Utility Quotes - Page 12

• My own suspicion is that a stand-alone artificial mind will be more a tool of narrow utility than something especially apocalyptic.

  Jamais Cascio

  Mind, Tools, Stand Alone

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• Sometimes, when I couldn’t afford to pay the utility bill at the end of the month, I was forced to read by the light of the stories themselves.

  Steve Stern

  Light, Stories, Pay

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• The hydrogen economy will make possible a vast redistribution of power, with far-reaching consequences for society. Today's centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities, could become obsolete.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Top Down, Oil, Energy

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• I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on them, because of the limited perspective you tend to get from being plunked down in some particular part of the past, and the danger of not getting back in time for your orals.

  John Lewis Gaddis

  Past, Perspective, Historical

  John Lewis Gaddis (2004). “The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past”, p.22, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and immanent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.

  Johannes Itten

  Color, Mystery, Deeper

  Johannes Itten (1961). “Kunst der Farbe”, Reinhold Pub. Corp

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• Liberals in the US don't have great passions about Margaret Thatcher. Conservatives do. For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the US, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here. When I moved to Britain, the utilities were state-run. By the time I left, most of that was privatized. Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.

  Jon Weisman

  Party, Passion, Cutting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Obviously, you can't operate a system at 100 percent capacity. You need room for growth. And because there are peak times, you need surge capacity. But it is easier to reduce and manage excess capacity in larger units than smaller, especially when you have a diversity of users who have different peak periods and different growth rates. That's why the utility model is intriguing.

  Steven Pearlstein

  Diversity, Growth, Different

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language.

  Daniel O'Connell

  Communication, Heart, History

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• Regarding wetsuits, I always liked the Marilyn Minter quote, 'Everything's better when wet,' injecting some style into sports utility.

  Cynthia Rowley

  Sports, Style, Wet

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• With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects - the building is there to be used, and times change.

  Arne Jacobsen

  Building, Architect, Used

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The answer is simple. If we lose the world's forests, we lose the fight against climate change. Rainforests are our Earth's greatest utility - our planet's lungs, thermostat and air-conditioning system.

  Michael Somare

  Fighting, Simple, Air

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• The misconception that there is serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans that rely on the massive unrestrained dumping of global warming pollution into the Earth's atmosphere every hour of every day.

  Al Gore

  Science, Oil, Atmosphere

  Al Gore (2006). “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It”, p.263, Rodale

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• Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process.

  L. Neil Smith

  Giving Up, Government, Law

  "Ceres". Book by L. Neil Smith, 2009.

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• Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Color, Cadavers, Weight

  Robert Charles Wilson (2010). “Spin”, p.59, Macmillan

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• But concerning vision alone is a separate science formed among philosophers, namely, optics, and not concerning any other sense ... It is possible that some other science may be more useful, but no other science has so much sweetness and beauty of utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can the other sciences be known.

  Roger Bacon

  Philosophy, Flower, Vision

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• The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Vocabulary, Mind, Important

  "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

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• An icon means nothing to me. I don't understand what it means to anybody actually. It seems like a word of convenience. It seems to attend to the huge success of certain kinds of movies that I did, but there's no personal utility in being an icon. I don't know what an icon does, except stand in a corner quietly accepting everyone's attention. I like to work, so there's no utility in being an icon.

  Harrison Ford

  Mean, Icons, Doe

  "Harrison Ford Talks ENDER’S GAME, Why It’s a Good Family Movie, the Evolution of Space Visual Effects Since STAR WARS, and More". Press conference, collider.com. October 27, 2013.

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• Ideal government would be a very boring job - it would be a matter of organizing a lot of utilities and keeping the wires together and the power plant and all that kind of stuff. It's not a matter of telling people how to live, it's a matter of making it pleasant for them to live. Government should be in the position of distributing food, stuff like that.

  Grace Slick

  Jobs, Government, People

  Source: www.rollingstone.com

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• Utility is the true criterion of beauty.

  Max von Stephanitz

  Criteria

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• Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

  George Santayana

  Music, Useless, Life Is

  'The Life of Reason' (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4

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• As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.

  Henry Fielding

  Men, Example, World

  Henry Fielding (1857). “Joseph Andrews. History of the life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the great”, p.7

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• Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Lying, True Life, Biographies

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].”, p.243

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• One of the first principles of decorative art is that in all manufactures ornament must hold a place subordinate to that of utility; and when, by its exuberance, ornament interferes with utility, it is misplaced and vulgar.

  George Mason

  Art, Principles, Ornaments

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• Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.

  David Ricardo

  Two, Scarcity, Commodity

  David Ricardo (1821). “On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation”, p.2

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• Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it.

  David Ricardo

  Essentials, Values

  David Ricardo, John Ramsay McCulloch (1852). “The Works of David Ricardo. With a notice of the life and writings of the author: by J. R. McCulloch”, p.9

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