Useful Purpose Quotes

The life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind.

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.

We owe them [animals] a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible. That's my job. I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. Being close to animals brings some of it back.

That which is useless dies. Animals that fail to serve some useful purpose in the scheme of things slowly but surely become extinct. Let any part of the human body cease to perform its ordained function, and it withers-as when an arm is kept long in a sling. This same decree, that nothing useless is permitted to survive, runs through the mind of the industrial world.

Above all be of single aim; have a legitimate and useful purpose, and devote yourself unreservedly to it.

Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.

There are good people in the lobbying industry. Lobbyists can serve a very useful purpose.

Don't bother to examine a folly-ask yourself only what it accomplishes.

A jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to the world because he is a jackass; but anobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it.

Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.

Logic sometimes makes monsters. For half a century we have seen a mass of bizarre functions which appear to be forced to resemble as little as possible honest functions which serve some purpose.

Knowledge has no value except that which can be gained from its application toward some worthy end.

I think it's important that we eliminate regulations that are not serving a useful purpose.