Useful Things Quotes - Page 2

• That is, to me at least, one of the most helpful and useful things books do for us: They are generous enough to allow us to choose what matters to us.

  John Green

  Real, Book, What Matters

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• But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.

  John Shelton Reed

  Believe, Hero, Poor

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• One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.

  Anna Quindlen

  Age, Conformity, Realizing

  Anna Quindlen (2012). “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life”, p.42, Random House

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• The only useful thing I ever learned in school was that if you spit on your eraser it erased ink.

  Dorothy Parker

  Education, School, Ink

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• I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.

  Stephen Dunn

  Thinking, Parent, Littles

  "Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stephen Dunn". "PBS NewsHour" with Elizabeth Farnsworth, www.pbs.org. April 26, 2001.

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• America is the world's living myth. There's no sense of wrong when you kill an American or blame America for some local disaster. This is our function, to be character types, to embody recurring themes that people can use to comfort themselves, justify themselves and so on. We're here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we provide. A myth is a useful thing.

  Don DeLillo

  Character, America, People

  Don DeLillo (2012). “The Names”, p.114, Vintage

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• Do not use intoxicants of any sort. We who should be serving the world should not ruin our health by smoking and drinking. The money we waste on these things can be used for so many useful things. With the money we smoke away, we can buy an artificial leg for one who has lost a leg, pay for an eye operation for someone with a cataract, or buy a wheelchair for a polio victim. Or, if nothing else, we can buy some spiritual books for the local library.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Spiritual, Drinking, Food

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• Organizations like the ACLU fought and won the good fight back in the 1960's, but it's clear that nowadays they've run out of useful things to do since they now spend most of their time defending the scum of the Earth from getting what they rightly deserve.

  Craig Reucassel

  Running, Fighting, Scum Of The Earth

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• Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.

  Warren Christopher

  War, President, World

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• I am a maker of useful things.

  Eva Zeisel

  Makers

  "Prolific" by Judith Thurman, www.newyorker.com. December 18, 2006.

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• Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

  Nick Park

  Children, Father, Electric Motors

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• The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things

  Abraham Lincoln

  Fire, Discovery, Patents

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• I can't draw. But I can draw with sound. That's the most useful thing I learned in terms of what my craft is... The arrangements were mine. They were little lines and stuff that I had written myself... And I was locked into this idea that vocals didn't count, melodies didn't count, songwriting craftsmanship didn't count. The only thing that counted was high arching guitar solos...

  Linda Ronstadt

  Guitar, Ideas, Sound

  "Ronstadt Proves She Can Go `Home' Again / New album returns singer to her roots". Interview with Joel Selvin, www.sfgate.com. March 19, 1995.

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• Be passionate and bold. Always keep learning. You stop doing useful things if you don't learn.

  Satya Nadella

  Passionate, Keep Learning, Ifs

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• Like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experience. Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. So family, curiosity and hunger for knowledge all define me.

  Satya Nadella

  Believe, Book, Thinking

  "Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO". news.microsoft.com. February 4, 2014.

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• People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?

  Tad Williams

  Average, People, What If

  Tad Williams (1998). “Otherland 2: River of Blue Fire”, p.21, Penguin

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• Instead of the primitive raw material economy, we will create a smart economy generating unique knowledge, new useful things and technologies. Instead of the archaic society, in which the leaders think and make decisions for everyone, we will become a country of intelligent, free and responsible people.

  Dmitry Medvedev

  Country, Smart, Intelligent

  "Medvedev wants Russia to go hi-tech" by Maxim Tkachenko, edition.cnn.com. November 12, 2009.

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• No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems

  Anna Garlin Spencer

  Art, Children, Husband

  Anna Garlin Spencer (1908). “Woman's Share in Social Culture”

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• A self-made man, if he is made at all, has already won the battle of life. . . . he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how the conversion of it into useful things will make of his life something worthwhile. He has learned to say no, to say no at the right time and then to stand by it. Without resistance, and the self-denial which it often imposes, there is no real happiness. In the quest for happiness man must learn that temptation resisted strengthens the mind and the soul.

  Alvin R. Dyer

  Life, Real, Men

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• Our time here on the earth is short, and our chance to make a difference is tiny. For me the grinding blocks of history came together in such a way that I was able to take what fragile defense I had and hold in place for seventy-six days. If I was able to give much it was only because I had some useful things from my life to give. I am a hotel manager...my job never changed, even in a sea of fire.

  Paul Rusesabagina

  Jobs, Block, Sea

  Paul Rusesabagina (2009). “An Ordinary Man: The True Story Behind Hotel Rwanda”, p.131, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• In trouble we are prone to forget all that we have heard and read that makes for our comfort. Now what is the reason that a man comes to think of that which otherwise he should never have called to mind? The Holy Spirit brings it to his remembrance; He is a Comforter, bringing to mind useful things at such times when we have most need of them.

  Richard Sibbes

  Men, Thinking, Remembrance

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• One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge.

  Isaac Asimov

  Real, Math, Understanding

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• Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.”

  Charlie Munger

  Order, Discipline, Needs

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• How did you find me anyway." "For all that I must keep reminding you that I am not a bloodhound, it's true that on occasion, having a sensitive nose is a useful thing. I followed the smell of you." Tybalt sighed, looking exaggeratedly put-upon. "If you must be ferried back to your people, I suppose I can oblige. But only because you asked me so very nicely, and promised me a kiss.

  Mira Grant

  Kissing, Smell, People

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• The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Drinking, Men, Wind

  H. L. MENCKEN (1924). “PREJUDICES FOURTH SERIES”

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