These utility quotes will inspire you. Utility is the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial; or an organization supplying the community with electricity, gas, water, or sewerage.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging utility quotes, utility sayings, and utility proverbs.
Famous Utility Quotes
- “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” ~ Thomas A. Edison
- “Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.” ~ Karl Marx
- “All men know the utility of useful things, but they do not know the utility of futility.” ~ Zhuangzi
- “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
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“Not to be, but to seem, virtuous – it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “Thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - “I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.” ~ Robert Browning
- “Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That’s why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.” ~ Mortimer Adler
- “Money and electricity are much alike. Both are stored energy. Living amidst electricity, using it constantly, you take its presence and its utility for granted. Treated with respect, it is constructive, tireless. Treated with disrespect, it is destructive, vicious. It will light your way, pull a twelve-car train from Washington to New York in a bit more than four hours, kill you or burn your house alike. Electricity is insulated, though, and children are not permitted to play with it.” ~ Evalyn Walsh McLean
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“Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none.” ~ Doug Larson
- “Nearly all of our existing power sources are generators which use a heat cycle. This includes our coal, oil, and gas fired utilities, our automobiles, trucks, and trains, and even our nuclear fission utility power plants.” ~ Wilson Greatbatch
- “Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.” ~ Friedrich Schiller
- “Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.” ~ Jeremy Bentham
- “In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.” ~ Mitt Romney
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“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
- “Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought.” ~ Herman Kahn
- “Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.” ~ Hermann von Helmholtz
- “Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the best. Socrates was esteemed the wisest man of his time because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality, and aimed at goodness more than greatness.” ~ John Tillotson
- “The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.” ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
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“Truth and right are above utility in all realms of thought and action.” ~ Charles William Eliot
- “Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.” ~ Marshall McLuhan
- “Whenever you play dance music, it serves a function. It becomes a utility; you have to worry about the tempos and what you’re going to play for people. But when you’re playing for listening, you’re free.” ~ Stan Kenton
- “Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure… they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.” ~ Jeremy Bentham
- “If you are without bread, how much wisdom can you boast and of what real utility are your talents, if you cannot procure for yourselves and save against a day of scarcity those substances designed to sustain your natural lives?” ~ Brigham Young
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“The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today’s vineyard, the military-industrial complex.” ~ Mario Savio
- “Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.” ~ William Stanley Jevons
- “Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.” ~ George Santayana
- “There’s a utility in the democracy refreshing itself on an ongoing basis.” ~ Barack Obama
- “If you had a really good – battery, it wouldn’t matter that the sun goes down at night and the wind stops blowing sometimes. But at the moment, battery technology is nowhere near good enough to use at utility scale.” ~ Nathan Myhrvold
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“Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir
- “We know the utility of prayer from the efforts of the wicked spirits to distract us during the divine office; and we experience the fruit of prayer in the defeat of our enemies.” ~ John Climacus
- “Clay is molded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing. . . . Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not.” ~ Laozi
- “True art is but the anti-type of nature; the embodiment of discovered beauty in utility.” ~ James A. Garfield
- “The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility.” ~ Scott Adams
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“Quality is free. It’s not a gift, but it’s free. The ‘unquality’ things are what cost money.” ~ Phil Crosby
- “The utility model of computing – computing resources delivered over the network in much the same way that electricity or telephone service reaches our homes and offices today – makes more sense than ever.” ~ Scott McNealy
- “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
- “It is folly to use as one’s guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)… despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.” ~ John Charles Polanyi
- “I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it’s soil, it’s climate, it’s equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Some people in the utility industry have called it ‘circling the drain'” ~ Richard Kauffmann
- “Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.” ~ Vannevar Bush
- “It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge.” ~ Montgomery Schuyler
- “The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it’s really delivering is data… Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree… Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor’s time is spent saying no.” ~ Clifford Stoll
- “False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.” ~ Cesare Beccaria
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“Regarding wetsuits, I always liked the Marilyn Minter quote, ‘Everything’s better when wet,’ injecting some style into sports utility.” ~ Cynthia Rowley
- “The misconception that there is serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans that rely on the massive unrestrained dumping of global warming pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere every hour of every day.” ~ Al Gore , Business utility quotes
- “Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language.” ~ Daniel O’Connell
- “Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and immanent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.” ~ Johannes Itten
- “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
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“Though no one would want to be sold as a slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no one will buy.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “The answer is simple. If we lose the world’s forests, we lose the fight against climate change. Rainforests are our Earth’s greatest utility – our planet’s lungs, thermostat and air-conditioning system.” ~ Michael Somare
- “Americans are driving more in less-efficient vehicles. Sales of sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks have been amazingly strong considering the recession, and low pump prices are keeping people on the roads” ~ Mike Lucky
- “The world’s forests need to be seen for what they are – giant global utilities, providing essential public services to humanity on a vast scale. They store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They act as a natural thermostat, helping to regulate our climate and sustain the lives of 1.4 billion of the poorest people on this Earth.” ~ Prince Charles
- “The Convention is not only a visionary document. We are reminded daily that it is an agreement that works – and its utility can be seen in the everyday use to which I have seen it increasingly being put by country after country, in policy, in practice and in law.” ~ Carol Bellamy
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“I mean, our primary businesses in wholesale pipelines, utilities, retail, were all doing extremely well.” ~ Kenneth Lay
- “At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility.” ~ Aristotle
- “Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Ah, the power of two. There’s nothing quite like it. Especially when it comes to paying utility bills, parenting, cooking elaborate meals, purchasing a grown-up bed, jumping rope, and lifting heavy machinery. The world favors pairs. Who wants to waste the wood building an ark for singletons?” ~ Sloane Crosley
- “Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory, its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” ~ William James
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“Any item in your wardrobe should satisfy one of two criteria: utility and joy.” ~ Stacy London
- “[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.” ~ Warren Buffett
- “Already renewable energy advocates are noting that the 42 miles of above-ground right-of-way between Yosemite and the city could be fitted with enough solar panels to generate at least 40 megawatts per year – a proposal the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has never seriously considered because they currently aren’t required to do so.” ~ Matt Gonzalez
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“We can’t ever forget that the Internet now is just a staid utility. The exciting platforms are software applications that are very, very simple.” ~ Mark Cuban
- “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
- “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
