Utility Quotes - Page 13

• No human being has the faculty of originally creating matter, which is more than nature itself can do. But any one may avail himself of the agents offered him by nature, to invest matter with utility.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Creating, Agents, May

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.65

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• But concerning vision alone is a separate science formed among philosophers, namely, optics, and not concerning any other sense ... It is possible that some other science may be more useful, but no other science has so much sweetness and beauty of utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can the other sciences be known.

  Roger Bacon

  Philosophy, Flower, Vision

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• The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Vocabulary, Mind, Important

  "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

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• An icon means nothing to me. I don't understand what it means to anybody actually. It seems like a word of convenience. It seems to attend to the huge success of certain kinds of movies that I did, but there's no personal utility in being an icon. I don't know what an icon does, except stand in a corner quietly accepting everyone's attention. I like to work, so there's no utility in being an icon.

  Harrison Ford

  Mean, Icons, Doe

  "Harrison Ford Talks ENDER’S GAME, Why It’s a Good Family Movie, the Evolution of Space Visual Effects Since STAR WARS, and More". Press conference, collider.com. October 27, 2013.

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• Ideal government would be a very boring job - it would be a matter of organizing a lot of utilities and keeping the wires together and the power plant and all that kind of stuff. It's not a matter of telling people how to live, it's a matter of making it pleasant for them to live. Government should be in the position of distributing food, stuff like that.

  Grace Slick

  Jobs, Government, People

  Source: www.rollingstone.com

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• Utility is the true criterion of beauty.

  Max von Stephanitz

  Criteria

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• Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

  George Santayana

  Music, Useless, Life Is

  'The Life of Reason' (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4

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• As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.

  Henry Fielding

  Men, Example, World

  Henry Fielding (1857). “Joseph Andrews. History of the life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the great”, p.7

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• Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Lying, True Life, Biographies

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].”, p.243

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• One of the first principles of decorative art is that in all manufactures ornament must hold a place subordinate to that of utility; and when, by its exuberance, ornament interferes with utility, it is misplaced and vulgar.

  George Mason

  Art, Principles, Ornaments

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• The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no.

  Clifford Stoll

  Data, Editors, Quality

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• Obviously, you can't operate a system at 100 percent capacity. You need room for growth. And because there are peak times, you need surge capacity. But it is easier to reduce and manage excess capacity in larger units than smaller, especially when you have a diversity of users who have different peak periods and different growth rates. That's why the utility model is intriguing.

  Steven Pearlstein

  Diversity, Growth, Different

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Liberals in the US don't have great passions about Margaret Thatcher. Conservatives do. For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the US, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here. When I moved to Britain, the utilities were state-run. By the time I left, most of that was privatized. Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.

  Jon Weisman

  Party, Passion, Cutting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.

  Giambattista Vico

  Men, Luxury, Mad

  Giambattista Vico (2015). “The New Science of Giambattista Vico”, p.153, Cornell University Press

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• The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.

  Tom Regan

  Life, Nature, Animal

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• That the foundation of our national policy should be laid in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity, of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.

  James Madison

  Justice, Voting, Foundation

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