Variant: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: All art is immoral.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Quoted in "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's S.S." - Page 439 - by Heinz Höhne, R. Barry - 1969
Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)
Variant: There is nothing inherently expensive about rockets. It's just that those who have built and operated them in the past have done so with horrendously poor efficiency.
“Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.”
On Machiavelli (1827)
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 31
Context: Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.
Misattributed
Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Ramage Magnus and Karen Shipp (2009) Systems Thinkers. p. 116
1990s and attributed
