Utility Quotes - Page 11

• The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs, Losing both beauty and utility.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Green, Docks

  'Henry V' (1599) act 5, sc. 2, l. 44

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• It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.

  Eric Hoffer

  Meaningful, Men, Skills

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Nothing is more useful to man that those arts which have no utility.

  Ovid

  Art, Men

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• Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

  Karl Jaspers

  Philosophy, Mean, Motherhood

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• The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Hands, Walking Sticks, Effort

  Thorstein Veblen (2011). “Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.184, BoD – Books on Demand

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• The superior excellence imputed to the book, which imitates the products of antique and obsolete processes, is conceived to be chiefly a superior utility in the aesthetic respect; but it is not unusual to find a well-bred book-lover insisting that the clumsier product is also more serviceable as a vehicle of printed speech.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Book, Excellence, Speech

  Thorstein Veblen (1993). “A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism”, p.88, M.E. Sharpe

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• To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?

  Jeremy Bentham

  Character, Pleasure, Source

  Jeremy Bentham, Etienne Dumont (1830). “The Rationale of Reward”, p.205

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• Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Race, Judging, Employment

  Jeremy Bentham (1839). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...”, p.254

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• It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Giving, Gold

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• Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Use, Elements

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• Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Passing On, Joy, Mind

  Rabindranath Tagore (2017). “Sadhana: The Realization of Life”, p.104, BookRix

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• When trees mature, it is fair and moral that they are cut for man's use, as they would soon decay and return to the earth. Trees have a yearning to live again, perhaps to provide the beauty, strength and utility to serve man, even to become an object of great artistic worth.

  George Nakashima

  Cutting, Men, Tree

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• Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate utility of pain

  Bill W.

  Pain, Ignorance, Years

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• A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean.

  Ken Wilber

  Ocean, Unity, Trying

  Ken Wilber (2001). “No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth”, p.52, Shambhala Publications

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• A purely materialistic art would be like a tree which is expected to bear fruit without flowering and to sacrifice grace and beauty for mere utility

  Haile Selassie

  Art, Sacrifice, Tree

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• Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, Two, Everyday

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• The only reason of the institution of civil government; and the only rational ground of submission to it, is the common safety and utility

  Jonathan Mayhew

  Government, Safety, Common

  Jonathan Mayhew (1750). “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-resistance to the Higher Powers: With Some Reflections on the Resistance Made to King Charles I, and on the Anniversary of His Death: in which the Mysterious Doctrine of the Princes' Saintship and Martyrdom is Unriddled: the Substance of which was Delivered in a Sermon Preached in the West Meeting-house in Boston the Lord's-day After the 30th of January, 1749/50...”, p.38

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• One of the most difficult things to learn is to render service without bossing, without making a fuss about it, and without any consciousness of high and low. In the world of spirituality, humility counts at least as much as utility.

  Meher Baba

  Humility, World, Spirituality

  "Discourses". Book by Meher Baba, 1967.

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• Utilities used deregulation to effect a series of mergers limiting competition. In order to accelerate profits, cost cutting ensued, involving the layoff of thousands of utility company employees, including some who were responsible for maintenance of generation, transmission, and distribution systems. A number of investor-owned utilities stopped investing in the maintenance and repair of their own equipment, and, instead, cut costs to enhance the value of their stock rather than spending money to enhance the value of their service.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Money, Cutting, Order

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• The gospel we preach must not be just something we hear from men or read from books or even conceived through our meditation. Unless it is delivered to us by God, it can serve no spiritual utility.

  Watchman Nee

  Spiritual, Book, Men

  Watchman Nee (2009). “The Spiritual Man”, p.532, Christian Fellowship Publishers

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• It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.

  Michael Faraday

  Doors, Degrees, Advancement

  Michael Faraday (1839). “Experimental Researches in Electricity: Series 1-14 [Phil. trans., 1831-38] 1839”, p.257

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• Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007 - and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.

  Amory Lovins

  Cells, Wind, Coal

  "Missing the Market Meltdown". www.newsweek.com. May 17, 2008.

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• Economic activity is no longer an adversarial contest between embattled sellers and buyers "In the distributed economy, where collaboration trumps competition, inclusivity replaces exclusivity and transparency and openness to others becomes essential to the new way of conducting business, empathic sensibility has room to breathe and thrive. It is no longer so constrained by hierarchies, boundaries of exclusion, and a concept of human nature that places acquisitiveness, self-interest, and utility at the center of the human experience."

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Self, Competition, Hierarchy

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• By utility is meant that property is any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness(all this in the present case come to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness to the party who whose is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community; if a particular individual; then the happiness of that individual

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Party, Evil

  Jeremy Bentham (1879). “The Principles of Morals and Legislation”

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• Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Land, Lasts

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