I don’t believe there is any finer mission on earth than just to make people laugh.
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (1887-1933) American silent film actor, comedian, director, screenwriter
“Fatty Off Guard,” interview by Elizabeth Sears (1916)
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Quotations about:
mission
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What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?
Barbara Brown Taylor (b. 1951) American minister, academic, author
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (2006)
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A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system. The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition.
W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) American management consultant, educator
The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, ch. 3 “Introduction to a System” (1993)
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If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Speech, Fourth Annual Republican Women’s National Conference, Washington, DC (6 Mar 1956)
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One of the things I like best about animals in the wild is that they’re always off on some errand. They have appointments to keep. It’s only we humans who wonder what we’re here for.
Diane Ackerman (b. 1948) American poet, author, naturalist
“In Praise of Bats,” The Moon by Whale Light (1991)
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Most of the activities of any bureaucracy are devoted not to the organization’s ostensible goals, but to ensuring that the organization survives: because if they aren’t, the bureaucracy has a life expectancy measured in days before some idiot decision maker decides that if it’s no use to them they can make political hay by destroying it. It’s no consolation that some time later someone will realize that an organization was needed to carry out the original organization’s task, so a replacement is created: you still lost your job and the task went undone. The only sure way forward is to build an agency that looks to its own survival before it looks to its mission statement. Just another example of evolution in action.
Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which says, “Give me something huge to fight, — and I should enjoy that — but why make me sweep the dust?”
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) English clergyman, historian, essayist, novelist (pseud. "Parson Lot")
Letter, “To a lady who consulted him about Sisterhoods” (24 Jul 1854)
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We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won’t let them into our country.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) American writer
(Attributed)
Quoted in Clifton Fadiman, The American Treasury: 1455-1955 (1955).
We discovered at one point that the brick wall of the pillar would hold up a sock pretty well. This led to sorting socks by putting them on the wall, which in turn led to mosaics built entirely of socks. Mission drift is a hazard in all pursuits, including doing the laundry.
James Nicoll (b. 1961) Canadian reviewer, editor
“Another question about expectations,” rec.arts.sf.written, Usenet (22 May 2005)
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There is a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
Ronald D. Moore (b. 1964) American screenwriter, television producer
Battlestar Galactica, 1×02 “Water” [Adama] (2004)
To serve the Public faithfully, and at the same time please it entirely, is impracticable.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Oct 1758)
An Ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
[Legatus est vir bonus, peregrè missus ad mentiendum Reipublicae causâ.]
Henry Wotton (1568-1639) English author, diplomat, politician
Reliquiae Wottonainae (1651)
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Wotton wrote in an apology to Velserus in 1612, that during his travel through Augsburg in 1604, "This merry definition of an ambassador I had chanced to set down at my friend's, Mr. Christopher Fleckamore, in his Album". It seems to have been intended as a pun when translated to English.Sometimes translated as "An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country."
The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they’re organized for.
Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) American writer
Little Town on the Prairie (1941)
We must guard against being too individualistic and elitist in our understanding of spirituality. Some Christians talk endlessly about the importance of one’s interior life and how to develop it more fully, forgetting that Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people — the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced.
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924-2006) American minister, social activist
Credo, “Faith, Hope, and Love” (2004)
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Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace!
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) Italian Franciscan mystic, reformer, saint [b. Giovanni di Pietro di Bunardone]
“Prayer of St Francis” (Attributed)
The poem (in French) appears to date back no further than 1912, and was first misattributed to St. Francis in 1927. The first English translation (as above) is in 1936. More information on its origin here and here. The original French (La Clochette magazine, #12 (Dec 1912):
Belle prière à faire pendant la Messe
Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a l'offense, que je mette le pardon.
Là où il y a la discorde, que je mette l'union.
Là où il y a l'erreur, que je mette la vérité.
Là où il y a le doute, que je mette la foi.
Là où il y a le désespoir, que je mette l'espérance.
Là où il y a les ténèbres, que je mette votre lumière.
Là où il y a la tristesse, que je mette la joie.
Ô Maître, que je ne cherche pas tant à être consolé qu'à consoler, à être compris qu'à comprendre, à être aimé qu'à aimer, car c'est en donnant qu'on reçoit, c'est en s'oubliant qu'on trouve, c'est en pardonnant qu'on est pardonné, c'est en mourant qu'on ressuscite à l'éternelle vie.
Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 3: The Return of the King, Book 5, ch. 9 “The Last Debate” [Gandalf] (1955)
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Here’s a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bach (b. 1936) American writer
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, ch. 15, epigraph (1977)
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If a man hasn’t discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Speech, Detroit (23 Jun 1963)
