#usefulness

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

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself. ↗

— Woodrow Wilson

#conceive #convenience #greatest #i #itself

I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless. ↗

— William Golding

#communication #usefulness #art

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

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue. ↗

— Richard M. Nixon

#forget #his #individual #issue #loses

A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. ↗

— William Graham Sumner

#decline #dissolution #drunkard #fitness #gutter

Usefulness! It is not a fascinating word, and the quality is not one of which the aspiring spirit can dream o' nights, yet on the stage it is the first thing to aim at. ↗

— Ellen Terry

#aspiring #dream #fascinating #first #first thing

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#usefulness #life

Well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account of their usefulness, but because they are states of richer souls that are capable of bestowing and have their value in the feeling of the plenitude of life. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#good-natured #helpful #life #plenitude #richness

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#life #purpose-of-life #time #usefulness #waste