“I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.”
Source: Unwind
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Neal Shusterman122
American novelist 1962Related quotes
“Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton Richelieu
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)
Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIX: On Noble Aspirations
“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer
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.”
Plutarch book Parallel Lives
Alexander, sec. 7
Parallel Lives
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant
Variant: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.