The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function.
Herbert Simon

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
Margaret Fuller

The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.
David Herbert Lawrence

The family has a social function and so it should be sustained.
Rocco Buttiglione

The female format is a beautiful one in which to function. Foolhardy as it may be. I change my image all the time, it's whatever suits me at the moment.
Lydia Lunch

The first and most optimistic response was complete rational expectations econometrics. A rational expectations equilibrium is a likelihood function. Maximize it.
Thomas J. Sargent

The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.
Walter Kaufmann

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think.
June Jordan

The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which the naturalist encountered when he undertook to define them.
Asa Gray

The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all.
Kingman Brewster, Jr.

The function of a citizen and a soldier are inseparable.
Benito Mussolini

The function of a genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.
Hugh Trevor-Roper

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.
Edward Thorndike

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
Ralph Nader

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
Lionel Trilling

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
Leonardo da Vinci

The function of posterity is to look after itself.
Dylan Thomas

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
Soren Kierkegaard

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
Norman Mailer