#utility

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. ↗

— Vannevar Bush

#his #learn #man #mission #privilege

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man. ↗

— Ray Charles

#blues #country #country music #different #different things

My Sadness is Deeper than Yours My sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too. ↗

— John Tottenham

#futility #sadness #beauty

There's always the tendency to transform the Church into an ethical agency, and of measuring the Church by the yardstick of social and cultural utility. ↗

— Karl Lehmann

#always #church #cultural #ethical #into

The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web. ↗

— Edwin Way Teale

#between #difference #plus #spider #telephone

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. ↗

— Benito Mussolini

#believes #considerations #considers #development #fascism

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 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

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

Man makes plans . . . and God laughs. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#futility #humor