#utility

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible. ↗

— Elliot Richardson

#bureaucratic #cruel #failure #futility #game

With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects - the building is there to be used, and times change. ↗

— Arne Jacobsen

#anything #architect #because #begin #building

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility. ↗

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

#because #cannot #catharsis #defeat #emotional

I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman - whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals. ↗

— Lord Salisbury

#disappear #higher #i #myself #policeman

Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance. ↗

— Friedrich Schiller

#allegiance #great #idol #must #powers

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise. ↗

— Peter Singer

#against #always #exercise #i #lying

The only reason of the institution of civil government; and the only rational ground of submission to it, is the common safety and utility. ↗

— Jonathan Mayhew

#civil government #common #government #ground #institution

I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor? ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#electricity #energy #exhaustion #futility #sherlock-holmes

I live an immoral life. It is immoral because it is deadly futile. ↗

— Mary MacLane

#life

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#life