Useless Quotes - Page 38

• Try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity.

  Maya Angelou

  Regret, Years, Live Your Life

  Twitter post from Jun 12, 2016

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• When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

  Bertrand Russell

  Party, Thinking, Political

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.22, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light. It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church.

  Simone Weil

  Religious, Heart, Son

  "Letter to a Priest". Book by Simone Weil, section 8, 1951.

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• Psychology is as useless as directions for using poison.

  Karl Kraus

  Psychology, Poison

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.

  Steve Jobs

  Ipods, Design, Trying

  Steve Jobs (0101). “Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs”, p.38, Prabhat Prakashan

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• It is useless to try to stir the dirt Out of the muddy water, As it will become murkier. But leave it alone, And if it should be cleared; It will become clear by itself.

  Bruce Lee

  Water, Trying, Dirt

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee: Artist of Life”, p.97, Tuttle Publishing

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• Now let the matter rest as it is, or as it may be, what avail useless speculations? What is to occur we do not know; still in so far we do! what God wills!

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  May, Matter, Gods Will

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1866). “The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1769-1791)”, p.131

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• Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.

  Frank Herbert

  Experts, Chaos, Source

  Frank Herbert (1984). “Children of Dune”, Berkley

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• There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Exercise

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.43, New Directions Publishing

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• Freedom of speech is useless without freedom of thought.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Freedom Of Speech, Speech, Freedom Of Thought

  John R. Coyne, Spiro T. Agnew (1972). “The Impudent Snobs: Agnew Vs. the Intellectual Establishment”, New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House

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• Don't be deceived when our Revolution has been finally stamped out and they tell you things are better now Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which these new industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you

  Peter Weiss

  Wages, Poverty, Revolution

  Peter Weiss (1998). “Marat/Sade ; The Investigation ; and The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman”, p.81, A&C Black

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• The whole idea of ideas in art is useless. Only have ideas about form.

  Matthew Collings

  Art, Ideas, Form

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• For those who do not wish to step away from consensus, the creative is useless at best; at worst, it is dangerous.

  Deena Metzger

  Creative, Wish, Steps

  Deena Metzger (2009). “Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Jou”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• I am afraid! It is not starving I fear, or talking to people, or even being alone. But I cannot bear to be useless and ineffectual. There must be some meaning to me, if not to my life; there must surely be some purpose that has my name written on it. If this is not so, if I am deceiving myself about this too, then why should I want to become real? What reason have I to live anywhere?

  Peter S. Beagle

  Real, Talking, Names

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

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• Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Heart, Eye, Men

  "To the Working People". Complete Works, translated by Leo Wiener, Volume 24, p. 129, 1905.

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• A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function.

  Walter Lippmann

  Cutting, Facts, Income

  Walter Lippmann, Julien C. Sprott (2015). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”, p.74, University of Wisconsin Pres

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• Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Evil, Degrees

  Henry Ward Beecher (1856). “Lectures to young men: on various important subjects”, p.134

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• You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday's parties.

  Cesare Pavese

  Party, Yesterday, Costumes

  Cesare Pavese, Geoffrey Brock (2002). “Disaffections: complete poems 1930-1950”, Copper Canyon Pr

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• Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Mean, Passion, Heart

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2009). “Emile: Or, On Education”, p.384, The Floating Press

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• It would be hard to conceive of any activity more useless than stamp collecting.

  Dave Barry

  Would Be, Stamp Collecting, Stamps

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• With useless endeavour Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Forever, Mountain, Stones

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Masque Of Pandora”

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• Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Support, Lows, Shows

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.134

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• Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Thinking, Church

  1878 An Inland Voyage,'At Maubeuge'.

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• We waste half our strength in a useless regretting; We sit by old tombs in the dark too long.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Regret, Dark, Long

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.665, Delphi Classics

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• To me, it appears no unjust simile to compare the affairs of this great Continent to the mechanism of a clock, each state representing some one or other of the smaller parts of it which they are endeavoring to put in fine order without considering how useless & unavailing their labor is unless the great Wheel or Spring which is to set the whole in motion is also well attended to & kept in good order.

  George Washington

  Spring, Order, Unjust

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1779). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.301

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