“I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.”
Source: Unwind
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Neal Shusterman 122
American novelist 1962Related quotes

“Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Act ii, Scene ii. This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.
Richelieu (1839)

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)

“I myself had rather excel others in excellency of learning than in greatness of power.”
Alexander, sec. 7
Parallel Lives

Variant: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.