Usefulness Quotes

• Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.

  Josh Billings

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

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• Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Men, Appearance, Jackets

  44 Copy quote

• Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Birthday, Peace, Age

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.19, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Nature, Children

  Theodore Roosevelt, Paul H. Jeffers (1998). “The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations”, p.30, Taylor Trade Publications

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• We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Courage, Men

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.312, Image

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• A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Character, Gun, Political

  Theodore Roosevelt (2013). “Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

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• Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Attitude, Yoga

  The Wall Street Journa, Summer 1993.

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• Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Friendship, World, Mankind

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1750). “Thoughts of Cicero: On the Following Subjects, Viz. I. Religion. II. Man. III. Conscience. IV. The Passions. V. Wisdom. VI. Probity. VII. Eloquence. VIII. Friendship. IX. Old Age. X. Death. XI. Scipio's Dream. XII. Miscellaneous Thoughts”, p.213

  14 Copy quote

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• The usefulness of the cup is its emptiness.

  Bruce Lee

  Art, Cups, Emptiness

  48 Copy quote

• Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.

  Bruce Lee

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Always help people increase their own self-esteem. Develop your skill in making other people feel important. There is hardly a higher compliment you can pay an individual than helping him to be useful and to find satisfaction in his usefulness.

  Donald Laird

  Self Esteem, Compliments You, Skills

  12 Copy quote

• Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Air, Alive, May

  Eleanor Roosevelt (1960). “You Learn by Living”, p.96, Westminster John Knox Press

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• It is a great misfortune to be of use to nobody; scarcely less to be of use to everybody.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Use, Misfortunes

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.49, Shambhala Publications

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• Success can corrupt; usefulness can only exalt.

  Dimitris Mitropoulos

  Success, Achievement, Fortune Cookie

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• As with all children, the feeling that I was useful was perhaps the greatest joy I experienced.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Children, Joy, Feelings

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• A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Men, Issues, Never Forget

  7 Copy quote

• Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Men, Kwanzaa, Nails

  Walter Savage Landor (2016). “Delphi Collected Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Art, Inspiration, Past

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

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• Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Attitude, Soul, Feelings

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2011). “The Will to Power”, p.654, Vintage

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• I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

  Jose Saramago

  Travel, Writing, Order

  "A Writer's Progress: An Interview with Nobel Prize-Winning Portuguese Novelist José Saramago". Interview with Anna Klobucka, masshumanities.org. Spring 2002.

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• The ease with which barley may be substituted directly for wheat in human food and its usefulness to replace wheat milling by-products as feed in the production of the milk supply render its abundant production important.

  David F. Houston

  Important, Ease, May

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• Not many appreciate the ultimate power and potential usefulness of basic knowledge accumulated by obscure, unseen investigators who, in a lifetime of intensive study, may never see any practical use for their findings but who go on seeking answers to the unknown without thought of financial or practical gain.

  Eugenie Clark

  Appreciate, Unseen, Use

  9 Copy quote

• Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Two, Important, Maps

  Alfred Korzybski (1958). “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”, p.58, Institute of GS

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• I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it.

  Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

  Benefits

  30 Copy quote

• Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished--their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Moving, Men, Light

  36 Copy quote