Quotessence
Home / Topics / Utility Quotes

Utility Quotes

Browse 408 quotes about Utility.

Related topics

MenPeopleValuesIfsPleasureMayWorldUseThinkingArtFirstsWellsMindTwoGivingGovernmentHumansLawActionEndsKindRealDoeJusticeMatterMoralityNeedsPurposeScienceSeemsSubjectsTodayUsedWantWayYearsEnergyHas BeensIndividualKnowsObjectsPainPlantProductsShouldSimple

Utility Quotes

“Though designing the house in which modern rational choice/utility/decision theory would inhabit, it is not clear that Ramsey would have chosen to reside there himself. For one thing, while he provided a logic of decision, he did not think that all human action and decision should be crammed into the strictures of rational choice theory, as many economists and social scientists today seem to assume. In his 1928 work in economics, he would make it clear that choosing to maximize utility is a moral decision, one which puts utility before justice and equality.”

JusticeEqualityUtilityStandardMortal Men
Book:Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers
Create image

“It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.”

UtilityMoral PhilosophyUtilitarianismConsequentialismImpracticalResponse To Common Critisism
Book:Utilitarianism
Create image

“As is often noted, and only partially in jest, economists seek to explain why people choose to commit suicide, while sociologists explain why they have no such choice. On suicide, the sociologists have been rather more successful than the economists. For their part, economists have proposed a “rational” theory of suicide that posits that people kill themselves in order to “maximize utility.”

EconomicsSuicideSociologyUtilityNeoclassical EconomicsDismal Science
Book:Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
Create image

“When I was researching the book Toxic Electricity, I would see biological reactions for up to a week afterwards. They are typically strong in the first day or two after the electromagnetic field (EMF) exposures and tail off as the week goes on. I would feel fine during the EMF exposures and start seeing weird health effects usually during sleep that night. Extended time around high voltage power lines & power poles were the worst for provoking reactions, followed by wifi and transmitting utility meters.”

TwoBookNightTimeStrongLinesSleepPowerSeeingWeekWorstEffectsHealthFineSmartReactionsToxicProvokingElectricityDayUtilityFeelHighElectromagneticSeeMeterStartFirstUpBiologicalWhenFieldAroundDuringOnResearchingWouldExposuresVoltageWifiOffTailFollowedEmfPolesGoesAfterwardsAmiUsuallyTypicallyWi FiTransmittingAmrWierdExtended
Book:Toxic Electricity
Create image

“If you wanted to create jobs in a way that has minimal effect on the deficit but has government action, the two best things you could do are the infrastructure bank and a simple SBA-like loan guarantee for all building retrofits, where the contractor or the energy-service company guarantees the savings. So that allows the bank to loan money to let a school or a college or a hospital or a museum or a commercial building unencumbered by debt to loan it on terms that are longer, so you can pay it back only from your utility savings. You could create a million jobs doing that.”

IfsWayTwoGovernmentActionWantedSchoolJobsEnergyTermSimplePayCompanyMillionsEffectsBuildingCollegeDebtSavingBest ThingsGuaranteesHospitalsMuseumsInfrastructureDeficitLoanUtilitySavingsContractor
Author:William J. Clinton
Create image

“It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.”

MenHumansAbilityPerfectParticularActivitySkillsSurvivalSpeciesSatisfactionMeaningfulMeaning Of LifeAcquireYieldMasteryUtilityMeaningful LifeAcquisitionHuman ActivityLife Means
Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
Create image

“The superior excellence imputed to the book, which imitates the products of antique and obsolete processes, is conceived to be chiefly a superior utility in the aesthetic respect; but it is not unusual to find a well-bred book-lover insisting that the clumsier product is also more serviceable as a vehicle of printed speech.”

WellsBookProcessProductsLoversSpeechExcellenceSuperiorsUnusualAestheticVehicleUtilityPrintedObsoleteAntiquesInsistingBook Lover
Book:A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism
Create image

“The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility”

ThinkingMayStillsFactsShowsSeemsEyeCenturyEverydayInterpretationPhenomenonBlindnessInnateUtilityCommonplaceNineteenth CenturyEpochUtilitarian
Author:Jose Ortega y Gasset
Create image

“The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.”

YearsTwoWarStatesAbleChristianNationsStruggleModernEuropeDestructionArmyAncientDenyBrokeRanTortureAgencyCivilizedFearfulImmenseAsiaUtilityBattlefieldsDoubtfulGreat WarCannibalismRuthlessnessModern War
Author:Winston Churchill
Create image

“In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”

MenWorldHumansSoulCountryStatesEarthChristianAmericaNationsFeltReligiousUnitedCommonUnited StatesGreaterInfluenceHuman NatureAuthorityProofHypocrisyEnlightenedConformitySovereignUtility
Book:Democracy in America: Book One
Create image

“Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word "useful" an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free.”

IfsMenGivingTryingMindEndsLyingValuesPositionSeriousAbsolutesOppressionLatterUtilityMeaning Nothing
Book:The Ethics of Ambiguity
Create image

“When one makes sculptures of horses, one remembers all of that great relationship that humans had with them.....Even today one raises horses only for dressage, the races, for the pleasure of horseback riding. It has become an animal of romance, an animal of pleasure which has lost its utility in the West.”

HumansTodayRememberRomanceLostPleasureAnimalRaceHorseRaisesWestRidingSculptureUtilityGreat RelationshipHorsebackHorseback RidingDressage
Author:Joe Fafard
Create image

“The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.”

ArtWholeEasyPleasureImpossibleStyleGeniusSpeechCompositionDisguiseUtilityRecogniseIngeniousPlagiarismOrators
Author:Isaac D'Israeli
Create image

“We build our personalities laboriously and through many years, and we cannot order fundamental changes just because we might value their utility; no button reading "positive attitude" protrudes from our hearts, and no finger can coerce positivity into immediate action by a single and painless pressing.”

YearsHeartMightActionValuesOrderReadingAttitudePersonalityFundamentalsFingersPositivityPositive AttitudeButtonsUtilityPainlessCoerceImmediate Action
Book:Full House
Create image

“In truth, the best long-term explanations about our ancient counterparts can be found in the paintings, sculpture, crafts, tools of utility, language and architecture left behind. These are the building blocks of civilization we call culture. These are what we call 'the arts.”

LongArtCultureFoundLeftLanguageTermBehindsBuildingPaintingCivilizationToolsAncientArchitectureBlockCraftsExplanationLong TermSculptureLeft BehindUtilityCounterpartsBuilding Blocks
Author:Edward J. Fraughton
Create image

“For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones; since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival.”

MenGivingUseArtistWorryMovementEqualSurvivalArtisticDamnThings To DoFancyOne ManUtilitySupposingSupposing ThatBetter Things To Do
Book:The good word and other words
Create image

“Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill.”

FirstsTwoWholeEvilSkillsBenefitsDividesArtificialRhetoricUtilityAttainment
Book:Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution
Create image

“Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.”

HumansPleasureRaceJudgingTasteDeserveTendenciesEmploymentHuman RaceOccupationEleganceUtilityMischievousBenefactorsEpithet
Book:The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...
Create image

“By utility is meant that property is any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness(all this in the present case come to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness to the party who whose is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community; if a particular individual; then the happiness of that individual”

IfsPainEvilIndividualCommunityPleasurePartyCasesObjectsProduceParticularBenefitsHappeningsAdvantagePropertyUnhappinessUtilityMischief
Book:The Principles of Morals and Legislation
Create image

“Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007 - and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.”

NeedsStatesBigsThreeExampleWindMonthsDemandPercentPlantNuclearCellsCombatCoalUtilityIntegratedSuppliesVariablesBackupSupply And DemandNuclear PlantsSolar Cells
Author:Amory Lovins
Create image

“It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.”

DoorsSubjectsDegreesResearchChemistryAdvancementUtilityExhausting
Book:Experimental Researches in Electricity: Series 1-14 [Phil. trans., 1831-38] 1839
Create image

“One of the most important axioms is, that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance, plain food, which a man has to consume, increases, so the utility or benefit derived from the last portion used decreases in degree. The decrease in enjoyment between the beginning and the end of a meal may be taken as an example.”

MenMayImportantEndsLastsUsedTakenExampleDegreesBenefitsIncreaseInstanceMealsEnjoymentPortionsQuantityCommodityUtilityDecreaseAxioms
Book:Papers and correspondence of William Stanley Jevons
Create image