Functional Quotes

1. "Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails."
Author: Aberjhani

2. "But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons."
Author: Albert Camus

3. "The talked about their messed-up, dysfunctional families, carefully respecting boundaries, never probing too deep in any one sitting. And they always ended up laughing. Even when the subject matter was intense or macabre, Henry's sick and twisted and often politically incorrect sense of humor was infectious…Gloria laughed more in these first weeks at Oxford then she remembered laughing almost anywhere."
Author: Andrea Kayne Kaufman

4. "I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand. I do not like to put it down. I will not want to leave it."
Author: Anne Morrow Lindbergh

5. "But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution."
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich

6. "All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas."
Author: Brian Eno

7. "We are angry about paying the highest income taxes and property taxes in the nation and getting less and less for it. We are angry about our incompetent, dysfunctional government that pays no attention to the desires of the people. We are angry about the cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interests and self-dealing that is Albany."
Author: Carl Paladino

8. "If a decision-making process is flawed and dysfunctional, decisions will go awry."
Author: Carly Fiorina

9. "You know it's a dysfunctional family," said Riker, "when the one you like best is a mass murderer."
Author: Carol O'Connell

10. "My husband and I own a CrossFit Gym. Crossfit is perfect for me because it's always competitive, all the workouts are in a class environment, and it's different every day. It's a constantly varied functional fitness workout done with intensity."
Author: Chelan Simmons

11. "You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'"
Author: Damian Lewis

12. "I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems."
Author: David Sheff

13. "I used to teach acting in a maximum security men's prison. I worked with guys with the most dysfunctional behavior problems. I probably learned more there than from my prestigious theater degree."
Author: Diane Farr

14. "Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained."
Author: Ferdinand Porsche

15. "Linguistics is a good way of defining the culture of a brand. The vocabulary used by sports and lifestyle brands - running, fitness, training, motorsports - is all about functionality, whereas the vocabulary of the luxury business - handbags, ready-to-wear - is all about the product."
Author: Francois Henri Pinault

16. "Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors."
Author: Gene Hackman

17. "I know we're all psychotic, single and completely dysfunctional and it's all done over the phone,' Tom slurred sentimentally, 'but it's a bit like a family, isn't it?"
Author: Helen Fielding

18. "That is such crap. How dare you be so fraudulently flirtatious, cowardly and dysfunctional? I am not interested in emotional fuckwittage. Goodbye."
Author: Helen Fielding

19. "What you get out of an M.B.A. programme, no matter how much experience, is functional tools and understanding in disciplines: you'll understand economics, you'll understand marketing, finance, accounting. That, M.B.A. programmes do very well."
Author: Henry Mintzberg

20. "Nope, Ali's waiting on you. He's in there watching some cockamamie show about a dysfunctional family that makes duck calls."
Author: James Patterson

21. "I would say that financial markets are very inefficient, and capable of extremes of being completely dysfunctional."
Author: Jeremy Grantham

22. "Functionalism is lethal when it is not balanced by a sense of reverence. Without reverence, there is no sense of presence or wonder."
Author: John O'Donohue

23. "Those who think money can't buy happiness just don't know where to shop … People would be happier and healthier if they took more time off and spent it with their family and friends, yet America has long been heading in the opposite direction. People would be happier if they reduced their commuting time, even if it meant living in smaller houses, yet American trends are toward even larger houses and ever longer commutes. People would be happier and healthier if they took longer vacations even if that meant earning less, yet vacation times are shrinking in the United States, and in Europe as well. People would be happier, and in the long run and wealthier, if they bought basic functional appliances, automobiles, and wristwatches, and invested the money they saved for future consumption; yet, Americans and in particular spend almost everything they have – and sometimes more – on goods for present consumption, often paying a large premium for designer names and superfluous features."
Author: Jonathan Haidt

24. "In architecture and interiors, as well as fashion, there is an interaction that is both functional and aesthetic."
Author: Joseph Altuzarra

25. "Jenny couldn't believe herself a multiple. She was a mother, a nurse, not that screwball who appeared on the screen like some dysfunctional figment of her imagination trying to find a life. Still, she was coming to a realization that accepting who she was would be the jailer's key to liberate her from this cuckoo's nest."
Author: Judy Byington

26. "For some in Washington, it's become sport to pick on the federal workforce. I think they do so unjustly. The very foundation of a stable America is having a government that functions well. Many countries have dysfunctional governments, because they don't have a good government workforce."
Author: Ken Salazar

27. "It's good to learn early that every show is a family---complete with dysfunctional relationships, tough love, and plenty of occasion for forgiveness..."
Author: Kristin Chenoweth

28. "Hundreds of words await ostracism from our functional vocabularies: waltz and fizz and squeeze and booze and frozen pizza pie, frizzy and fuzzy and dizzy and duzzy, the visualization of emphyzeema-zapped Tarzans, wheezing and sneezing, holding glazed and anodized bazookas, seized by all the bizarrities of this zany zone we call home. Dazed or zombified citizens who recognize hazardous organizations of zealots in their hazy midst, too late - too late to size down. Immobilized we iz. Minimalized. Paralyzed. Zip Zap. ZZZZZZZZZ. Crazy.Crazy.Did I say crazy?"
Author: Mark Dunn

29. "Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior."
Author: Martin Luther

30. "A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it."
Author: Mary Karr

31. "Think of it.' said Robert Rosenbluth, a doctor whose acquaintance i made at the start of this book. 'no engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine tuned as an anus. to call someone an asshole is really bragging him up."
Author: Mary Roach

32. "I grew up in a dysfunctional family."
Author: Melissa Gilbert

33. "Government is dysfunctional."
Author: Michael Bloomberg

34. "Our ultimate goal is extensible programming (EP). By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system."
Author: Niklaus Wirth

35. "Great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine."
Author: Paul Cookson

36. "[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me."
Author: Paul R. Halmos

37. "I want kids to have a chance to dream of becoming something like I did in my life, and when you're living in a home that's dysfunctional and unhealthy that way, you don't dream like that."
Author: Picabo Street

38. "American products are marvels of production and functionality, but were unnecessarily and unbearably ugly, noisy smelly and offensive."
Author: Raymond Loewy

39. "In general, the more dysfunctional the family the more inappropriate their response to disclosure. Never expect a sane response from an insane system."
Author: Renee Fredrickson

40. "So much of young adult literature has turned dark, almost pathological. It's almost as if there is a race to see who can be the most dysfunctional."
Author: Richard Paul Evans

41. "On the front flap, the reader was informed that the Testamento geometrico was really three books, 'each independent, but functionally correlated by the sweep of the whole,' and then it said 'this work representing the final distillation of Dieste's reflections and research on Space, the notion of which is involved in any methodical discussion of the fundamentals of Geometry."
Author: Roberto Bolaño

42. "..."stupidity: a process, not a state. A human being takes in far more information that he or she can put out. 'Stupidity' is a process or strategy by which a human, in response to social denigration of the information [they] put[] out, commits [themself] to taking in no more information than [they] can put out. (Not to be confused with ignorance, or lack of data.) Since such a situation is impossible to achieve because of the nature of mind.perception itself in its relation to the functioning body, a continuing downward spiral of functionality and/or informative dissemination results." and he understood why! "The process, however, can be reversed," the voice continued," at any time..."
Author: Samuel R. Delany

43. "I love books about dysfunctional families."
Author: Sara Shepard

44. "We fight a lot, you know, but that's family. We may be dysfunctional but we're still family."
Author: Star Jones

45. "Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. We're so used to evaluating everything (and everyone) by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us. Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Which is to say, beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses."
Author: Stasi Eldredge

46. "The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight."
Author: Steve Martin

47. "It's a stark thought that when we die most of us will leave behind uneaten biscuits, unused coffee, half toilet rolls, half cartons of milk in the fridge to go sour; that everyday functional things will outlive us and prove that we weren't ready to go; that we weren't smart or knowing or heroic; that we were just animals whose animal bodies stopped working without any sort of schedule or any consent from us."
Author: Steven Hall

48. "Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. It's the deepest, wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snooze in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can't wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with a family-style restaurant or a new S and L. That's the payoff, I guess. Safety. Security. Certainty. Yes, indeed. Well, remember this, pussy latte: we're not involved in a 'relationship,' you and I, we're involved in a collision. Collisions don't much lend themselves to secure futures..."
Author: Tom Robbins

49. "I removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, cloverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there were no increments, no arbitrary graduations reducing time to functional units. I abstracted and purified."
Author: Tom Robbins

50. "Few things contain and impact the immediacy of cultural impress so evocatively as books, and not only through their ideas. A book is an artifact, and every age establishes upon the basic functional structure its own particular stamp."
Author: William Everson

Functional Quotes Pictures