Utility Quotes - Page 4

• The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Mean, Law, Justice

  4 Copy quote

• The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a very free flow of scientific information - a freedom accepted by the countries of the world irrespective of political systems or religions. ... Great care must be taken that the scientific network is utilized only for scientific purposes - if it gets involved in political questions it loses its special status and utility as a nonpolitical force for development.

  Sune Bergstrom

  Country, Taken, Science

  8 Copy quote

• Books are the basis; purity is the force; preaching is the essence; utility is the principle.

  A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

  Book, Essence, Principles

  57 Copy quote

• A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Good Man, Action

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.95, Psychology Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, there's no question that the law passed in 1996 was flawed. It deregulated the wholesale market, meaning the price that the utilities had to pay energy companies for power, but not the retail market.

  Gray Davis

  Law, Pay, Energy

  7 Copy quote

• Play: It is an an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action.

  Johan Huizinga

  Order, Play, Space

  Johan Huizinga (1949). “Homo Ludens”, p.132, Taylor & Francis

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of SPEECH, consisting of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion; whereby men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation; without which, there had been amongst men, neither Commonwealth, nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Science, Past, Men

  Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (1996). “Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised Student Edition”, p.24, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I regarded as quite useless the reading of large treatises of pure analysis: too large a number of methods pass at once before the eyes. It is in the works of application that one must study them; one judges their utility there and appraises the manner of making use of them.

  Joseph-Louis Lagrange

  Reading, Eye, Science

  31 Copy quote

• Facebook is such a basic utility. It's something that is such a part of peoples' lives, I think it's hard to imagine it going away.

  Sean Parker

  Thinking, Going Away, Imagine

  "Sean Parker ‘Bored’ By Facebook — And It Seems He’s Not The Only One" By Bianca Bosker, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 6, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones; since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival.

  Wilfrid Sheed

  Artist, Men, Supposing That

  Wilfrid Sheed (1978). “The good word and other words”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

  Ray Charles

  Country, Men, Special

  8 Copy quote

• Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?

  Henri Poincare

  Writing, Science, Numbers

  "The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare".

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• At no period of [Michael Faraday's] unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected.

  Abraham Flexner

  Science, Careers, Curiosity

  11 Copy quote

• What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.

  Benjamin Franklin

  War, Bridges, Rivers

  Benjamin Franklin (2006). “The Portable Benjamin Franklin”, p.332, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mind is a mechanism. It has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill, but it has no intelligence; it has a functional utility, but it has no awareness. It is a robot; it works well but don`t listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you. You are asking a machine which has nothing original in it.

  Rajneesh

  Skills, Intelligence, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Thinking, Race

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.102, Rowman & Littlefield

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility.

  Aristotle

  Wise, Art, Knowledge

  Aristotle (2016). “Pocket Aristotle”, p.114, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no one will buy.

  C. S. Lewis

  Want, Slave

  C. S. Lewis (1997). “The voyage of the Dawn Treader”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ah, the power of two. There's nothing quite like it. Especially when it comes to paying utility bills, parenting, cooking elaborate meals, purchasing a grown-up bed, jumping rope and lifting heavy machinery. The world favours pairs. Who wants to waste the wood building an ark for singletons?

  Sloane Crosley

  Two, Jumping, Cooking

  "I want to be alone: the rise and rise of solo living". Interview with Eric Klinenberg, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I did not realize that when money becomes a core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Community, Mind, Important

  Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.140, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, People, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• The Convention is not only a visionary document. We are reminded daily that it is an agreement that works - and its utility can be seen in the everyday use to which I have seen it increasingly being put by country after country, in policy, in practice and in law.

  Carol Bellamy

  Country, Children, Agreement

  7 Copy quote

• The world's forests need to be seen for what they are - giant global utilities, providing essential public services to humanity on a vast scale. They store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They act as a natural thermostat, helping to regulate our climate and sustain the lives of 1.4 billion of the poorest people on this Earth.

  Prince Charles

  Life, People, Support

  Prince Charles' Speech to a WWF gala dinner at Hampton Court Palace on the Prince's Rainforests Project, www.theguardian.com. October 26, 2007.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Americans are driving more in less-efficient vehicles. Sales of sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks have been amazingly strong considering the recession, and low pump prices are keeping people on the roads

  Mike Lucky

  Sports, Strong, People

  5 Copy quote

• There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Acceptance, Self, Two

  "Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think". Book by Charles Caleb Colton, 1820.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source