Quotes about Usefulness

But when nothing is valued for what it is, everything is destined to be wasted. Once the values of things refer only to their future usefulness, then an infinite withdrawal of value from the living present has begun. Nothing (and nobody) can then exist that is not theoretically replaceable by something (or somebody) more valuable. The country that we (or some of us) had thought to make our home becomes instead 'a nation rich in natural resources'; the good bounty of the land begins its mechanical metamorphosis into junk, garbage, silt, poison, and other forms of 'waste.' "The inevitable result of such an economy is that no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home, no home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty, nothing is ultimately worth doing, and no place or task or person is worth a lifetime's devotion. 'Waste,' in such an economy, must eventually include several categories of humans--the unborn, the old, 'disinvested' farmers, the unemployed, the 'unemployable.' Indeed, once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a resource, we are all sliding downward toward the ashheap or the dump.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

I've said before that every craftsman
searches for what's not there
to practice his craft.

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.

The search for static security-in the law and elsewhere-is misguided. The fact is . . . security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting to current facts.

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of many masters of craftsmanship. Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a "common goal" of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds which brave men and women are capable.

Usefulness is not impaired by imperfection. You can still drink from a chipped cup.

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only. you cannot develop because you are choking thee source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics.

Our likes and dislikes exert a fateful influence upon both our own happiness and our value to others. The ancients recognized this fully, but modern education has long neglected it and is now slowly beginning to rub its eyes and awake to the significance of training the tastes. To like the wrong things may mean the ruin of body and soul, a worthless and wretched life, and all that we may well pray to be delivered from. To like the right things is an indispensable condition to health of body and mind, to contentment and happiness, and to usefulness. Likes and dislikes run powerfully into habits and even affect principles: for when we are fond of a certain pleasure it is hard for us to condemn it, even though our reason bids us do so. It is a too familiar fact that some of the most deadly foes of physical health and vigor are certain tastes, either pathological, like that for intoxicants and narcotics, or excessive, as those of the Giordano or sensualist.

It is well to read up everything within your reach about your business; this not only improves your knowledge, your usefulness and your fitness for more responsible work, but it invests your business with more interest, since you understand its functions, its basic principles, its place in the general scheme of things.

The harmlessness of the mission performed by law and lawful defense is self-evident; the usefulness is obvious; and the legitimacy cannot be disputed.

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.

Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an "old man". Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an "old" book.