Top 100 Being Useful Quotes
#1. Whether it's veterans' disability claims, infrastructure projects, dam safety, or helping our farmers, what I am focused on is being useful for folks in the Hudson Valley.
Sean Patrick Maloney
#2. Stop trying to be amazing and start being useful.
Jay Baer
#3. You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.
Caitlin Moran
#4. The usefulness of science is sometimes exaggerated. You'd never talk about music being useful or art being useful.
Richard Dawkins
#5. Whatever happened in the world was a decree from God. A task to be completed. Any crying or joy just got in the way of being useful. Any emotion was decadent. Anticipation or regret was a silly extra. A luxury.
Chuck Palahniuk
#6. There is the joy of being healthy and fair, but there is overall the beauty, the immense joy of being useful.
Gabriela Mistral
#7. Die young, and I shall accept your death-but not if you have lived without glory, without being useful to your country, without leaving a trace of your existence: for that is not to have lived at all.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#8. I can't help but note that God is being useful to a lot of people trying to do harm to one another.
Barbara Brown Taylor
#9. If you wish to enjoy a position, find ways of being useful, hard working and cooperative with the people whose favour has given you the position
Radhe Maa
#10. With the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them;
Jon Krakauer
#11. It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble.
Aristotle.
#12. It's hard to be sad when you're being useful.
Noah Hawley
#13. Subtle! Subtlety is bourgeois. Brecht us that when he popped drama's cherry. He fucked drama until it stopped being subtle, like a lady, and started being useful, like a whore.
David Burr Gerrard
#14. The curious fascination in this job [U.S. representative] is the illusion that either you are being useful or you could be
and that's so tempting.
Millicent Fenwick
#15. You can make clothing as art, but I like the idea of my clothes actually being worn and being useful to women.
Tracy Reese
#16. A woman needs to be told that you would sacrifice anything for her. A man needs to be told he is being useful. When the man or woman strays from that formula, the other loses trust. When trust is lost, communication falls apart.
Scott Adams
#17. Fact was, little Carmen was so ornamental that you just never thought about her being useful.
Robert A. Heinlein
#18. The purpose of life is to be happy by being useful to others. Always have the inborn sense of wonder and enjoy the wonderful universe every moment with great love and great affection.
Debasish Mridha
#19. It is wicked to withdraw from being useful to the needy, and cowardly to give way to the worthless.
Epictetus
#20. The World is pretty much divided between the weak of mind & the strong- between those who can act & those who cannot, & it is the bounden Duty of the Capable to let no opportunity of being useful escape them.
Jane Austen
#21. The best thing in the world for each of us is that which we can best do, because it gives us the feeling of being useful. That's happiness.
Pearl S. Buck
#22. I never allow of any difficulties. The great secret of being useful and successful is to admit of no difficulties.
George Gipps
#23. I have lived through much and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet, secluded life in the country with possibility of being useful to people.
Leo Tolstoy
#24. My problem is how to find the best way of being useful.
Jacques Delors
#25. Action can give us the feeling of being useful, but only words can give us a sense of weight and purpose.
Eric Hoffer
#26. Being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.
N.K. Jemisin
#27. I am never weary of being useful ... In serving others I cannot do enough. No labor is sufficient to tire me.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#28. Seyyed Hassan Modarres: "However good the guarddog is, it stops being useful the moment it bites the hands of its master's child, and must be banished
Christopher De Bellaigue
#29. All companies would be better off if they stopped trying to be amazing and just focused on being useful.
Jay Baer
#30. A truth may be useful without being understood, indeed without being believed.
Frank Durham
#31. There is something more here than embarrassment at being praised. The strengths 'I' have are not admissible to the arena of ability where they are socially useful; for once admitted, 'I'
my real self
would no longer have them.
Richard Sennett
#32. We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
Fernando Pessoa
#33. This thought has met with the fate of many other useful projects, of being applauded and neglected.
Voltaire
#34. Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#35. The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#36. I have enough trouble with useful information, never mind being burdened with what is useless.
Erlend Loe
#37. But is shame really the most useful tool to be employed in the reformation of mankind? Do people grow better through being belittled? Does fear educate?
Alain De Botton
#38. Curiosity's primal. Our senses scan our surroundings, alerting us most urgently about sudden change. Useful, that. Change can mean opportunity. It can mean danger. Finding lunch or being lunch. We're hard-wired to notice the unexpected, then take action.
Julie Czerneda
#39. When I was CEO, and I'd listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
Ben Horowitz
#40. Learning lines is hard for me because I have the attention span of a six year old. That's why being on planes all the time is so useful - I'm forced to learn out of boredom.
Eddie Redmayne
#42. Do not focus on being happy, focus on doing something useful; afterwards, happiness will flow towards you!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#43. Having fins in the water was useful to travel quickly, but the bulky appendage left much to be desired for exerting dominance. Something about being unable to sit, legs open, left me feeling feminine."
~Fin
Brenda Pandos
#44. Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.
Seth Godin
#45. Experience supplies painful proof that traditions once called into being are first called useful, then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them or be punished.
J.C. Ryle
#46. Humour ended up being a really useful skill when it came time to be an international television celebrity.
Carson Kressley
#47. It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.
John Stuart Mill
#48. Don't commit to being a columnist unless you're willing to do it right. Report your behind off, so you have something original and useful to say. Say it in a way that will interest someone other than you, your family and your sources.
Allan Sloan
#49. Some of the steps you take may end up being detours or out-and-out mistakes. By staying focused on your vision, though, you'll find even those steps useful in the creating process.
David Emerald Womeldorff
#50. When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need five days to get the world I've left out of my head and ten days or a fortnight not talking to anyone to hold what I need to hold inside my head.
Tom Stoppard
#51. I really believe in trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world and in being accurate in the sense that you can take what I say to the bank, even if you disagree with me.
Rachel Maddow
#52. Now in many cases - too many cases - the activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being.
John Dewey
#53. I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.
John Updike
#54. Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#55. I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was ... it wasn't until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.
Barbara Brown Taylor
#56. Josie is a Pye," said Marilla sharply, "so she can't help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don't know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles.
L.M. Montgomery
#57. But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.
Milan Kundera
#58. The term faith-based is nothing more than an attempt to slip religion past you when you're not thinking; which is the way religion is always slipped past you. It deprives you of choice; choice being another word the political-speech manipulators find extremely useful.
George Carlin
#59. In my opinion, he only may be truly said to live and enjoy his being who is engaged in some laudable pursuit, and acquires a name by some illustrious action, or useful art.
Sallust
#60. Happiness doesn't come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.
Robert Baden-Powell
#61. Twitter and Facebook are brilliant tools, the journalistic uses of which are still being plumbed. They are great for disseminating interesting material. They are useful for gathering information, including from places that are inaccessible.
Bill Keller
#62. I think there are many in the Democratic Party that want immigration to be unsolved issue at least for the time being, because it's more useful as a campaign issue than it is as a solved issue.
Marco Rubio
#63. The important thing is that if I can get to it and get back out again without being spotted, it will be a useful study aid in my newly chosen specialist field of getting-the-fuck-out-of-here-ology.
Nick Harkaway
#64. Young people, not to mention people of all ages, really, really don't like being annoyed. And ads, almost always, were annoying. There is nothing beautiful, let alone useful, not to mention authentic, about being interrupted, distracted, or annoyed by something you didn't choose to see.
Andrew Essex
#65. The acknowledgment that God is always with us - even when we are least aware of it in our sensory being - requires discipline. To acknowledge the Unseen Real requires a concerted effort of our will at first. This is why the term practicing the presence is so useful.
Leanne Payne
#66. I suppose I'm very aware of time and of memories and of enjoying life ... not just doing the right thing and being a useful person, which I certainly wanna be and believe that I am. I hold onto my family really tight and try to be as good a woman as I can be in my life.
Angelina Jolie
#67. Being good is commendable, but only when it is combined with doing good is it useful
Stephen King
#68. The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a "supportive institution" and our clergy as members of a "helping profession". The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.
Stanley Hauerwas
#69. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.
Nathan Hale
#70. GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#72. If I could be useful to another human being, even for a day, that would be a great thing. It would be greater than all the big thoughts I could have at the university.
Muhammad Yunus
#73. I don't think being angry is useful or healthy, and usually when I get angry, my brain just goes right out the window. Boom, as soon as the adrenaline hits, instant stupid. Just add water and mix.
David Crosby
#74. I think the gay - the gay/straight alliances in the school are very useful as far as creating understanding among kids and so kids aren't necessarily so stigmatized or demonized for being who they really are.
Jeanne Phillips
#75. It is easier to list modes of behaviour that are required or forbidden than to set reason to work; but once the mind has been stored with useful knowledge and strengthened by being used, the regulation of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance without the aid of formal rules.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#76. Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.
Charlie Munger
#77. I attended Catholic school. We received a great education from the nuns ... Also, guilt. Guilt and a feeling of never being satisfied with what you've done. And a sense that you are inadequate and a big phony. All useful for a writer. I'm always being edited by my inner nun.
George Saunders
#78. Being a laborer with one hand is about as useful as being a sperm donor with one nut.
Devon McCormack
#79. I tend to discourage people from calling me 'Sir Ian,' because I don't like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you're writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They're impressed by these things.
Ian McKellen
#80. Useful men, who do useful things, don't mind being treated as useless.
But the useless always judge themselves as being important and hide all their incompetence behind authority.
Paulo Coelho
#81. Sometimes it is very useful to have a reputation for being a reclusive, amoral jerk.
Brandon Sanderson
#82. After all, wedlock is the natural state of man. A bachelor is not a complete human being. He is like the odd half of a pair of scissors, which has not yet found its fellow, and therefore is not even half so useful as they might be together.
Benjamin Franklin
#83. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should be to receive a mysteriously useful omen every day of your life. - Rob Brezsny
Jake Ducey
#84. I have learned to have very modest goals for society and myself; things like clean air, green grass, children with bright eyes, not being pushed around, useful work that suits one's abilities, plain tasty food, and occasional satisfying nookie.
Paul Goodman
#85. That being said, I often write into recipes techniques I learned in the restaurant kitchen. There are ways of organizing your prep and so on that are immensely useful. Those are woven into all the recipes I do.
Sally Schneider
#86. The senses do not enable us to cognize any entity in its Being; they merely serve to announce the ways in which 'external' Things within-the-world are useful or harmful for human creatures encumbered with bodies ... they tell us nothing about entities in their Being.
Martin Heidegger
#87. I think of everything and I'm pretty sure if I could use my organizational skills for something else, like wildlife survival kits or preparing people for nuclear warfare, I'd be a millionaire. Or at the very least actually a useful human being.
Corey Ann Haydu
#88. Factual information alone isn't sufficient to guide you through life's labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive a mysteriously useful omen every day of your life.
Rob Brezsny
#89. When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.
Anatole Broyard
#90. Stories are the only thing that I can be bothered with. It's the only way that I can do anything, even if I'm quite useless. It's the only area in being human where I could be a little useful.
Alice Englert
#91. My biggest fear is that I become useless or less useful by not being up to date - be it with technology, changing consumers, changing global situations. You continuously have to have a little level of paranoia that forces you to set the bar higher every day.
Paul Polman
#92. Being a writer
is all about having something to say. And it'd better be interesting. If you don't have anything
interesting to say, don't become a writer. Become something useful. Like a doctor.
Candace Bushnell
#93. People are looking for software development that actually does something useful ... People are looking for partners who deliver when promised, and at a reasonable and transparent price. I believe that the days of being able to value price software are numbered.
Kent Beck
#94. You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end,each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a genaral responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think can be most useful.
Marie Curie
#95. Joy, feeling one's own value, being appreciated and loved by others, feeling useful and capable of production are all factors of enormous value for the human soul.
Maria Montessori
#96. A science or an art may be said to be "useful" if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way.
G.H. Hardy
#97. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency;
Frederick Douglass
#98. Another writer argued in an 1895 issue of the Cosmopolitan that by riding a bicycle, a woman would "become mistress of herself," transformed into a "rational, useful being restored to health and sanity.
Frances E. Willard
#99. Being able to jump off a swing is actually a useful and meaningful thing for a child to do ... those are the tests that help us understand the limits of our body. That's a positive learning experience that we deny children on a regular basis.
Gever Tulley
#100. Since I've written many of my books from a less-than-sympathetic viewpoint, I think that being able to see things from all sides is a useful talent.
Alex Flinn
