Mission
The society takes its intellectual mission very seriously, invoking Socrates' exhortation "The unexamined life is not worth living” as well as stating to its prospective members that: "Berzelius provides opportunities for achieving insights through an open, honest exchange of experiences, passions, and opinions. This process prepares its members — whose diversity is highly valued — for an active, intellectually vigorous, and moral life, giving them a place and time for contemplation and reflection so that they might rise boldly to the challenges of their lives, devoted to good character, tolerant of others, and willing to serve their communities, while forging links of mind to mind in a chain unbroken."
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Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I cannot be a materialist—but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery—such suffering, such dreadful suffering—and shall the short years of Christ’s mission atone for it all?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I am succeeding quite well in my work and the future looks well. What special mission is God preparing me for? Cutting off all earthly ties and isolating me as it were.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)