Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader.
About the only useful thing my economics degree taught me was that, in all decisions in life, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis.
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.
Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.
I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit.
My mother always worked and thought staying at home was a bit twee, and that you should get your act together and do something useful. Now I think that's the most useful thing you can do: bring up some non-criminals.
Believing that a crisis is a useful thing to create, the Obama administration - which understands that, for liberalism, worse is better - has deliberately aggravated the fiscal shambles that the Great Recession accelerated.
I think a good dollop of sadness is quite a useful thing in comedy sometimes. I think if everyone's happy all the time, it's a bit dull. It's like salt and caramel - you wouldn't imagine they would go well together, but they do.
There's nothing good about ash dieback, but there is one useful thing that could be done: wherever possible, leave the dead trees to stand. There is more life in a dead tree than in a living tree: around 2,000 animal species in the UK rely on dead or dying wood for their survival.
If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can't control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game.
I'm very lucky in the sense that I've got a voice that's distinctive. Not good, but distinctive. That's a very useful thing to have in this business. I'm glad on the one hand that I've got it, but I wish it was more powerful. I wish I had a greater range. I wish it was more accurate at times.
I think the most useful thing you can do as a writer is to reconstruct real life with all its color, hardship, joy, and intrigue. If you're interested in people, you honor them best, I think, by making the fullest possible picture of them. Your subjects may - and from my experience probably will - protest your portrait of them.
It's been a very strong force for me over the years. I don't know exactly why. For some people, fear can be a very useful thing. They can use it to recognise there's something missing, and heal themselves. But fear can also destroy some people. I think I'm the first type of person. I'm pretty anxious, always thinking 'what if?' about the bad stuff.