#utility

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

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

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

— Mary MacLane

#life

The wise hero must realise how terrible it will be, when all the wealth of this world lies waste, as now in various places throughout this middle-earth walls stand, blown by the wind covered with frost, the buildings storm-swept. The halls decay, their lords lie deprived of joy, the whole hearth-troop has fallen, proud by the wall. from THE WANDERER, lines 73-80 ↗

— Anonymous

#beautiful-writing #destruction #futility #haunting #middle-earth

Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable that the business of anglers would be very little hindered. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#futility #wisdom #business

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin. ↗

— P.D. James

#pessimism #posterity #the-future #men