#useful

I think people ought to do what they feel useful at the time. If I do things because I ought to do them, I switch off. ↗

— Matthew Macfadyen

#feel #i #i do #i think #off

While knowledge may provide useful point of reference, it cannot become a force to guide the future. ↗

— Herbie Hancock

#cannot #force #future #guide #knowledge

But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum, removing the arts and music, and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#arts #child #children #curriculum #drilling

I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#become #big #brain #collective #communication

But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch. ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#existentialism #human-dignity #meaning #nihilism #usefulness

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#becomes #brought #conviction #directed #easily

Indeed, I am sometimes inclined to doubt whether some men consider youth as rational and intelligent beings, with minds capable of expansion, and talents formed for usefulness. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#beings #capable #consider #doubt #expansion

I'm touched by the idea that when we do things that are useful and helpful - collecting these shards of spirituality - that we may be helping to bring about a healing. ↗

— Leonard Nimoy

#bring #collecting #healing #helpful #helping

I'm very lucky in the sense that I've got a voice that's distinctive. Not good, but distinctive. That's a very useful thing to have in this business. I'm glad on the one hand that I've got it, but I wish it was more powerful. I wish I had a greater range. I wish it was more accurate at times. ↗

— Gary Numan

#business #distinctive #glad #good #got

The hallway of every man's life is paced with pictures; pictures gay and pictures gloomy, all useful, for if we be wise, we can learn from them a richer and braver way to live. ↗

— Sean O'Casey

#every #gay #gloomy #hallway #learn