Purpose
Despite the educational ambitions, most working men's clubs are recreational. Typically, clubs have a bar for the sale and consumption of alcohol, snooker, pool or bar billiards tables, and many provide food. They often provide entertainment such as bingo, raffles, live music and comedy. They are also known for their charitable works. In recent years, declining membership has seen many clubs close down and others struggle to remain open. Some groups try to raise the profile of clubs, pointing to their historical legacies and their community roles.
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Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock as not going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch’s greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)