Usefulness Quotes - Page 2

• Experiments were not attempted at that time, we did not believe in the usefulness of the concept anyway, and I finished my thesis in 1962 with a feeling like an artist balancing on a high rope without any interested spectators.

  Richard Ernst

  Believe, Artist, Feelings

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• I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

  Jose Saramago

  Travel, Writing, Order

  "A Writer's Progress: An Interview with Nobel Prize-Winning Portuguese Novelist José Saramago". Interview with Anna Klobucka, masshumanities.org. Spring 2002.

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• Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.

  William O. Douglas

  Change, Ideas, Facts

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• A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.

  Walter Lippmann

  Sleep, Men, Useless

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

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• A man's usefulness depends on his living up to his ideals insofar as he can. It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Iron, Joy

  Theodore Roosevelt (1955). “Theodore Roosevelt's America: Selections from the Writings of the Oyster Bay Naturalist”

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• By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds which brave men and women are capable.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Communication, Heart, Mean

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• What is a good man?
  Simply one whose life is useful to the world.
  And a bad man is simply one whose life is harmful to others.
  There are, however, those who are harmful and yet enjoy a good reputation, and who manage to profit by a show of usefulness.
  These are the worst of all.

  Zhang Zhao

  Men, Good Man, World

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• Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

  Dan Inosanto

  Motivational, Individuality, Experience

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• My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Country

  Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1961

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• All models are wrong, but some are useful.

  George E. P. Box

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  George E. P. Box, Norman R. Draper (2007). “Response Surfaces, Mixtures, and Ridge Analyses”, p.414, John Wiley & Sons

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• Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  God, Christian, Religious

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• Labor wants pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something beautiful or useful - to be treated with dignity and respect as brother and sister.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Respect

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• Every person who has grown to any degree of usefulness, every person who has grown to distinction, almost without exception has been a person who has risen by overcoming obstacles, by removing difficulties, by resolving that when he met discouragement he would not give up.

  Booker T. Washington

  Success, Determination, Giving Up

  Booker T. Washington (2013). “The Booker T. Washington Reader”, p.303, Simon and Schuster

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• What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.

  Julia Cameron

  Motivational, Money, Work

  Julia Cameron (2012). “The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity”, p.148, Souvenir Press

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• The Lord was pleased to strengthen us, and remove all fear from us, and disposed our hearts to be as useful as possible.

  Richard Allen

  Strength, God, Christian

  Absalom Jones, Richard Allen (1993). “A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793: And a Refutation of Some Censures Thrown Upon Them in Some Late Publications”, Eastern Acorn Press

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• Quality is free. It's not a gift, but it's free. The 'unquality' things are what cost money.

  Phil Crosby

  Money, Business, Effectiveness

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• Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.

  Sherry Turkle

  Being Alone, Expectations, Feelings

  Sherry Turkle (2011). “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”, p.154, Basic Books

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• There are those who believe that the value of a children's book can be measured only in terms of the moral lessons it tries to impose or the perfect role models it offers. Personally, I happen to think that a book is of extraordinary value if it gives the reader nothing more than a smile or two. In fact, I happen to think that's huge.

  Barbara Park

  Smile, Children, Fun

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• Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it

  Richard P. Feynman

  Inspirational, Funny, Sex

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• The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strenght state; usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Flower, Eye, Maturity

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1997). “The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman”, p.109, Broadview Press

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• Beauty is highly desirable but simplicity and usefulness are the overwhelming fashion of our age. Just because it's beautiful does not mean it's useful.

  Gerry McGovern

  Beautiful, Fashion, Mean

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• We reward people a lot for being rich, for being famous, for being cute, for being thin... one of the values I think we need to instill in our country, in our children, is a sense of 'usefulness', in other words, are we useful, are we making other peoples' lives a little bit better?

  Barack Obama

  Cute, Country, Money

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• We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a 'common goal' of nature as I can guess at.

  Lewis Thomas

  Life, Music, Science

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• It is my humble prayer that I may be of some use in my day and generation.

  Hosea Ballou

  Prayer, Humble, Generations

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• Shape clay into a vessel;
  It is the space within that makes it useful.
  Cut doors and windows for a room;
  It is the holes which make it useful.
  Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
  Usefulness from what is not there.

  Laozi

  Inspirational, Cutting, Space

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