Wise Quotes about Usefulness

Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
... Don't Let It Poison Your Day.
Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
... the Antidote is Perspective.
Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
... Your Mind is Only Useful When Tamed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"Fair" is not a useful concept.
Life is not "fair."
You can't make life "fair."
You can get angry.
You can complain about life not being "fair."
You can attempt revenge - perhaps violently.
You can inflict great suffering upon yourself
in the name of life being "unfair."
And Life is still not "fair."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Competition has been shown to be useful
up to a certain point and no further,
but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today,
begins where competition leaves off.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other,
the whole world loses some of its radiance.
- Anatole Broyard

I think, at a child's birth,
if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift,
that gift should be curiosity.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Prejudice is a two-edged sword.
Like the steel sort of sword, it's very sharp, very useful,
and very dangerous if not properly mastered.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I have found out that though the ways in which
I can make myself useful are few,
yet the work open to me is endless.
- Helen Keller

An architect's most useful tools are
an eraser at the drafting board,
and a wrecking bar at the site.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

I have called this principle,
by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term of Natural Selection.
- Charles Darwin

Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Autobiographies are only as useful
as the lives you read about and analyze
may suggest to you something that
you may find useful in your own journey through life.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

There are nine requisites for contented living:
HEALTH enough to make work a pleasure;
WEALTH enough to support your needs;
STRENGTH enough to battle with difficulties and forsake them;
GRACE enough to confess your sins and overcome them;
PATIENCE enough to toil until some good is accomplished;
CHARITY enough to see some good in your neighbor;
LOVE enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others;
FAITH enough to make real the things of God;
HOPE enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
- Thomas Jefferson

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

If you wait for opportunities to occur,
you will be one of the crowd.
- Edward de Bono

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

No one was ever named "Hero" for following the crowd.
Heroes set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

About most subjects, there is not "The Truth;"
there is merely one's personal truth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

How is it that one rails against that
which is nearly a certainty?
- Mary Anne Radmacher

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent
of what nature has revealed to us.
- Albert Einstein

I am one with the Earth,
with the Water, with the Fire,
with the Air that I breathe,
with all Living Things,
and we are all one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self,
can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.
- Soren Kierkegaard

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

Never be fooled into believing that
there is one speck out of order.
- Byron Katie

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The fox has many tricks.
The hedgehog has but one.
But that is the best of all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood
between sincere men of all denominations.
- Helen Keller

Each one of us has our own perspective
on everything we see in life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor,
nor should life rest on a single hope.
- Epictetus

Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The mystery of the beginning
of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one, must be content to remain an agnostic.
- Charles Darwin

True wisdom cannot be learned in a lifetime,
but can be revealed in a moment,
for it has always lived within each and every one of us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau

We have two ears and one mouth so that
we can listen twice as much as we speak.
- Epictetus

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

An instructed and intelligent people
are always more decent and orderly
than an ignorant and stupid one.
- Adam Smith

This day I will marry my friend,
the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.
- Anonymous

Listen to all, plucking a feather
from every passing goose,
but, follow no one absolutely.
- Chinese Proverb

There is only one time that is important - NOW!
It is the most important time because
it is the only time that we have any power.
- Leo Tolstoy

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying
about things which are beyond the power of our will.
- Epictetus

In the practice of tolerance,
one's enemy is the best teacher.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Watch what people are cynical about,
and one can often discover what they lack.
- George S. Patton

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy

Joy increases and suffering decreases
as one masters the distinction between events
and one's feelings about those events.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

This isn't a rehearsal or a practice life.
This is your real life - your one and only real life.
There are no retakes - no second chances.
Begin now - live full out.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Please sign up on the form below to receive
my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

Wisdom Quotes