Special Purpose Entities

Famous quotes containing the words special, purpose and/or entities:

    The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    With the breakdown of the traditional institutions which convey values, more of the burdens and responsibility for transmitting values fall upon parental shoulders, and it is getting harder all the time both to embody the virtues we hope to teach our children and to find for ourselves the ideals and values that will give our own lives purpose and direction.
    Neil Kurshan (20th century)

    What are you now? If we could touch one another,
    if these our separate entities could come to grips,
    clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
    I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
    and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
    Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand. Speak to me.
    Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)