Teleology Quotes

#1. In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.

Daniel Dennett

#2. I would say that teleology is theology, and that God is not a "because," but rather an "in order to.

Miguel De Unamuno

#3. When all the mythologies have been set aside, we can see that, children or no children, the joke of evolution is that it is a teleology without a point, that we, like all animals, are a project that issues in nothing.

Maggie Nelson

#4. Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves.

Carl Jung

#5. The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty ... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation ... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad ... Truth matters because of beauty.

Alfred North Whitehead

#6. Evolution works by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose guiding the overall process

Gerald Edelman

#7. Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

Alfred Adler

#8. A teleology directed to material ends has been substituted for the lust for adventure, variety, and play.

John Carroll

#9. Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.

John B. S. Haldane

#10. But really justice has no coordinates, no teleology.

Maggie Nelson

#11. Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept.

Immanuel Kant

#12. Teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can live. Yet he is ashamed to show himself with her in public.

Ernst Wilhelm Von Brucke

#13. The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.

Richard Dawkins

#14. I found that married life gave me the necessary freedom to follow an ambition which had been with me since childhood; and so I started to write in earnest.

Jean Plaidy

#15. There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting ... But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.

Richard Dawkins

#16. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.

Michael Jordan

#17. The individual's religion may be egotistic, and those private realities which it keeps in touch with may be narrow enough; but at any rate it always remains infinitely less hollow and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which prides itself on taking no account of anything private at all.

William James

#18. Inside of every being there is a constant war being raged. The part that tell us to do what is right and what is decent and the part of us that is self-serving. The part that wants what it wants regardless of who is hurt getting it.

Kinley MacGregor

#19. The ultimate foundation of spirituality is the recognition that there can't be such a thing as a purposeful life in a purposeless universe.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#20. The relic of the "why" of advertising seems to still persist: Since I, as the advertiser, am paying, you have to put up with whatever I dish out. But think of it this way: just because my date pays for my ticket or dinner, does that give them license to do anything they want? No.

Yoram Jerry Wind

#21. We should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn.

George Washington

#22. Yeah school girl, cool girl. Your dress is sexy and your momma is a cougar.

J. Cole

#23. The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist.

G.K. Chesterton

#24. It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation).

Steven Pinker

#25. Only by intertwining these two perspectives, the biological and the phenomenological, can we gain a fuller understanding of the immanent purposiveness of the organism and the deep continuity of life and mind.

Evan Thompson

#26. If we knew what comes next, we never would have worried.

Mitch Albom

#27. He put his chin on the top of my head. "I know." He wrapped both arms around me just above my chest and pulled me against him. - Stefan (Bone Crossed)

Patricia Briggs

#28. Like physical events with their causal and teleological interpretations, every linguistic event had two possible interpretations: as a transmission of information and as the realization of a plan.

Ted Chiang

#29. But he didn't seem to need her to finish her sentence as he said, I know. When you kiss me, it's like that for me, too.

Bella Andre

#30. You are not the body. You are the immensity and infinity of consciousness.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

#31. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Richard Dawkins