Quotes About Utility

Chanakya says that like rain serves no purpose over a sea, a candle is useless in daylight, it is useless to feed a person who is not hungry and give alms to a rich person. Chanakya says that rain is required in fields and candle is required in darkness; food must be fed to a hungry person and alms must be given to the poor.

The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do, but to be.

The vulgar crowd values friends according to their usefulness.

My problem is that I like technology, but I always have to ask myself, 'Now wait a minute, will I actually have any use for this?'

I'm a guy that can play three downs. You don't have to take me off the field. I value blocking.

I want to be an asset to the team who can bat or bowl in any position.

WHOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline. Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not

One class live to the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol, as the poet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified; these are wise men.

Para qué recordar lo que no me sirve?

a new suit of overalls has among its beauties those of a blueprint: and they are a map of a working man.

Es gibt genügend praktische Erfindungen, die uns keinerlei Trost spenden", hatte Dylia einmal ihren Brüdern mitgeteilt. "Aber viel zu wenige trostspendende, die überhaupt keinen praktischen Nutzen haben.

Lo bueno debe ser útil. Lo útil es bueno. El tipo A, congruente con su afán acaparador, hace de la obtención de logros su bandera de lucha. Por tal razón, abandonar los resultados es casi una blasfemia y un sinsentido ridículo, producto de un romanticismo ingenuo.

plumbing as toilets were

A barking dog is more useful than a sleeping lion

Everything is at its best when it's doing exactly what it was created for. A lamp gives light. An apple gives sustenance and refreshment. A chair is perfect in being exactly what it is--a chair.

The agent of economic theory is rational, selfish, and his tastes do not change.

the weighted average of its possible dollar outcomes; it is the average of the utilities of these outcomes, each weighted by its probability.

But of course the main reason that decision theorists study simple gambles is that this is what other decision theorists do. The field had a theory, expected utility theory, which was the foundation of the rational-agent model and is to this day the most important theory in the social sciences.

During the first five years we spent looking at how people make decisions, we established a dozen facts about choices between risky options. Several of these facts were in flat contradiction to expected utility theory. Some had been observed before, a few were new. Then we constructed a theory that modified expected utility theory just enough to explain our collection of observations. That was prospect theory.

The mystery is how a conception of the utility of outcomes that is vulnerable to such obvious counterexamples survived for so long. I can explain it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself. I call it theory-induced blindness:

Utilitarianism is a type of hedonism.

what we objectively get (wealth) is not the same as what we subjectively experience when we get it (utility).

When you buy a jacket, it's important the pockets are big enough for a paperback!

Just as absent pleasures that do deprive are 'bad' in the sense of 'worse', so absent pleasures that do not deprive are 'not bad' in the sense of 'not worse'.