Useless Quotes - Page 40

• All the sutras in the world are useless. All the lectures of all the teachers don't really mean anything. They are only words. They point in a direction, that is their only use.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Mean, Use

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• It is useless saying that we do not accept the gods of the primitive world. In form, no; in essence, yes. The fact before us is that all ideas of gods can be traced to the earliest stages of human history.... There is an unbroken line of descent linking the gods of the most primitive peoples to those of modern man. We reject the world of the savage; but we still, in our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, perpetuate the theories he built upon that world.

  Chapman Cohen

  Men, Ideas, Essence

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• Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical.

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Men, Law, Atheism

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• The best idea ever thought of in the history of humanity is useless unless someone communicates it. It will die in the test tube. And in our case, what we're communicating here to people is not necessarily something they want to hear. And so, our demeanor - how we deliver this message - takes on crucial, crucial importance.

  Phil Plait

  Ideas, People, Humanity

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• Do not be tempted to invest in a sample of each golfing invention as soon as it makes its appearance. If you do, you will only complicate and spoil your game - and encumber your locker with useless rubbish.

  Harry Vardon

  Golf, Games, Temptation

  Harry Vardon (2010). “The Complete Golfer”, p.168, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Civilization, Age, Lost

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.173, Penguin

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• I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it's given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: 'All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit - beginning with my own'.

  Maya Angelou

  Regret, Ignorance, Years

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• If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Use, Recipes, Today

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2865, Delphi Classics

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• Attack anything that makes you feel unworthy, inadequate, hopeless, powerless and useless. That is the evidence of the enemy. All those things need to be attacked with joy, with peace, with love and grace, with mercy, with kindness and the goodness of God.

  Graham Cooke

  Kindness, Joy, Grace

  FaceBook post by Graham Cooke from Jul 05, 2011

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• In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.

  Milton Friedman

  Milton Friedman, William Richard Allen (1983). “Bright promises, dismal performance: an economist's protest”, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.

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• As the economy unravels, as hundreds of millions of Americans confront the fact that things will not get better, life for those targeted by this culture of hate will become increasingly difficult. Rational debate will prove useless.

  Chris Hedges

  Hate, Get Better, Culture

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• We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

  George Eliot

  Useless Things, Consumerism, Deals

  George Eliot (2016). “The Mill On The Floss”, p.243, George Eliot

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• A useless life is an early death.
  [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Indolence, Early Death

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• it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises.

  Frances Wright

  Hypocrisy, Promise, Morality

  Frances Wright (1850). “A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum”, p.203

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• The typhoon came out of the sea first as a deep hollow roar. ... I was surrounded by the madness, the unreason, of uncontrolled, undisciplined energy. None of this made any sense. It was worse than useless - it was nature destroying its own creation - its own self. To create by the long process of growth and then to destroy by a fit of wild emotion - was this not madness, was this not unreason?

  Pearl S. Buck

  Self, Sea, Weather

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• The belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully by meanness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd.

  Theodor Mommsen

  Mean, Evil, Simplicity

  "The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2" by Theodor Mommsen, translated by W.P.Dickson, 1866.

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• The United Nations is useless...and also harmful. It is a land that flowers demagoguery with a bunch of newborn countries, devoid of any tradition.

  Antonio de Oliveira Salazar

  Country, Flower, Land

  "Memories of an unfinished war: Canada, the United States and the decolonization process in Angola" by Manuel Francisco Gomes, Collaborator Alberto João Jardim; Published by Edições Colibri, (p. 153), 2006.

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• There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.

  Henry Clay Trumbull

  Two, Self, World

  Quoted by Richard Foster in "Renovare perspective", Vol. 7, No. 2, April 1997.

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• Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

  Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild

  Men, World, Maxims

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• The simplest case, where one is informed that a cat is black because it is black, may be harmless, though irritating and useless; but the actual cases [in statements of evolutionary theory] are always harder to detect than this, and may darken counsel for a long time.

  Norman Macbeth

  Cat, Long, Black

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• Boycotting the referendum is a possible option ... because we believe that participating in the voting might be a useless act.

  Saleh al-Mutlaq

  Believe, Voting, Might

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• There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself

  Michel de Montaigne

  Uselessness

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1542, Delphi Classics

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• Talent without work is useless, thank God

  Mark Twain

  Thank God, Talent

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• It will be found, as men grow more tolerant in their instincts,
  that many uniformities now insisted upon are useless and even harmful.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Instinct, Found

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Political Ideals”, p.23, Bertrand Russell

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• Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Men, Feelings, Culture

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

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