Iain Pears Quotes

The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.

Iain Pears

• Society
• Action
• Purpose
• Philosophy
• Civilization

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Quotes to Explore

• My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

  

  J. C. Watts
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Action

• Of course, giving is deeply emotional. But supplementing emotion with research makes it more likely that a gift can have a bigger impact. It's like any investment. After all, you wouldn't put funds into stocks or bonds without understanding the potential return. Why wouldn't you do the same when investing in society?

  

  Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
  • Why
  • Society
  • Giving

• Truth in our society often takes a back seat to securing gainful consequences.

  

  Pamela Meyer
  • Truth
  • Society
  • Consequences

• The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.

  

  Xavier Rudd
  • Music
  • Believe
  • Change

• Do our children now have to choose between getting an education and dying? Some of us cannot move on and accept that kind of society.

  

  Obiageli Ezekwesili
  • Children
  • Society
  • Education

• I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.

  

  Ice Cube
  • Up
  • Music
  • Society

• Artists are political in the sense that they've subtracted themselves from the structure of the marketplace and are contributing something that's not utilitarian. Even though books get sold, and I get advances, I get to look at society and think for a living.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • Think
  • Society
  • Political

• Rising anti-Semitism is rarely the lone or the last expression of intolerance in a society.

  

  Samantha Power
  • Society
  • Expression
  • Last

• As much as I enjoy traveling and playing on stage as an artist, I really find my true sense of purpose in a room writing a song.

  

  Sam Hunt
  • Writing
  • True
  • Song

• As a matter of personal philosophy, I have generally said, 'Why not?' far more often than either 'Why?' or 'Not.'

  

  Rachel Sklar
  • Why
  • Philosophy
  • Said

• What 'Deadwood' did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in, and how that brought its own problems.

  

  Ian McShane
  • Society
  • Talk
  • Capitalism

• If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.

  

  Zig Ziglar
  • God
  • Live
  • Society

• Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.

  

  Hannah Arendt
  • Action
  • Name
  • Without

• The 'Dog's Purpose' premise has gotten me so many emails and comments from people who say that their dog is so much like one they had when they were young or years before, that it seems like the truth. The idea that you would come across an old friend later in life.

  

  W. Bruce Cameron
  • People
  • Life
  • Truth

• Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action.

  

  Malcolm Fraser
  • Heart
  • Change
  • Action

• When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.

  

  J. William Fulbright
  • Men
  • Society
  • Democracy

• In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

  

  Adam Gopnik
  • Long
  • High
  • Space

• Labels, boxes, and politically correct terminology all seem small and irrelevant when being compared to the violent and brutal attacks on the lives of people who are different than what society says we should be.

  

  La'Porsha Renae
  • People
  • Different
  • Society

• The work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men.

  

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  • World
  • Good
  • Work

• More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being above everything else...All our lauded technological progress-our very civilization-is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.

  

  Albert Einstein
  • Love
  • Progress
  • Charity

• John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.

  

  Zell Miller
  • Like
  • Security
  • Outsourcing

• What motivates me is seeing people in the crowd and wondering what they're going home to and what they're dealing with, and knowing that for the time being we're their escape.

  

  Hayley Williams Paramore
  • People
  • Time
  • Home

• I want to put something on the screen that audiences have never seen black actors do before, roles that will widen views of who African-Americans are.

  

  Joe Morton
  • Black

• The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.

  

  Iain Pears
  • Society
  • Action
  • Purpose