Its Own Sake Quotes

#1. Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.

Charles Kingsley

#2. I write - and read - for the sake of the story ... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?

Ayn Rand

#3. Learn the writer's craft, write regularly, grow to love the practice for its own sake-and inspiration will either come on a particular day or it won't, but you'll have prepared the way for it.

Dennis Palumbo

#4. Building community for its own sake is like attending a cancer support group without having cancer.

Alan Hirsch

#5. Destruction, best expressed in this age in which I write as terrorism, is truly there for its own sake, but the pretense of religion or secular patriotism converts the destructive into the speciously creative.

Anthony Burgess

#6. The world exists for its own sake, not for ours. Swallow *that* pill!

Edward Abbey

#7. I was always more interested in the ultimate live performance rather than the recording for its own sake. And, for the audience too, that thrill of - just being there.

Ian Anderson

#8. Perhaps," the half-breed admitted. "But why fight when there is no need? Why fight just for its own sake? That is not fighting to save anyone, or to win anything, or even for glory. It is fighting from sheer bloodlust, from love of violence alone. And I am sick of that. I want no part of it.

Aaron Rosenberg

#9. What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?

Susan Cain

#10. The concept that one ought to restrict one's political involvement to one's own state was deeply antithetical to those who were pursuing the accumulation of capital for its own sake.

Immanuel Wallerstein

#11. Some of us will admit to a simple fascination with the inner world for its own sake, a fascination with no further goal than the thrill of discovery, the pleasure of engaging the mysterious, dark ground of our own nature.

Sandra Lee Dennis

#12. It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.

Paul Nurse

#13. Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.

Jasper Fforde

#14. Unemployment, with its injustice for the man who seeks and thirsts for employment, who begs for labour and cannot get it, and who is punished for failure he is not responsible for by the starvation of his children
that torture is something that private enterprise ought to remedy for its own sake.

David Lloyd George

#15. Knowledge pursued for its own sake - that's the definition of education, as opposed to training.

Jane Haddam

#16. Politics with me isn't theater. It's performance art. Sometimes, for its own sake.

Roger Stone

#17. I enjoy spending time with other awakened people and feeling the shared vibration of that, whereas just fun for its own sake might no longer be quite so enticing as it used to be.

Arjuna Ardagh

#18. The open mode is a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate, because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done properly. We can play.

John Cleese

#19. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.

C.S. Lewis

#20. Beauty is an ultimate value - something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.

Roger Scruton

#21. A calling is the most satisfying form of work because, as gratification, it is done for its own sake rather than for the material benefits it brings,

Daniel H. Pink

#22. I've always loved just learning stuff for its own sake. Just to be smarter about the world around me.

Cory Doctorow

#23. The sages advise us to study Torah lishma-"for its own sake" rather than to impress others with our scholarship. A paradox of parenting is that if we love our children for their own sake rather than for their achievements, it's more likely that they will reach their true potential.

Wendy Mogel

#24. There is no value in the reading of Scripture for its own sake, but only if it effectively introduces us to Jesus Christ.

John R.W. Stott

#25. I had then and still retain an interest in science for its own sake and as a metaphor for our current lives.

Peter Hammill

#26. You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.

Eckhart Tolle

#27. Secrecy can spring from the best motives; but as it grows it begins to exist only for itself, only for its own sake, only to cover its own abuses.

Christopher Dodd

#28. Fortunately I never came to enjoy the effect of heroin for its own sake, but floating away on a silk pillow was infinitely nicer than grinding my teeth in a drunken, paranoid stupor at the end of a coke binge.

Duff McKagan

#29. Because we humans find stories such fascinating things, it's all too easy to get interested in the story for its own sake, and lose sight of the purpose for which we set out to use the story.

Steve Denning

#30. Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.

Wole Soyinka

#31. In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve a problem.

Carroll Quigley

#32. It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

Margaret Thatcher

#33. Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.

Blaise Pascal

#34. ( ... ) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. ( ... ) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence - once they became an option - they mutated ... into a form of expression. And Art for its own sake, God help us, was born.

Chip Kidd

#35. To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

Arthur Conan Doyle

#36. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

Steven Pressfield

#37. I was watching Monster's Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It's just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done. It made me feel very old, really, because it wasn't eccentric for its own sake, it was just very original.

Adrian Lyne

#38. [W]e should be mucking about all the time, because mucking about is enjoying life for its own sake, now, and not in preparation for an imaginary future. It's obvious that the mirth-filled man, the cheerful soul, the childish adult is the one who has least to fear from life.

Tom Hodgkinson

#39. Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an unalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.

Isaiah Berlin

#40. Whether the task is writing, design, or hanging a picture straight, it is obvious that we do our best work when healthy, rested, refreshed, alert, and eager to do the job for its own sake.

Jeffrey Zeldman

#41. We can begin to open our hearts to others when we have no hope of getting anything back. We just do it for its own sake.

Pema Chodron

#42. One must devote oneself to figuring out that one must live for the good, for its own sake. It was a secular morality. Contemporaries did not know what to call a thing like that - he questioned their every faith, their every way of life - so they called it atheism.

Jennifer Michael Hecht

#43. Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Robert Quillen

#44. The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.

Oscar Wilde

#45. Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening" ... The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored ... The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

Elizabeth Bowen

#46. The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of
it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#47. If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.

C.S. Lewis

#48. [Practical intelligence is] practical in nature: that is, it's now knowledge for its own sake. It's knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.

Malcolm Gladwell

#49. The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.

Richard Sennett

#50. No Romeo-and-Juliet acts, no nonsense about Love with a large L, none of that popular song claptrap with its skies of blue, dreams come true, heaven with you. Just sensuality for its own sake.

Aldous Huxley

#51. Graphic Design for its own sake will never happen, because the concept cancels itself out - a poster about nothing other than itself is not Graphic Design, it's ... makin' ART.

Chip Kidd

#52. He watched her, listened to her, and knew she was truly asleep. He kissed her forehead and found the act pleasing for its own sake. And, he admitted as he licked his lips, it was enjoyable for other reasons. Meg wasn't bitable, but he really did like the taste of her.

Anne Bishop

#53. While men believe themselves to be seeking truth for its own sake, they are in fact seeking life in truth.

Miguel De Unamuno

#54. For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.

Sarah Waters

#55. I like accuracy for its own sake, strive after it myself, and am sometimes guilty of forcing it upon others.
-Bunny

E.W. Hornung

#56. I'm less interested in proselytizing or a bigger tent for its own sake than in issues of human flourishing. What are the best conditions in which people live and flourish? It's more the, How do we get along? What does it mean for living now?

Karen L. King

#57. Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.

Nancy Pearcey

#58. Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

James C. Collins

#59. 'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end.

Marcel Duchamp

#60. Knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

Moses Finley

#61. I think most people see drawing as subservient to the subject, a sort of meditation, a studying, a searching observation, in my case, for its own sake.

Peter Wright

#62. Lord, in our work for justice, let us not seek after martyrdom for its own sake, but neither let us turn away from your truth because we fear suffering. Give us grace to live faithfully whatever the cost. Amen.

Shane Claiborne

#63. In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity."10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible

Brennan Manning

#64. I learned to love dance for its own sake.

Suzanne Farrell

#65. Intellectual effort for its own sake, they call eccentricity.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#66. I have never designed a language for its own sake.

Niklaus Wirth

#67. How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning Living for its own sake isn't life. People need meaning as much as they need air.

Daniel H. Wilson

#68. We never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#69. I do not believe that God tortures any person simply for its own sake. I believe that God enables all things to work for the greater good.

James McGreevey

#70. If philosophy is to be a valuable part of life, we have to appreciate it for its own sake, and not just for what it's done for us lately.

Julian Baggini

#71. Towards himself a Christian should have a broken spirit, but towards God it should be one of rejoicing always in Him. He rejoices not for its own sake nor because of any joyful experience, work, blessing or circumstance, but exclusively because God is his center.

Watchman Nee

#72. We do not evaluate the result but the starting point of the creative process. Precisely, this shows whether the form was discovered by starting from life, or for its own sake. That is why I consider the creative process so essential. Life for us is the decisive factor.

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

#73. The world often seemed more like a template for fiction than something that should be indulged in for its own sake.

Dan Simmons

#74. Change for its own sake doesn't make life more interesting; it only makes it different.

Dennis Vickers

#75. Or: "The ideal student values knowledge for its own sake, as well as for its instrumental uses. He or she hopes to make a contribution to society at large.

Carol S. Dweck

#76. Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited.

Carl Sagan

#77. Wealth for its own sake is an empty shell. Wealth that includes making other people's lives better will reward you even more than the beautiful mansion you live in.

Gene Simmons

#78. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.

Mahatma Gandhi

#79. I did not make this a long film for its own sake. I wanted to make an entertaining film and offer it out there for those who want to see it. If word of mouth suggests there is an audience out there, hopefully their cinema will show it.

Kenneth Branagh

#80. Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#81. Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process--which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.

Lytton Strachey

#82. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence
these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

Albert Einstein

#83. Nowhere in Scripture do we find doctrine studied for its own sake or in isolation from life.

Wayne Grudem

#84. Although he didn't care much about any subject for its own sake, he cared a great deal about marks (grades or comparisons).

C.S. Lewis

#85. Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire.

Hannah Arendt

#86. This is excellence - the following of anything for its own sake and with its own integrity ...

Freya Stark

#87. There are people who try to look as if they are doing a good and thorough job, and then there are the people who actually damn well do it, for its own sake.

John D. MacDonald

#88. A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.

Aristotle.

#89. We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake. It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their truth.

Ayn Rand

#90. Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth.

H.L. Mencken

#91. So here are our truisms about truth:
Truth is objective.
Truth is good.
Truth is a worthy goal of inquiry.
Truth is worth caring about for its own sake.

Michael P. Lynch

#92. It's possible to make things that aren't just money-makers. Something wonderful for its own sake.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#93. If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it's bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.

J.I. Packer

#94. Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.

Colin Powell

#95. He was like some wild, untamed creature that you could keep and feed for a time, but in the end you knew you'd have to let it go for its own sake as well as yours.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#96. No man, perhaps, is so wicked as to commit evil for its own sake. Evil is generally committed under the hope of some advantage the pursuit of virtue seldom obtains. Yet the most successful result of the most virtuous heroism is never without its alloy.

Benjamin Haydon

#97. When the artist ... intends from the beginning to be obscure and take obscurity as his objective or goal for its own sake and wishes to astonish, shock, and seem mysterious, that is a swindle.

Tawfiq Al-Hakim

#98. Your mind has some clearness and capacity for right thinking; it opens towards the heights, but for its own sake, - to receive light from above for its own activity.

Sri Aurobindo

#99. The word 'superficial' comes with such negative connotations, suggesting that whatever it is applied to has no value. But the emotional pull of beauty for its own sake cannot be underestimated.

Robin Givhan

#100. As soon as you start asking what education is for, what the use of it is, you're abandoning the basic assumption of any true culture, that education is worth while for its own sake.

Ann Bridge