Utility Quotes

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice. (Edmund Burke)
The calculus of utility aims at supplying the ordinary wants of man at the least cost of labour. View quote
William Stanley Jevons
Every institution goes through three stages - utility, privilege, and abuse. View quote
François-René de Chateaubriand
Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility. View quote
William Stanley Jevons
These are, of course, some things which, for utility's sake, must be made of the same size in a small theatre, and a large one: such as the steps, curved cross-aisles, their parapets, the passages, stairways, stages, tribunals, and any other things which occur that make it necessary to give up symmetry so as not to interfere with utility. View quote
Vitruvius
In economic terms, we've always thought of work as a disutility - as something you do to get something else. Now it's increasingly a utility - something that's valuable and worthy in its own right. View quote
Daniel H. Pink
Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance. View quote
Giambattista Vico
No human being has the faculty of originally creating matter, which is more than nature itself can do. But any one may avail himself of the agents offered him by nature, to invest matter with utility. View quote
Jean-Baptiste Say
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. View quote
José Ortega y Gasset
Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them. View quote
David Ricardo
Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it. (David Ricardo)
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. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
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. View quote
Marshall McLuhan
I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time. View quote
Robert Browning
I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God,-the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures. I trust in my own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward,-Nature's good And God's. View quote
Robert Browning
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. View quote
Benito Mussolini
Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility. View quote
Robert Charles Wilson
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. View quote
Herman Kahn
The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Vannevar Bush
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)
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. View quote
Richard Whately
My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics. View quote
William Stanley Jevons
The difficulties of economics are mainly the difficulties of conceiving clearly and fully the conditions of utility. View quote
William Stanley Jevons
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. View quote
Mortimer Adler