A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness.
William Graham Sumner

A person's worth is quite independent of their usefulness to society.
Kjell Magne Bondevik

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.
Richard M. Nixon

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
Theodore Roosevelt

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.
Peace Pilgrim

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.
Charles William Eliot

Besides, my usefulness here is destroyed because all of my friends think me a man of unsound mind.
Alex Campbell

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
Josh Billings

Education is more than Pisa. Particularly musical education. We also need education and training for more than reasons of usefulness and marketability.
Johannes Rau

Experiments were not attempted at that time, we did not believe in the usefulness of the concept anyway, and I finished my thesis in 1962 with a feeling like an artist balancing on a high rope without any interested spectators.
Richard Ernst

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.
E. T. Bell

I am aware of the usefulness of science to society and of the benefits society derives from it.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.
Jose Saramago

If all human lives depended upon their usefulness - as might be judged by certain standards - there would be a sudden and terrific mortality in the world.
Gene Tunney

In such an environment, I was able to study things that could be of immediate usefulness to the world. That learning experience undoubtedly served me well when I eventually entered the work force.
Koichi Tanaka

In the early West, law and politics were parallel roads to usefulness as well as distinction.
John George Nicolay

Indeed, I am sometimes inclined to doubt whether some men consider youth as rational and intelligent beings, with minds capable of expansion, and talents formed for usefulness.
Joseph Lancaster

It is a remarkable honor to receive a Nobel Prize, because it not only recognizes discoveries, but also their usefulness to the advancement of fundamental science.
Peter Agre

It is inevitable that those to whom is vouchsafed a long life of usefulness should outlive the friends of their youth.
Cleveland Abbe

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor