Valueless Quotes

• It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless.

  Oscar Wilde

  Giving, Doubt, Unbiased

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.284, OUP Oxford

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• Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Desirable

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.72, Princeton University Press

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• Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.

  James Cash Penney

  Business, Practice, Entrepreneur

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• Lack of self-worth is the fundamental source of all emotional pain. A feeling of insecurity, unworthiness and lack of valueis the core experience of powerlessness.

  Gary Zukav

  Relationship, Spiritual, Pain

  FaceBook post by Gary Zukav from Apr 03, 2015

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• Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

  Emile Durkheim

  Dream, Reality, Imagination

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.216, Routledge

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• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Leadership

  'Lady Windermere's Fan' (1892) act 3

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• Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

  John Ruskin

  Life, Book, Reading

  Sesame and Lilies preface (1865)

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• I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Class, Numbers

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• The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces.

  Paul Halmos

  Space, Algebra, Seasoning

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• One joins the movement in a valueless world, Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward.

  Thom Gunn

  Moving, Movement, World

  Thom Gunn (2010). “The Sense of Movement”, p.6, Faber & Faber

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• From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

  Emile Durkheim

  Dream, Wall, Reality

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.216, Routledge

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• It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Appreciation, Adventure, Men

  Charles A. Lindbergh, Reeve Lindbergh (2003). “The Spirit of St. Louis”, p.255, Simon and Schuster

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• Values cannot be speedily forgotten if it is inconvenient or commercially expedient. Values have to have meaning and longevity; otherwise they are valueless. You cannot embrace innovation up to a point or only sometimes. Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking cords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.

  Richard Branson

  Commitment, Successful, Imagination

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• Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves.

  G. M. Trevelyan

  Past, History, Historical

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• Love is a force. . . . It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product. It is a power, like money, or steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Love, Mean, Giving

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• Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.

  Karl Kraus

  What Matters, Sound, Opinion

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Strong, Pride, Men

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• I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue an accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and I have just been born today.

  Hermann Hesse

  Eye, World, Today

  "Siddhartha".

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• I wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible.

  Dorothy Allison

  Running, Past, Thinking

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• I have read - nay, I have bought! - Carlyle's 'Latter Day Pamphlets,' and look on my eight shillings as very much thrown away. To me it appears that the grain of sense is so smothered up in a sack of the sheerest trash, that the former is valueless....I look on him as a man who was always in danger of going mad in literature and who has now done so.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Eight, Mad

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• Blind adoration, in the age of action, is perfectly valueless, is often embarrassing and, equally, often painful.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Age, Action, Blind

  Mahatma Gandhi (1962). “The Essential Gandhi: His Life, Work, and Ideas : an Anthology”, Vintage

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• If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.

  Emma Goldman

  Pride, Men, Numbers

  Emma Goldman (2012). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• If a gem falls into mud it is still valuable. If dust ascends to heaven, it remains valueless.

  Saadi

  Wisdom, Fall, Islamic

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• I can understand, he said, that many people, many perfectly ordinary people, have an interesting story to tell. No one's experience of life is valueless.

  Michael Frayn

  People, Interesting, Ordinary

  Michael Frayn (2015). “The Russian Interpreter”, p.43, Faber & Faber

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• This account of him [Thomas More] developed as I wrote: what first attracted me was a person who could not be accused of any incapacity for life, who indeed seized life in great variety and almost greedy quantities, who nevertheless found something in himself without which life was valueless and when that was denied him was able to grasp his death.

  Robert Bolt

  Able, Firsts, Greedy

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