Utilitarian Quotes - Page 2

• Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra-these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Moon, Space, Feelings

  N.Y. Times, 21 July 1969

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• I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

  John D'Agata

  Art, Thinking, Mind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I would describe that [friendship with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras] as a utilitarian friendship. At the time, his country was facing the prospect of leaving the euro zone and many Greeks felt abandoned by Europe. In such a situation, it seemed appropriate to me to present myself as a friend to Greece. It had to do with the country's dignity.

  Jean-Claude Juncker

  Country, Europe, Leaving

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people’s actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant.

  Azar Nafisi

  Attitude, Passion, Land

  Azar Nafisi (2014). “The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books”, p.20, Penguin

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• You might argue on utilitarian grounds that the best way for the world to work is for everybody to take care of themselves first. And people have made that argument. But I just think we would be so much better off if we could care for distant others even a little bit more.

  Paul Bloom

  Thinking, People, Would Be

  "Paul Bloom: The Trouble With Empathy". Interview with Allyson Kirkpatrick, www.guernicamag.com. February 1, 2016.

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• In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes.

  Albert Einstein

  Sports, Ambition, Intellectual

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Essays in Science”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian adopts) and about which actions or moral rules would contribute to maximizing the good. For the rational intuitionist, there are truths about which actions should be done and not done.

  Allen W. Wood

  Done, Maximizing, Matter

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.

  Henri Nouwen

  Distance, Emotional, Safe

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• We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, that fire can purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Mother, Fire

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.152, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• What interests me is the following paradox: of how, precisely in our liberal societies, where no one can even imagine a transcendental cause for which to die, we are allowed to adopt a hedonistic, utilitarian, or even more spiritually egotistical stance - like, the goal of my life is the realization of all my potential, fulfillment of my innermost desires, whatever you want.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Goal, Desire, Realization

  Source: www.electronicbookreview.com

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• [Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.

  James A. Garfield

  Stars, Character, Science

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• But on a utilitarian level, I realize that to try to accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number of people, sometimes we have to become salesmen for what we believe, and part of being a salesman is being effective.

  Moby

  Believe, Numbers, People

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• [Aldous Huxley] compared the brain to a 'reducing valve'. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world.

  Tom Wolfe

  Men, Knowing, Perception

  Tom Wolfe (1999). “The electric kool-aid acid test”, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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• I do not see why the axiom of Prudence should not be questioned, when it conflicts with present inclination, on a ground similar to that on which Egoists refuse to admit the axiom of Rational Benevolence. If the Utilitarian has to answer the question, 'Why should I sacrifice my own happiness for the greater happiness of another?' it must surely be admissible to ask the Egoist 'Why should I sacrifice a present pleasure for a greater one in the future? Why should I concern myself about my own future feelings any more than about the feelings of other persons?'

  Henry Sidgwick

  Sacrifice, Psychology, Feelings

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• Forests, beyond offering us their plainly utilitarian wealth, have to perform vast physiological functions in the great economy of nature, by contributing predominantly in the empire of vegetation to the liberation of oxygen.

  Ferdinand von Mueller

  Offering, Oxygen, Empires

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• Worship ought not to be construed in a utilitarian way. Its purpose is not to gain numbers nor for our church to be seen as successful. Rather, the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it. (Worship) immerses us in the regal splendor of the King of the cosmos…provides opportunities for us to enjoy God’s presence in corporate ways that takes us out of time and into the eternal purposes of God’s kingdom. As a result, we shall be changed—but not because of anything we do. God, on whom we are centered and to whom we submit, will transform us by his Revelation of himself.

  Marva Dawn

  Kings, Successful, Opportunity

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• The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die... His whole life is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as such.

  Allan Bloom

  Powerful, Passion, Men

  "The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students". Book by Allan Bloom, 1987.

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• In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite... Not only communism, but any political movement which implicitly relies on purely utilitarian ethics, must become a victim to the same fatal error. It is a fallacy as naïve as a mathematical teaser, and yet its consequences lead straight to Goya's Disasters, to the reign of the guillotine, the torture chambers of the Inquisition, or the cellars of the Lubianka.

  Arthur Koestler

  Errors, Political, Single Life

  Arthur Koestler (1952). “Arrow in the blue: an autobiography”

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• Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.

  Aristotle

  Math, Skills, Egypt

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• I am indeed a hedonistic utilitarian. I have defended hedonistic utilitarianism for quite a while.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Utilitarianism, Hedonistic

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It was also her nature that caused her letters to avoid emotional pitfalls and confine themselves to relating the events of her daily life in the utilitarian style of a ship's log. In reality they were distracted letters, intended to keep the coals alive without putting her hand in the fire, while Florentino Ariza burned himself alive in every line.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Reality, Emotional, Fire

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• Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

  David Lodge

  Age, Modern, Cathedrals

  David Lodge (1990). “Nice Work”, Penguin Group USA

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• Opportunism towards knowledge is a utilitarian demand that knowledge must be immediately practical. Just like with sociology where we hope its purpose is to serve society, however, the true purpose of sociology lies in its impracticality. It cannot become practical or else it loses its meaning. Perhaps we should learn a different kind of knowledge: the knowledge to question knowledge.

  Wang Jianwei

  Lying, Different, Purpose

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'd be the first person to say I can't write dialogue. My dialogue is very utilitarian and is designed to move things forward. I'm not Shakespeare. It's not designed to be poetic.

  George Lucas

  Moving, Writing, Firsts

  "Star Wars archive: George Lucas 1999 interview". Interview with Ian Freer, www.empireonline.com. September 1999.

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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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