Usefulness Quotes - Page 4

• The usefulness of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.

  Lane Kirkland

  Numbers, Squares, People

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• Our idea of what constitutes social good has advanced with the procession of the ages, from those desperate times when just to keep body and soul together was an achievement, to the great present when "good" includes an agreeable, stable civilization accessible to all, the opportunity of each to develop his particular genius and the privilege of mutual usefulness.

  Frances Perkins

  Opportunity, Civilization, Ideas

  Frances Perkins (1934). “People at work”

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• Any idol, regardless of its beauty or usefulness or original purpose, is to be set aside so that Christ might reign supreme, without a single competitor.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Christian, Idols, Religion

  Charles R. Swindoll (1979). “Home, where life makes up its mind”

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• Many a woman shudders... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians.

  Sarah Moore Grimke

  Art, Army, Intellectual

  "The Female Experience". Book by Gerda Lerner (Chapter 87), 1977.

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• In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it... Then and not till then, the tree being drained dry and the sap no longer dripping, let it be felled and it will be in the highest state of usefulness.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Heart, Cutting, Tree

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter IX, Section 3), circa 15 BC.

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• Your success and usefulness in the world is going to be measured by your confession and by the tenacity with which you "hold fast" that confession under all circumstances.

  F. F. Bosworth

  World, Tenacity, Confession

  F. F. Bosworth (2001). “Christ the Healer”, p.159, Chosen Books

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• What I am anxious to do is to secure my legislation.... What I want to do is to get through that, and if I can point to a record of usefulness of that kind, I am entirely willing to quit office.

  William Howard Taft

  Office, Want, Records

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• Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lying, Moving, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.210, Graphic Arts Books

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• The man who works 52 weeks in the year does not do his best in any one week of the year, Daniel Guggenheim, onetime head of the greatest smelting and mining family in America, impressed upon me. Real recreation quickens aspiration. The true purpose of recreation is not merely to amuse, not merely to afford pleasure, not merely to kill time, but to increase our fitness, enhance our usefulness, spur achievement.

  B. C. Forbes

  Real, Men, Years

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• I taught myself to name my name,
  To bark back, loosen love and crying;
  To ease my woman so she came,
  To ease an old man who was dying.

  W. D. Snodgrass

  Education, Men, Names

  W. D. Snodgrass, “April Inventory”

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• The useful and the beautiful are never separated.

  Periander

  Beautiful

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• The validity of usefulness, adequacy of popular standards can be tested only by research that violates them.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Adequacy, Research, Standards

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• People who acquire things beyond their usefulness not only will derive little or no marginal gains from these acquisitions, but they also will experience negative consequences, as with any form of gluttony.

  Ray Dalio

  Life, People, Growth

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• One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them.

  Sarah Moore Grimke

  Religious, Hands, Interesting

  Sarah Moore Grimké, Mary S. Parker (1838). “Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman: Addressed to Mary S. Parker”, p.121

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• Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity. The evil all arose from the fact that he had increased his needs rather than limited them; . . . As long as fresh needs continued to be created, so new frustrations would come into being. When had the decline begun? The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution - not a social or political revolution - only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Country, Loss, Frustration

  Simone de Beauvoir (1968). “Les Belles Images”

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• Experts must read the patterns and judge their usefulness as evidence. Under any of numerous pressures, an expert may wish to misread a pattern or even to alter it. Americans had a touching trust in "experts".

  Dean Koontz

  Judging, Touching, Wish

  Dean Koontz (2007). “The Good Guy”, p.147, Bantam

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• Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power, the utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God's creation. Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal, and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of his needs.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Taken, Men, Animal

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.34, Macmillan

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• Let mine not be that saddest fate of all To live beyond my greater self; to see My faculties decaying, as the tree Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall... "She lives, but all her usefulness is past."

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Appreciation, Fall, Fate

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.386, Jazzybee Verlag

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• All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves...

  Aristotle

  People, Desire, Example

  "Metaphysics" by Aristotle, Book I, (980a.21),

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• The usefulness of the pot lies in its emptiness.

  Laozi

  Lying, Emptiness, Pot

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• In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them

  Eric Hoffer

  Order, Growth, Development

  Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

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• Dinocrates did not leave the king, but followed him into Egypt. There Alexander, observing a harbor rendered safe by nature, an excellent center for trade, cornfields throughout all Egypt, and the great usefulness of the mighty river Nile, ordered him to build the city of Alexandria, named after the king. This was how Dinocrates, recommended only by his good looks and dignified carriage, came to be so famous.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Kings, Egypt, Cities

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book II, Introduction, Section 4,

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• Technology is all the accumulated usefulness that our minds invent.

  Kevin Kelly

  Technology, Mind

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• The reason why I take my life is because I want to go to my wife and boy. My usefulness in this world is at an end. I can not be satisfied in any business and can not be without their companionship.

  Alex Campbell

  Boys, Wife, World

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• The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system.

  Kevin Kelly

  Innovation, Overwhelmed, Fringe

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