These useless quotes will motivate you. Useless, not fulfilling, or not expected to achieve the intended purpose or desired outcome.
Below you will find a collection of inspiring, happy, and encouraging useless quotes, useless sayings, and useless proverbs.
Best Useless Quotes
- “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.” ~ Charles Dickens
- “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” ~ Peter Drucker
- “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.” ~ Thomas Merton
- “The useless men are those who never change with the years.” ~ James M. Barrie
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“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” ~ Thomas A. Edison
- “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Ability without honor is useless.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
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“Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.” ~ Abu Bakr
- “You can have all the tools in the world but if you don’t genuinely believe in yourself, it’s useless.” ~ Ken Jeong
- “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.” ~ Karl Marx
- “You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.” ~ Charles de Gaulle
- “Worry is a useless mulling over of things we cannot change.” ~ Peace Pilgrim
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“There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.” ~ Herodotus
- “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” ~ Jonathan Swift
- “It’s useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office.” ~ Shirley MacLaine
- “If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless.” ~ Darryl F. Zanuck
- “Without courage, all other virtues are useless.” ~ Edward Abbey
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“I am convinced that in the arts, committees are useless.” ~ Walter Legge
- “It is not that I do not get angry. I don’t give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “Plans are useless, but planning is essential.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.” ~ Thomas Hardy
- “A great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove today on examination to have been of immense value to mankind.” ~ Lafcadio Hearn
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“The elderly are useless eaters.” ~ Henry A. Kissinger
- “When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.” ~ Henry Miller
- “There’s really nothing else I’m going to do with my life. I’d be useless if I weren’t singing or acting” ~ Taryn Manning
- “But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for himself, and furnishes laughter for his enemies.” ~ Sophocles
- “Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.” ~ Albert J. Nock
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“When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.” ~ Lois McMaster Bujold
- “Only useless things are indispensable.” ~ Francis Picabia
- “Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.” ~ Albert Camus
- “Newman’s first law: It is useless to put on your brakes when you’re upside down.” ~ Paul Newman
- “It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice.” ~ Jose Rizal
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“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.” ~ John Ruskin
- “So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
- “It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.” ~ Tom Stoppard
- “Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “I’m not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.” ~ Bill Watterson
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“‘He means well’ is useless unless he does well.” ~ Plautus
- “Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield, Nature’s, not honour’s law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away.” ~ Archilochus
- “The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.” ~ Nicolas Chamfort
- “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “Worry is wasteful and useless in times like these.” ~ Jewel
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“A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.” ~ George Ade
- “It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.” ~ Lord Byron
- “It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.” ~ Giacomo Casanova
- “I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless.” ~ Billy Connolly
- “I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was… nothingness.” ~ Frances Farmer
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“The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it.” ~ Esther Williams
- “Golf is the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man.” ~ Westbrook Pegler
- “And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?” ~ Thomas B. Macaulay
- “A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.” ~ Stewart Alsop
- “The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.” ~ Chanakya
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“If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless.” ~ Moliere
- “Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.” ~ Quintilian
- “Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.” ~ Honore de Balzac
- “A useless life is an early death.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.” ~ Oscar Wilde
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“It’s useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.” ~ John Cage
- “Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.” ~ Thomas B. Macaulay
- “It would be useless for any player to attempt to explain successful batting.” ~ Tris Speaker
- “I didn’t want to do just another set of recipes. I think that’s useless.” ~ Paul Prudhomme
- “Celebrity is a weird appendage, which is useless unless you do something with it.” ~ Minnie Driver
- “If notwithstanding, a Rebellion of the same Kind now afflicts this Country, we should not infer that this Institution is useless, or should be laid aside; but just the Reverse.” ~ Charles Inglis
