Usefulness Quotes - Page 5

• To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth out not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration. The only distinctions which should be recognized are those of the soul, of strong principle, of incorruptible integrity, of usefulness, of cultivated intellect, of fidelity in seeking the truth.

  William Ellery Channing

  Strong, Honesty, Integrity

  William Ellery Channing (1925). “The Liberal Gospel: As Set Forth in the Writings of William Ellery Channing”

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• One absolutely crucial change is that feminist film theory is today an academic subject to be studied and taught. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was a political intervention, primarily influenced by the Women's Liberation Movement and, in my specific case, a Women's Liberation study group, in which we read Freud and realised the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory for a feminist project.

  Laura Mulvey

  Study Group, Feminist, Political

  Source: en.aup.nl

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• Almost every one of the great religions of the world has made special provisions for them, and the woman who has preferred a celibate to a domestic life has been able to occupy a position of honor and usefulness.

  Mary Livermore

  Women, Honor, Religion

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• The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.

  John Cheever

  Writing, Needs, Make Sense

  Accepting Edward MacDowell Medal, September 8, 1979.

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• A happy marriage is a new beginning of life, a new starting point for happiness and usefulness.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Anniversary, Marriage, Wedding

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• Conservation means development as much as it does protection.
  A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Mean, Men, History

  Theodore Roosevelt, Leo Edward Miller (1955). “Theodore Roosevelt's America: selections from the writings of the Oyster Bay naturalist”

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• Science ... has no consideration for ultimate purposes, any more than Nature has, but just as the latter occasionally achieves things of the greatest suitableness without intending to do so, so also true science, as the imitator of nature in ideas, will occasionally and in many ways further the usefulness and welfare of man,-but also without intending to do so.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Nature, Science, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.40, Courier Corporation

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• The writer cultivates, extends, raises and inflates his imagination, sure that this is his destiny, his usefulness, his contribution to the understanding of good and evil. As he inflates his imagination he inflates his capacity for evil.

  John Cheever

  Destiny, Evil, Imagination

  "Going To The Tigers" by Robert Cohen, www.believermag.com. February 2010.

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• This present system by which industry is motivated exclusively by the quest for maximal profits - though it may have helped a great deal to develop, to industrialize our country so rapidly and so successfully - now it's clearly passed its usefulness. It is keeping us from achieving the ideal society that we should have. We say industry must produce to improve the quality of life for all our people.

  Benjamin Spock

  Country, Should Have, People

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• I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting.

  George Orwell

  Soccer, Football, Fighting

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We have no organ at all for knowledge, for truth: we know (or believe or imagine) precisely as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, the species: and even what is here called usefulness is in the end only a belief, something imagined and perhaps precisely that most fatal piece of stupidity by which we shall one day perish.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Believe, Knowledge, Stupidity

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• One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Real, World, Action

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.214

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• So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Apology, Hands

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1965). “The Philosophy of Nietzsche”, Signet Book

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• If all human lives depended upon their usefulness - as might be judged by certain standards - there would be a sudden and terrific mortality in the world.

  Gene Tunney

  Sports, Making A Difference, Charity

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• The truly scientific mind is altogether unafraid of the new, and while having no mercy for ideas which have served their turn or shown their uselessness, it will not grudge to any unfamiliar conception its moment of full and friendly attention, hoping to expand rather than to minimize what small core of usefulness it may happen to contain.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Truth, Science, Ideas

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• Man, being made reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public, and his own present and future benefit in all respects.

  William Penn

  Men, Thinking, Benefits

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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• If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment, all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Crush, Meaningful, Work

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• I don't think conservativism is about a deficiency. I think it's about a commitment to an ideology that has to in some ways devalue the usefulness of empathy. I do think empathy can be learned. And enhanced.

  Jim Shepard

  Commitment, Thinking, Empathy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Empathy is a human trait. But lots of humans exercise some traits more energetically than others. By "the usefulness of empathy" I mean the way in which a progressive might claim that empathy is a crucial aspect of any benign political system, and the way a conservative might argue that not only is it not necessary, but it might not even be all that helpful, in that regard.

  Jim Shepard

  Mean, Exercise, Empathy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Progress Of Society, Political, Lines

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.97, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

  Marie Curie

  Science, Discovery, Views

  Marie Curie's lecture at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, May 14, 1921.

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• There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of; there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Sight, Needs, Way

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• Tommy moved on. "Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet - they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now?

  Christopher Moore

  Dream, Kings, Years

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• I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Reflection, Self, Dwelling

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2015). “Annotated Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus with English Grammar Exercises: by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.29, Powell Publications, LLC

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• I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.

  Charles Dickens

  Lying, Mean, Ambition

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.5760, Delphi Classics

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