Quotes about utility

A collection of quotes on the topic of utility, utilization, use, other.

Quotes about utility

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Wisdom, Justice, Law, Idea

“The new profession of public relations has grown up because of the increasing complexity of modern life and the consequent necessity for making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other sectors of the public. It is due, too, to the increasing dependence of organized power of all sorts upon public opinion. Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts.
The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media of communications and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public.”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Source: Propaganda (1928), p. 63

Life, Education, Communication, Idea

“Any corporation selling us products on the basis of anything other than utility should be revoked and shut down. Any corporation that at this time of fast-diminishing resources designs products that have in-built doomsday devices, planned obsolescence, should be shut down. All this glamour and clamor and blagging and skanking has to end.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Time

“It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257 http://books.google.com/books?id=XuITAAAAQAAJ&vq=257&pg=PA257

Beauty, Knowledge, Science

“As far as socialism is concerned, it is not a heavenly message like Islam but a mere system for regulating the relations between man and his utilization of the means of production in this world. If we decide to regulate our national wealth, it is not against the essence of Islam. God has created man and has given him the faculty of mind to choose between good and bad, between virtue and vice. We have chose social justice instead of exploitation of man by man and this is how we can practically help the individual Muslim and direct him to [a] virtuous life. However, the reactionaries wanted to create a rift between socialism and Islam because socialism is not in their interest.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

Speech (1972), as quoted by Ioan Myrddin (1980), A Modern History of Somalia, Wilture Enterprises (International) Ltd.

Life, God, World, Justice

“I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Internet meme commonly attributed to Stallman made by an unknown source.
Misattributed

People, Parting

“If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

As quoted in The Subconscious Diet : It's Not What You Put in Your Mouth; It Is What You Put in Your Mind (2005) by Hugh B. Sanders, p. 104 
Context: Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.

Success

“President Obama is, however, a man who embodies all the personal characteristics of a fascist leader, right down to the arrogant chin-up head tilt he utilizes when waiting for applause. He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms — not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

2010-02-03
Obama's Philosophically Fascist State of the Union Address
Townhall.com
https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2010/02/03/obamas-philosophically-fascist-state-of-the-union-address-n1331445

Democracy, Personality, Waiting

“I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,—Nature's good
And God's.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

A Soul's Tragedy (1846), Act. i.

God, Law, Beauty, Soul

“During this period I was constantly preoccupied with the analysis of every film, which I saw, and in considering whether I could make them here. There was no doubt whatsoever about the utility of the profession and its importance as an industry…this was the period of the Swadeshi movement and there was profuse talking and lecturing on the subject. For me personally, this led to the resignation of my comfortable government job and taking to an independent profession. I took this opportunity to explain my ideas to my friends and leaders of the Swadeshi movement. Even people who were familiar with me for 15 years found my ideas impracticable.”

Dadasaheb Phalke (1870–1944) Indian producer-director-screenwriter

In [Jain, Manju, Narratives of Indian Cinema, http://books.google.com/books?id=ORE9TDOoU1IC&pg=PA22, 2009, Primus Books, 978-81-908918-4-4, 22]
Quote

People, Idea, Personality

“In addition to the animal essence, we have something that is above animal existence. This something is called our egoism. It is based on our aspirations to wealth, honor, fame, power, and knowledge. Animals do not have these aspirations […] — envy, inclination to pleasures, and aspiration to honor. These aspirations bring a person to a level above the animal. Since they are above animal qualities, these aspirations and qualities are praiseworthy. On the other hand, their common natural utilization puts us below all other levels”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

i.e. still, vegetative, and animate
Introduction to the Book of Zohar, in Introduction to the Book of Zohar: Volume Two, Michael Laitman, ed., Laitman Kabbalah Publishers, 2005, p. 94.
Introduction to the Book of Zohar

Pleasure, Nature, Knowledge, Animals

“The potential sacrifices itself if you don't utilize it as you mature, and you just end up a 40 year old lost boy, which is a horrifying thing to behold. It's almost as if you're the living corpse of a child, because who wants a six year old 40-year-old? You're a little on the stale side by that point, and you're not the world's happiest individual. Your potential is going to disappear because you age anyways, so you might as well shape that potential in a particular direction and at least become something, no matter how limited, rather than nothing.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Age, World, Boy

“The calculus of utility aims at supplying the ordinary wants of man at the least cost of labour.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter I, Introduction, p. 53.

“Currency means nothing if you still ain't free. Money breeds jealousy. Take the game from me; I hope for better days. Trouble comes naturally. Running from authorities. 'Til they capture me, and my aim is to spread more smiles than tears. Utilize lessons learned from my childhood years.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

"Hold Ya Head" https://play.google.com/music/preview/Te5ppuyfquh4t6lnlla3zs6w33e?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics 1990s, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996)

Money, Jealousy, Smile, Hope

“To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015) 2015

War, People, Truth, Youth

“This new form of communication could have some utility.”

Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) Italian inventor and radio pioneer

Marconi, 1899: Cited in: Simon Saunders, ‎Alejandro Aragón-Zavala (2007) Antennas and Propagation for Wireless Communication. p. 361

Communication

“This striving becomes understood completely as an end in itself—to such an extent that it appears as fully outside the normal course of affairs and simply irrational, at least when viewed from the perspective of the "happiness" or "utility" of the single individual. Here, people are oriented to acquisition as the purpose of life; acquisition is no longer viewed as a means to the end of satisfying the substantive needs of life. Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-loving dispositions experience this situation as an absolutely meaningless reversal of a "natural" condition (as we would say today). Yet this reversal constitutes just as surely a guiding principle of [modern] capitalism as incomprehension of this new situation characterizes all who remain untouched by [modern] capitalism's tentacles.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Love, Life, People, Nature

“Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities.. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Source: Propaganda (1928), p.59

Men, Idea, Support, Sport

“A lot of sophistication has been developed about the utilization of machines for complex purposes, and it doesn't make sense not to use it if you can think of a good question to ask. Playing chess is about the dumbest question you can ask. But, if you want, maybe can make money that way, or something. In fact, what's going on with the chess is about as interesting as the fact that a front-end loader can lift more than an Olympics champion, weight lifter, or something. Probably so, but, you know, these are just not serious questions.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "Language & Mind", 1997.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Money, Way, Question, Thinking

“The bourgeoisie today is a falling class. … By its imperialist methods of appropriation [it] is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), p. 83

World, Tear

“To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1

Pleasure

“The dialectics of history have already hooked him and will raise him up. He is needed by all of them; by the tired radicals, by the bureaucrats, by the Nepmen, the upstarts, by all the worms that are crawling out of the upturned soil of the manured revolution. He knows how to meet them on their own ground, he speaks their language and he knows how to lead them. He has the deserved reputation of an old revolutionist, which makes him invaluable to them as a blinder on the eyes of the country. He has will and daring. He will not hesitate to utilize them and to move them against the Party. Right now he is organising himself around the sneaks of the party, the artful dodgers.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Statement of 1924 on Joseph Stalin's growing powerbase, in Stalin, An Appraisal Of The Man And His Influence (1966); also in Stalin's Russia 1924-53 by Michael Lynch, p. 18

Art, History, Country

“The idea is that you could sacrifice something of value, and that would have transcendent utility. That is by no means an unsophisticated idea. In fact, it might be the greatest idea that human beings ever came up with.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Biblical Lectures

Idea

“We cannot suppose that an individual’s thinking survives bodily death, since that destroys the organization of the brain and dissipates the energy which utilized the brain tracks. God and immortality, the central dogma of the Christian religion, find no support in science. But we in the West have come to think of them as the irreducible minimum of theology. No doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any grounds for either. I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist, so might the Gods of Olympus, Ancient Egypt or Babylon; but no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other. They lie outside the region of provable knowledge and there is no reason to consider any of them.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, What I Believe (1925)

Death, God, People, Lie

“[I've changed a bit here - see youtube video "Jordan Peterson - Are YOU Antisocial?!"] We have these shared frames of reference, like when we're playing monopoly. Children at three learn to play games, which means that they learn to organize their own internal motivational states into a hierarchy that includes the emotional states of other people. And that means they can play. And that's what everyone does when they're out in the world. That's why we can go about our daily business - we all know the rules. That's why we can sit in the same room without fighting each other. Because you're smart and socially conscious, you can walk into a room full of people and know what to do. If you're civilized and social you can just do it, and you can predict what all the other primates are up to, and they won't kill you. That's what it means to be part of the same tribe. People are very peculiar creatures and God only knows what they're up to. As long as they're playing the same game that you are, you don't have to know what they're up to, and you can predict what they're going to do because you understand their motivational states. And so, part of the building and constructing of higher order moral goals is the establishment of joint frames of reference that allow multiple people to pursue the goals that they're interested in simultaneously. Not all shared frames of reference can manage that. There's a small subset of them that are optimized so that not only can multiple people play them, but multiple people can play them, AND enjoy them, AND do it repeatedly across a long period of time. So it's iterability that partly defines the utility of a higher order moral structure, and that is not arbitrary. It's an emergent property of biological interactions. It's not arbitrary at all, because a lot of what's constraining your games is your motivational substructure and those ancient circuits that are status oriented, which operate within virtually every animal. Virtually every animal has a status counter. Creatures organize themselves into dominance hierarchies. The reason they do that is because that works. It's a solution to the Darwinian problem of existence. It's not just an epiphenomena. It's the real thing. So your environment is fundamentally dominance hierarchy, plus God only knows where you are. And that's order and chaos. And part of the reason people fight to preserve their dominance hierarchies is because it's better to be a slave who knows what the hell is going on than someone who is thrown screaming and naked into the jungle at night. And that's the difference between order and chaos. And we like order better than chaos and it's no wonder. And invite a little chaos in for entertainment now and then, but it has to be done voluntarily, and generally you don't want the kind of chaos that upsets your entire conceptual structure. You're willing to fool around on the fringes a little bit, but you know, when the going gets serious you're pretty much likely to bail out.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

God, Children, People, World

“As soon as we have contrived to give our pupil an idea of the word "Useful," we have got an additional means of controlling him, for this word makes a great impression on him, provided that its meaning for him is a meaning relative to his own age, and provided he clearly sees its relation to his own well-being. This word makes no impression on your scholars because you have taken no pains to give it a meaning they can understand, and because other people always undertake to supply their needs so that they never require to think for themselves, and do not know what utility is. "What is the use of that?"”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

Pain, People, Age, Idea

“This is Nietzsche’s twofold struggle: against those who remove values from criticism, contenting themselves with producing inventories of existing values or with criticizing things in the name of established values (the “philosophical labourers”, Kant and Schopenhauer, BGE 211); but also against those who criticise or respect values by deriving them from simple facts, from so-called “objective facts” (the utilitarians, the “scholars”, BGE Part 6). In both cases philosophy moves in the indifferent element of the valuable in itself or the valuable for all. Nietzsche attacks both the “high” idea of foundation which leaves values indifferent to their origin and the idea of simple causal derivation or smooth beginning which suggests an indifferent origin for values. Nietzsche substitutes the pathos of difference or distance (the differential element) for both the Kantian principle of universality and the principle of resemblance dear to the utilitarians. “It was from the height of this pathos of distance that they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for them; what did utility matter?””

Gilles Deleuze book Nietzsche and Philosophy

GM I 2 p. 26
Source: Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), p. 2

Idea, Universe, Parting, Indifference

“There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), part I, "The World of Science", chapter 3, "The World of Physics", p. 41
1940s

Fear, Hope, Time, Animals

“It is part of a work to which if ever it should be compleated I intend to give some such title as Principles of Legal Policy; the object of it is to trace out a new model for the Laws: of my own country you may imagine, in the first place: but keeping those of other countries all along in view. To ascertain what the Laws ought to be, in form and tenor as well as in matter: and that elsewhere as well as here. All that I shall say to recommend it to you is that I have taken counsel of you much oftener than of our own Ld. Coke and Hale and Blackstone. The repose of Grotius and Puffendorf and Barbeyrac and Burlamaqui I would never wish to see disturbed. I have built solely on the foundation of utility, laid as it is by Helvetius. Becarria has been lucrative pedibus, or if you please manibus, meis.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Letter to Voltaire (c. November 1776), quoted in Timothy L. S. Sprigge (ed.), The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (London: University College London Press, 2017), p. 367

Law, Imagination, Parting, Country

“The principle of utility judges any action to be right by the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interests are in question… if that party be the community the happiness of the community, if a particular individual, the happiness of that individual.”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Introduction (1789 edition)
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823)

Communication, Question, Appearance, Happiness

“It is therefore reasonable to think that the creations of man are made either with a view to his body, and that is the principle we call utility, or with a view to his soul, and that is what he seeks under the name of beauty. But, further, since he who constructs or creates has to deal with the rest of the world and with the movement of nature, which both tend perpetually to dissolve, corrupt or upset what he makes, he must recognize and seek to communicate to his works a third principle, that expresses the resistance he wishes them to offer to their destiny, which is to perish. So he seeks solidity or lastingness.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, pp. 128–9
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

World, Beauty, Soul, Communication

“This is the Church’s destination: it is, as the Bible says, the “new Jerusalem”, “Paradise”. More than a place, it is a “state” of soul in which our deepest hopes are fulfilled in superabundance and our being, as creatures and as children of God, reach their full maturity. We will finally be clothed in the joy, peace and love of God, completely, without any limit, and we will come face to face with Him! (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). It is beautiful to think of this, to think of Heaven. We will all be there together. It is beautiful, it gives strength to the soul. … At the same time, Sacred Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this marvellous plan cannot but involve everything that surrounds us and came from the heart and mind of God. The Apostle Paul says it explicitly, when he says that “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Other texts utilize the image of a “new heaven” and a “new earth” (cf. 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1), in the sense that the whole universe will be renewed and will be freed once and for all from every trace of evil and from death itself. What lies ahead is the fulfillment of a transformation that in reality is already happening, beginning with the death and resurrection of Christ. Hence, it is the new creation; it is not, therefore, the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being, of truth and of beauty.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"General Audience", in Saint Peter's Square (26 November 2014) https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20141126_udienza-generale.html. 2010s, 2014

Love, Death, God, Children

“Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 2 Variant translation of a passage: Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)
Context: The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.

Time

“Anger and aggressive behavior create a combative environment and temporarily reduces one’s ability to utilize their intellectual capacity.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2007

Behavior, Anger

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

But, further, since he who constructs or creates has to deal with the rest of the world and with the movement of nature, which both tend perpetually to dissolve, corrupt or upset what he makes, he must recognize and seek to communicate to his works a third principle, that expresses the resistance he wishes them to offer to their destiny, which is to perish. So he seeks solidity or lastingness.
Socrates, pp. 128–9
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Beauty, Thinking, Soul

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 1 : Of the Principle of Utility

Pain, Law, Question, Light

“Never reveal your dark moments to anyone, for what people do not know cannot be utilized to destroy you. By nature, people are envious and jealous; and will attempt to bring you down. Silence reveals nothing.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1974

Silence, People, Nature

“Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Perfection, World, Education, Nature

“Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. That is the message of The Vinegar Tasters.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Life

“Don’t utilize utilize. Use use.”

Larry King (1933) American television and radio host

How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication

“[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People

“Electricity for example was considered a very Satanic thing when it was first discovered and utilized.”

Zeena Schreck (1963) Tantric Buddhist/Sethian

“Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority I just don't know what I'll do with you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Nature

“Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

“I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“I can't tell them what to do!"
"Why not?" the other girl demanded. "Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority, I just don't know what I'll do with you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Girl, Nature

“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

World, Help, Madness

“In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

Future

“Like proselytization, desecrating and demolishing the temples of non-Muslims is also central to Islam…. India too suffered terribly as thousands of Hindu temples and sacred edifices disappeared in northern India by the time of Sikandar Lodi and Babur. Will Durant rightly laments in the Story of Civilization that "We can never know from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty it once possessed". In Delhi, after the demolition of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples, the materials of which were utilized to construct the Quwwat-ul-Islam masjid, it was after 700 years that the Birla Mandir could be constructed in 1930s. Sita Ram Goel has brought out two excellent volumes on Hindu Temples: What happened to them. These informative volumes give a list of Hindu shrines and their history of destruction in the medieval period on the basis of Muslim evidence itself. This of course does not cover all the shrines razed. Muslims broke temples recklessly. Those held in special veneration by Hindus like the ones at Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, were special targets of Muslims, and whenever the Hindus could manage to rebuild their shrines at these places, they were again destroyed by Muslim rulers. From the time of Mahmud of Ghazni who destroyed the temples at Somnath and Mathura to Babur who struck at Ayodhya to Aurangzeb who razed the temples at Kashi Mathura and Somnath, the story is repeated again and again.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Beauty, History, Suffering, Time

“Above all, Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

"The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), credited to Mussolini but ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile; quoted in Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present (2004) by Stanislao G. Pugliese, p. 89
1930s

Life, Death, War, People

“The way out from complication and doubt is to reduce the good to pleasure, something close to the body, or to utility, something useful to the body. … The body is considered as a factor all human beings have in common, hence an easy basis for generalization.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Pleasure, Way

“The theory of repeated games is able to account for phenomena such as altruism, cooperation, trust, loyalty, revenge, threats (self-destructive or otherwise) – phenomena that may at ﬁrst seem irrational – in terms of the “selﬁsh” utility-maximizing paradigm of game theory and neoclassical economics.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

Source: War and peace (2005), p. 3

Game, Revenge, Loyalty

“The mass-man has very little spare time, does not live a life that appertains to a whole, does not want to exert himself except for some concrete aim which can be expressed in terms of utility; he will not wait patiently while things ripen; everything for him must provide some immediate gratification; and even his mental life must minister to his fleeting pleasures. That is why the essay has become the customary form of literature, why newspapers are taking the place of books… People read quickly and cursorily.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Der Massenmensch hat wenig Zeit, lebt kein Leben aus einem Ganzen, will nicht mehr die Vorbereitung und Anstrengung ohne den konkreten Zweck, der sie in Nutzen umsetzt; er will nicht warten und reifen lassen; alles muß sogleich gegenwärtige Befriedigung sein; Geistiges ist zu den jeweils augenblicklichen Vergnügungen geworden. Daher ist der Essay die geeignete Literaturform für alles, tritt die Zeitung an die Stelle des Buches... Man liest schnell.
Man in the Modern Age (1933)

Life, People, Pleasure, Books

“The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

§1.4
Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)

“The social rootedness of science is often associated with the utility of applied science; this is an error and a dangerous error. But precisely the detachment of the theoretical scientist is rooted in the institutions of his society and in the evaluative choices which underlie those institutions. He can focus his whole attention, bringing every relevant clue to bear, on a problem wholly without appetitive or utilitarian implications, he can put his whole heart and mind into the search for understanding for the sake of understanding alone. How can he do this? First, because he himself has been nourished and disciplined by traditions cultivated within his society which have produced this kind of devoted attention to impersonal goals. And secondly, because the society itself, in its deepest foundations, respects those independently self-sustaining traditions of scientist or scholar.”

Marjorie Grene (1910–2009) American philosopher

The Knower and the Known (1974), pp. 180-181

Error, Search, Understanding, Problem

“These are, of course, some things which, for utility's sake, must be made of the same size in a small theatre, and a large one: such as the steps, curved cross-aisles, their parapets, the passages, stairways, stages, tribunals, and any other things which occur that make it necessary to give up symmetry so as not to interfere with utility.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter VI, Sec. 7

“A firm is essentially a pool of resources the utilization of which is organized in an administrative framework.”

Edith Penrose (1914–1996) economist

p 149
The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, 1959

“We should not allow the word "democracy" to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)

Democracy

“First develop a strategy that utilizes everything around you. The best way to prepare for a challenge is to cultivate the ability to call on an infinite variety of responses.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Way

“It is important to plan for maximum utilization of contingent capability.”

John H. Disher (1921–1988) American aeronautical engineer and NASA manager

"Skylab Lessons Learned" (22 September 1975)

“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

Peace, Law, History, Motivation

“Part of it, which perhaps you and most other observers are not aware, is that I have enough passive income, and enough dispassion for conventional status signaling, that my marginal utility of money is pretty low compared to my disutility for doing busywork. To put it in perspective, I quit my last regular job in 2002, and stopped doing consulting for that company as well (at $100/hour) a year later when they merged with Microsoft and told me I had to do a bunch of paperwork and be hired by Microsoft's "independent consulting company" in order to continue.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jter3YhFBZFYo8vtq/look-for-the-next-tech-gold-rush#ikKBYevf2aL2pBwsS on LessWrong, July 2014

Money, Parting

“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources.
Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals

Life, Youth, Beauty, Dreams

“From these causes united, the mere separation of the occupation of the cultivator, from that of the Artificer, has the effect of augmenting the productive powers of labour, and with them, the total mass of the produce or revenue of a Country. In this single view of the subject, therefore, the utility of Artificers or Manufacturers, towards promoting an increase of productive industry, is apparent.”

Alexander Hamilton Report on Manufactures

Report on Manufactures (1791)

Country

“Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal — the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. Modern propaganda must utilize all of these media. There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls: that is not propaganda.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Vintage, p. 9
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)

Fashion

“The aim of the process chart is to present information regarding existing and proposed processes in such simple form that such information can become available to and usable by the greatest possible number of people in an organization before any changes whatever are actually made, so that the special knowledge and suggestions of those in positions of minor importance can be fully utilized.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Process charts (1921), p. 5.

People, Knowledge, Change

“Well, the Caribbeans were far superior on paper but we could utilize the English conditions better during the tournament. Mind you, we had won against bigger opponents, matches after matches. I think nobody can deny that. How could then it be termed as a fluke?”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

Kapil Dev: 30 years on, I can still recall India World Cup victory

Thinking

“Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Candles $3,600
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472] Tweets by year, 2013

Family, Food, Help

“A piece of knowledge about boat-building, about whose correctness Crusoe has no doubts at all, will not be seen as a hunch and will be valued according to Menger's Law. It may be said that Crusoe is well aware that he possesses this kind of information; he will deploy and value it in the same way as he may be imagined to deploy and value other resources he believes are definitely at his disposal. But concerning Crusoe's hunches and his visions in the face of a changing, uncertain environment, it cannot be said at all that Crusoe knows he has a hunch or a vision of the future. He does not act by deliberately utilizing his hunch about the future; instead, he finds that his actions reflect his hunches…In other words, it turns out, the essence of entrepreneurial vision, and what sets it apart from knowledge as a resource, is reflected in Crusoe's lack of self-consciousness concerning it…Crusoe may…gradually come to be aware of his vision. When he does, that vision ceases to be entrepreneurial and comes to be a resource. Moreover, Crusoe's realization that he possesses this definite information resource may itself be entrepreneurial. As soon as he 'knows' that he possesses an item of knowledge, that item ceases to correspond to entrepreneurial vision; instead, as with all resources, it is Crusoe's belief that he has the resources at his disposal that may now constitute his entrepreneurial hunch.”

Israel Kirzner (1930) American economist

Israel Kirzner, (1979: 168-169); as cited in: " Israel Kirzner's Entrepreneurship http://www.constitution.org/pd/gunning/subjecti/workpape/kirz_ent.pdf" by the Constitution Society, May 31, 2004

Law, Way, Imagination, Knowledge

“Almost 2000 years ago, the Roman architect Vitruvius recorded what makes a design good: durability (firmitas), utility (utilitas), and charm (venustas). These quality requirements still hold, for buildings as well as software systems. A well-designed system is easy to implement, is understandable and reliable, and allows for smooth evolution. Badly-designed systems may work at first, but they are hard to maintain, difficult to test, and unreliable.”

Hans van Vliet (1949) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Software Engineering: Principles and Practice, 2007, p. 279

Understanding

“The new governmental reason does not deal with what I would call the things in themselves of governmentality, such as individuals, things, wealth, and land. It no longer deals with these things in themselves. It deals with the phenomena of politics, that is to say, interests, which precisely constitute politics and its stakes; it deals with interests, or that respect in which a given individual, thing, wealth, and so on interests other individuals or the collective body of individuals. … In the new regime, government is basically no longer to be exercised over subjects and other things subjected through these subjects. Government is now to be exercised over what we could call the phenomenal republic of interests. The fundamental question of liberalism is: What is the utility value of government and all actions of government in a society where exchange determines the value of things?”

Michel Foucault book The Birth of Biopolitics

Lecture 2, January 17, 1979, pp. 45-46
The Birth of Biopolitics (1978)

Exercises, Question, Wealth

“Scientific investigation is rapidly putting at our disposal vast amounts of knowledge concerning materials and forces, which it is the business of the engineer to utilize for the benefit of the community. Well-designed plants and efficiency labor-saving devices, to be seen on every hand, bear testimony that he is doing at least a portion of his work well. When, however, it comes to the operation of these plants and the utilization of these labor-saving devices, the lack of co-operation between employer and employee, and the inefficient utilization of labor, very much impair their efficiency. The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible.”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

Source: Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910, p. 13-14.

Communication, Business, Knowledge, Problem

“There is a subtle difference in the way sugar molecules are utilized. Momentarily, the body uses less sugar. However, sugar is important in fueling the consciousness on its journey. It also aids in connecting the consciousness to the body. In other words, there is indeed a connection that is and must be partially physical, between the body and the travelling consciousness, and it is based upon a certain sugar molecule in a form not normally seen. Before conscious projections I would therefore recommend that you take a small amount of starchy or sugar food. A small snack before bed is a good idea from this viewpoint. Alcohol is of some benefit, though not to any great degree. Excellent results can be achieved in a dream-based projection during the day, in a nap.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 348, quoting from Session 276

Alcohol, Food, Dreams, Way

“To my complete surprise, that exposure to out-of-date scientific theory and practice radically undermined some of my basic conceptions about the nature of science and the reasons for its special success.
Those conceptions were ones I had previously drawn partly from scientific training itself and partly from a long-standing avocational interest in the philosophy of science. Somehow, whatever their pedagogic utility and their abstract plausibility, those notions did not at all fit the enterprise that historical study displayed. Yet they were and are fundamental to many discussions of science, and their failures of verisimilitude therefore seemed thoroughly worth pursuing. The result was a drastic shift in my career plans, a shift from physics to history of science and then, gradually, from relatively straightforward historical problems back to the more philosophical concerns that had initially led me to history.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Preface

History, Failure, Nature, Problem

“My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter III, Theory of Utility, p. 65.

Nature, Problem

“Utility alone is the cause of value.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter VIII, Modern Economics, p. 400

“Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Spin

Source: Spin (2005), p. 59

Truth, Color

“Interviewer: About fishing … do you avoid campaigning against it because there isn’t a ground-swell movement in our culture to eliminate it?
Wayne Pacelle That is correct. We’re out to minimize suffering wherever it can be done, and wherever our limited resources can be utilized most effectively—abusive forms of hunting for now, all hunting eventually.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

Interview in "Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt," 1994

Fish, Suffering

“Where the world comes in my way — and it comes in my way everywhere — I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but — my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Dover 2005, p. 296, 297
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Hunger, World, Food, Way

“We have at hand these great resources and great opportunities. They can not be utilized to their fullest extent without careful organization and methodical purpose. Our youth need instruction in how to play as much as they do in how to work. There are those who are engaged in our industries who need an opportunity for outdoor life and recreation no less than they need opportunity of employment. Side by side with the industrial plant should be the gymnasium and the athletic field. Along with the learning of a trade by which a livelihood is to be earned should go the learning of how to participate in the activities of recreation, by which life is made not only more enjoyable, but more rounded out and complete. The country needs instruction in order that we may better secure these results.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Life, Youth, Learning, Country

“It was the FLP that was committed to reducing the cost of doing business and started by lowering the cost of utilities, and requested the commercial banks and lending organizations to reduce their fees, charges and interest rates. The FLP also moved to reduce public expenditure, which saw a saving of $96 million in its year in office. It was also the FLP, which lowered interest in Housing Authority home loans from 12 per cent to 6 per cent for those on lower incomes. It was the aggregate effect of this and a range of other measures of tight fiscal control, investment in key growth areas and a firm hand on curbing corruption that saw the economy record an unprecedented growth of 9.6% in 1999.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Reaction to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's address to the Fiji Employers Federation in Nadi, 4 September 2005

Home, Business, Housing

“My deranged mother has written another book. This one is called The Bough and is even worse that the others. I refer not to its quality—it exhibits the usual “coruscating wit” and “penetrating social observation”—but to the extent to which it utilizes, as a kind of mulch pile, the lives of her children.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Author”, opening; p. 45.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Children, Books

“We may predict that the science of which we try to be the humble and devoted servants will in the future life of the nations be an important factor in eliminating maladjustments between fundamental economic sectors and assure a smooth and progressive utilization of resources… One wants men with a knowledge of the characteristic features of the economic and social structure of their country and with a fundamental theoretical knowledge along modern lines.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Frisch, (1946, p. 1), as quoted in: " Ragnar Frisch 1895-1995 https://www.ssb.no/a/histstat/doc/doc_199403.pdf." O. Bjerkholt, 1994. 1940-60s

Life, Men, Knowledge, Science

“It is an honor to be nominated as Director of National Intelligence. A robust and responsible intelligence infrastructure is essential to our homeland security, and if confirmed I will ensure our national security decision-makers have every piece of information they need to protect the American people from the threats facing our nation. There is no higher priority than keeping America safe, and I will utilize every tool at my disposal to make that happen.”

Dan Coats (1943) 5th and current Director of National Intelligence, former United States Senator from Indiana

President-Elect Donald J. Trump Nominates Former U.S. Senator Dan Coats Director of National Intelligence https://greatagain.gov/dni-e1ff90566dcb#.h2txkfboq (January 7, 2017)

People, Intelligence, Decision

“Mass struggle was utilized throughout the war by the Vietnamese communist party. It was used, first of all, because guerrilla warfare is one expression of the mass struggle. One cannot conceive of guerrilla war when it is isolated from the people. The guerrilla group is the numerically inferior vanguard of the great majority of the people, who have no weapons but express themselves through the vanguard.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

People's War, People's Army (1964)

War, People

“Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

Life, Drink, Passion, Night

“It is true that M. Fourier had the opinion that the principal end of mathematics was the public utility and the explanation of natural phenomena; but such a philosopher as he is should have known that the unique end of science is the honor of the human mind, and that from this point of view a question of number is as important as a question of the system of the world.”

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician

Letter to Legendre (July 2, 1830) in response to Fourier's report to the Paris Academy Science that mathematics should be applied to the natural sciences, as quoted in Science (March 10, 1911) Vol. 33 https://books.google.com/books?id=4LU7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA359, p.359, with additional citations and dates from H. Pieper, "Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi," Mathematics in Berlin (2012) p.46

World, Mathematics, Question, Nature

“I had always regarded language as more a question of utility than identity. Therefore, I promptly noted that all the (EU) meetings should be conducted in English and French. My older colleagues laughed. Later I understood why. On the second day of the Finnish presidency (of the EU) a German delegation refused to participate in an informal ministerial meeting because no German interpretation had been arranged.”

Alexander Stubb (1968) Finnish politician

Alexander Stubb The naked truth and other stories about Finns and Europeans WSOY 2009 p 13, 31.

Question

“Already in my own time the volume of business was much less than in the heyday of the Victorian age, when the developments of the industrial era stimulated the enterprise of promoters and led to the construction of our modern railways, docks, and other undertakings of public utility. That was the era which my friend Walter Elliot has so aptly called the `century of equipment.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 72

Age, Business, Time

“There's no question that demand for traditional sport utility vehicles has been affected by rising gas prices…”

Steve Lyons (1960) American baseball player

Question, Sport

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485 https://books.google.it/books?id=w-I3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA485

Pain, Pleasure, Animals, Selfishness

“• Amendment in the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund and the Pension and Gratuity Fund, requiring the DBM to submit, within the first quarter, to Congress the amounts allocated to the Judicial Branch, Legislative Branch, Constitutional Commissions, and the Ombudsman, and that in no case shall releases to the said offices exceed the amount submitted to Congress also for purposes of utilizing these as savings to augment the budget of these constitutional offices;”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

“We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility. Organisms inherit a body form and a style of embryonic development; these impose constraints upon future change and adaptation. In many cases, evolutionary pathways reflect inherited patterns more than current environmental demands. These inheritances constrain, but they also provide opportunity. A potentially minor genetic change […] entails a host of complex, nonadaptive consequences. […] What “play” would evolution have if each structure were built for a restricted purpose and could be used for nothing else? How could humans learn to write if our brain had not evolved for hunting, social cohesion, or whatever, and could not transcend the adaptive boundaries of its original purpose?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

"Hyena Myths and Realities", p. 156
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

World, Optimism, Nature, Learning

“There was a world of mutants, men and women who were more than normal men and women, persons who had certain human talents and certain human understandings which the normal men and women of the world had never known, or having known, could not utilize in their entirety, unable to use intelligently all the mighty powers which lay dormant in their brains.”

Clifford D. Simak book Ring Around the Sun

Ring Around the Sun (1954)

Women, Men, World, Intelligence

“In its origins the utility school was strongly influenced by a desire to strengthen the potentially apologetic character of economics.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter VIII, Modern Economics, p. 370

School

“Even though principles of rationality seem as often violated as followed, we still cling to the notion that human thought should be rational, logical, and orderly. Much of law is based upon the concept of rational thought and behavior. Much of economic theory is based upon the model of the rational human who attempts to optimize personal benefit, utility, or comfort. Many scientists who study artificial intelligence use the mathematics of formal logic—the predicate calculus—as their major tool to simulate thought. […] Human thought is not like logic; it is fundamentally different in kind and spirit. The difference is neither worse nor better. But it is the difference that leads to creative discovery and to great robustness of behavior.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

Source: The Design of Everyday Things (1988, 2002), Ch. 5, pp. 114–115.

Law, Behavior, Intelligence, Mathematics

“That's wild! I'll start off with five stars and work backwards from there. Now there, to me, is the most perfect band in existence, whether you're thinking of it orchestrationally or in terms of Duke's immensely creative writing. I can't think of anybody I admire more than this man; nobody could even be compared with him, except Billy Strayhorn. Duke does something with this old, tired instrumentation of trumpets, trombones and saxophones, and he has a perfect way of utilizing the men's specific sounds. Anything he plays is a work of art. The band is out of tune, for instance, and it doesn't even matter. They almost have their own brand of intonation. Duke can take an exotic-sounding idea and create something – you might call it sophisticated crudity. It gives both the qualities that I look for – an earthy quality and the sophisticated quality.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing " Agra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MDDbrAqqg" from Far East Suite, as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu

Men, Art, Way, Star