Quotes About Utility

If i bought something that didn't warrant more than three wearings, I did not need it.

If God had created colours, but not the faculty of vision, colours would have been of little use. [4] Or if God had created vision, but not made sure that objects could be seen, vision would have been worthless. [5] And even if he had made them both, but not created light – [6] then neither would have been of any value. So who contrived this universal accommodation of things to one another? Who fitted the sword to the scabbard and the scabbard to the sword? No one?

Yes, the success of open source does call into some question the utility of command-and-control systems, of secrecy, of centralization, and of certain kinds of intellectual property. It would be almost disingenuous not to admit that it suggests (or at least harmonizes well with) a broadly libertarian view of the proper relationship between individuals and institutions.

I'm not sure why anyone on the face of the planet would want to use a bow and arrow. I mean, it seems like a fairly limited field of expertise and usefulness. Unless your name is Katniss.

big blue plastic bin.

Hilbert, who was always down-to-earth, liked to say: 'One must always be able to say "tables, chairs, beer-mugs", instead of "points, lines, planes".

Until you use the iPad for a couple of weeks, you can't appreciate it. But it quickly becomes your primary consumption device.

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.

Books should have a purpose. Books should be practical in some sense.

I'd rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game.

The point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people want to use.

Everybody has stories about using duct tape. Of course, most don't try to lift a car with it.

If you're doing well, you're a target, nobody's interested in you except how you can be of use to them.

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea.

High-prowed fishing smacks bobbed at their moorings along the riverbank, nets draped over the gunwales to dry. Stork nests, intricately thatched and big as a queen's bed, crowned utility poles along the road.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser — in case you thought optimism was dead.

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

It was a plain table, and unadorned like all of her furnishings, some of which she suspected might be of indifferent workmanship. A trivial matter; so long as furniture did what it was supposed to do, nothing more mattered

That is impractical, but practicality isn't the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility... It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.