Utility Quotes - Page 7

• Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures.

  James McHenry

  Scripture, Holy, Distribution

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• To treat programming scientifically, it must be possible to specify the required properties of programs precisely. Formality is certainly not an end in itself. The importance of formal specifications must ultimately rest in their utility -in whether or not they are used to improve the quality of software or to reduce the cost of producing and maintaining software.

  Jim Horning

  Learning, Quality, Cost

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• I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God,-the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures. I trust in my own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward,-Nature's good And God's.

  Robert Browning

  Beauty, Spring, Autumn

  Robert Browning, John Woolford, Daniel Karlin (1991). “The Poems of Browning: 1841-1846”, p.192, Pearson Education

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• It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.

  Henry John Stephen Smith

  Beauty, Math, Science

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• Happy 60th Birthday, good buddy.
  How are you dealing with your awful debility,
  lessened utility and loss of mobility?

  John Walter Bratton

  Birthday, Loss, Mobility

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• For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize... They were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Ignorance, Knowledge

  "Metaphysics". Book by Aristotle (982b10), later published in "The Basic Works of Aristotle" edited by Richard McKeon (p. 692), 1941.

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• The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects,as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind.

  David Hume

  Religious, Moon, Support

  David Hume (2013). “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• The determination of the value of an item must not be based on its price, but rather on the utility it yields. The price of the item is dependent only on the thing itself and is equal for everyone; the utility, however, is dependent on the particular circumstances of the person making the estimate. Thus there is no doubt that a gain of one thousand ducats is more significant to a pauper than to a rich man though both gain the same amount.

  Daniel Bernoulli

  Money, Determination, Men

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• The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Exercise, Boys, Men

  Michel de Montaigne (1850). “Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.94

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• Acting is not about competing. Acting is about cooperating. Acting is about collaboration. It's about your utility, your usefulness, your capacity to add to the work that has already been done and will be done. You're just part of a team. I never feel competitive about acting.

  Harrison Ford

  Team, Acting, Done

  "Harrison Ford, Liam Hemsworth, Amber Heard, Lucas Till, and Director Robert Luketic Talk PARANOIA, Real-Life Parallels, and More". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. August 12, 2013.

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• It is only by being exchanged that the products of labor acquire a socially uniform objectivity as values, which is distinct from their sensuously varied objectivity as articles of utility.

  Juliet B. Schor

  Objectivity, Uniforms, Articles

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• Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.

  James Mackintosh

  Generosity, Fiction, Taught

  Sir James Mackintosh (1835). “Memoirs of the life of the Right Honorable Sir James Mackintosh”, p.42

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• [on the theory of the firm] It is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility.'

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Mean, Curves, Analysis

  "The theory of the firm in the last ten Years" by Kenneth E. Boulding in "The American Economic Review", Volume 32, No. 4 (pp. 791-802), December 1942.

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• I loved the idea that people dressed up to go to the gardens. Our work always has a utility point of view at its heartbeat and then other things come around it, so it really allowed us to use denims and suedes and gauzes, and those sorts of hard-working fabrics - workwear fabrics - and then contrast them with crepe de chine, beautiful florals and big jewelry.

  Karen Walker

  Beautiful, Hard Work, Garden

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• Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Politics, Entertainment

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• When we say we can pull resources away from libraries, from culture, from those parts of the education system that are not about utility, what we are really saying is that the life of the mind is unnecessary.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Mind, Library, Culture

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• I don't want to convince you that mathematics is useful. It is, but utility is not the only criterion for value to humanity. Above all, I want to convince you that mathematics is beautiful, surprising, enjoyable, and interesting. In fact, mathematics is the closest that we humans get to true magic. How else to describe the patterns in our heads that - by some mysterious agency - capture patterns of the universe around us? Mathematics connects ideas that otherwise seem totally unrelated, revealing deep similarities that subsequently show up in nature.

  Ian Stewart

  Beautiful, Education, Math

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• To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.

  Adam Smith

  Sacrifice, Law, Ideas

  Adam Smith, William Playfair (1811). “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations”, p.26

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• The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Long, Use

  Michel de Montaigne “Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

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• Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.

  David Brooks

  Art, Commitment, People

  David Brooks (2015). “The Road to Character”, p.109, Random House

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• If the knowledge of torture of others makes you sick, it is a case of sympathy... It can be argued that behaviour based on sympathy is in an important sense egoistic, for one is oneself pleased at others' pleasure and pained at others' pain, and the pursuit of one's own utility may thus be helped by sympathetic action.

  Amartya Sen

  Pain, Sick, Religion

  Amartya Kumar Sen (1997). “Choice, Welfare and Measurement”, p.92, Harvard University Press

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• What I look for is identifying what the utility of a character is to the telling of the story overall. If I can identify that from reading the script, then I've got a clear idea of whether or not I think the character is worth playing.

  Harrison Ford

  Reading, Character, Thinking

  "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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• The eighteenth-century view of the garden was that it should lead the observer to the enjoyment of the aesthetic sentiments of regularity and order, proportion, colour and utility, and, furthermore, be capable of arousing feelings of grandeur, gaiety, sadness, wildness, domesticity, surprise and secrecy.

  Penelope Hobhouse

  Sadness, Garden, Views

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• What a noble gift to man are the Forests! What a debt of gratitude and admiration we owe to their beauty and their utility! How pleasantly the shadows of the wood fall upon our heads when we turn from the glitter and turmoil of the world of man!

  Susan Fenimore Cooper

  Gratitude, Fall, Men

  Susan Fenimore Cooper (1850). “Rural Hours”, p.202

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• The script is a blueprint for the film - there are very few bad scripts that make good movies. If you really like the character and understand the utility it serves within the movie, that's a part of my process.

  Topher Grace

  Character, Good Movie, Scripts

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