The historical weight was and remains the name of its founder, Aristotle Onassis, who in January 1974, οn an airplane crossing over the Atlantic, was inspired to write the Foundation's founding declaration. The responsibility can be condensed into the words “aid, progress and development”, which Onassis himself carefully chose, noted down, underlined, and passed on as a legacy, the motivating factor underpinning the Foundation’s existence. And the desire was, is, and will remain, the individual.

The Foundation’s first and last principle is human nature. Progress, stories and the individual’s imprint within the greater whole of the city. Words and curiosity — sometimes torturous, sometimes entertaining, but always creative. Thoughts, contradictions, and above all the release of possibilities, of the strengths we each carry within, which develop if properly nurtured. The individual, full of contradictions and adventures, takes shape in an ongoing workshop of actions, interventions and ideas that begins with the Foundation’s financial self-sufficiency and independence and ends with its three central pillars of activity: Culture, Education and Health. These are the things a human being needs to truly live — rather than merely to survive.
Above all, the Onassis Foundation is a heterogeneous human ecosystem. It is a gathering of personalities, moods, goals and talents that allows for unexpected encounters between artists, doctors, business-people, academics, sailors, philosophers, technocrats and activists, resulting in the words that bring them together — words that are always more than they had expected.