Practicality Quotes

I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

Florence Nightingale

Well, Jack, we have taken the Macedonian, and your share of the prize, if we get her in safely, may be two hundred dollars; what will you do with it?” Stephen Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, North Atlantic, near the Azores Islands, 1812.“One hundred will go to my mother, sir, and the other I shall spend on schooling.” Jack Creamer, aged ten.

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

How does a hundred-and-eighty-pound man turn into a ninety-pound wolf? Where does the leftover ninety go? Does he park it in the umbrella stand overnight?

A taste for literature and a turn for business, united in the same person, never fails to make a great man.

Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole.

James S.A. Corey

You can't grasp the wonderful and keep your feet on the ground.

... a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living.

Mortimer J. Adler

You'll never grab the wonderful with your feet on the ground.

Coming from a business family, she shied away from abstractions.

Stephen L. Carter

As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.

Never underestimate love, as you need estimate to underestimate.

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy.But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

G.K. Chesterton

..it happens in all human affairs that we never seek to escape one mischief without falling into another. Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage, and in accepting a less evil as a good.

Niccolò Machiavelli

A wise man's goal shouldn't be to say something profound, but to say something useful.

The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only the material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind.

Bertrand Russell

A balance, I think, is needed , " Dr. Templeton said judiciously,"between the head and the heart: nothing easier to say: nothing harder to achieve.

Innovation is about practical creativity - it's about making new ideas useful...

Sometimes it's best to trade an ideal for something more practical that you can guarantee.

A painting shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.

Lovers tend to be philosophical, achievers are practical.

Pragmatism is good prevention for problems.

Don't fall for the ones who say, I am always yours. They are liars, unfortunately humans too

It might come a time to not follow your passion, so to speak, although it must be prioritized. It may be the case that your passion will serve as the medic, your peace of mind, alongside a higher calling, with your higher calling being the point man.

If you can’t be brave in the face of adversity, at least be practical.

If only there was a way to escape this reality, if only there was a way to erase all this formality, if only there was a way to figure out your mentality, if only there was a way to rid all the theatricality, if only...however sadly all we think of is practicality, so we will never reach any finality.

If only there was a way to escape this reality, if only there was a way to erase all this formality, if only there was a way to figure out your mentality, if only there was a way to rid all the theatricality,if only...however sadly all we think of is practicality, so we will never reach any finality.

Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart.

Able hands' are more favorable to business than 'adorable hearts'.

One of the great benefits of being married is always having someone to tie one's tie.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a great many problems.

The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.

In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, "He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.

David Pietrusza

I am apt, however, to entertain a Suspicion, that the World is still too young to fix any general stable Truths in Politics, which will remain true to the latest Posterity. We have not as yet had Experience of above three thousand Years; so that not only the Art of Reasoning is still defective in this Science, as well as in all others, but we even want sufficient Materials, upon which we can reason. 'Tis not sufficiently known, what Degrees of Refinement, either in Virtue or Vice, human Nature is susceptible of; nor what may be expected of Mankind from any great Revolution in their Education, Customs, or Principles.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

Who gets to Live? You or Your Rules?

Vineet Raj Kapoor

We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both.

Tiffany Madison

You can only take too much in pursuit of something you don't really want.

Secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin is accused of treason by war enthusiasts merely for suggesting budget adjustments to pay for war measures.

Donald R. Hickey

Bring real and practical life experience to the people

Live your life as a practical example to others

Take practical and rational steps in maximizing your time

Take practical and rational steps in maximizing your time

It could be said that a liberal education has the nature of a bequest, in that it looks upon the student as the potential heir of a cultural birthright, whereas a practical education has the nature of a commodity to be exchanged for position, status, wealth, etc., in the future. A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past. The practical educators assume that human society itself is the only significant context, that change is therefore fundamental, constant, and necessary, that the future will be wholly unlike the past, that the past is outmoded, irrelevant, and an encumbrance upon the future -- the present being only a time for dividing past from future, for getting ready.But these definitions, based on division and opposition, are too simple. It is easy, accepting the viewpoint of either side, to find fault with the other. But the wrong is on neither side; it is in their division...Without the balance of historic value, practical education gives us that most absurd of standards: "relevance," based upon the suppositional needs of a theoretical future. But liberal education, divorced from practicality, gives something no less absurd: the specialist professor of one or another of the liberal arts, the custodian of an inheritance he has learned much about, but nothing from.

It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.

Life is fundamentally a mental state. We live in a dream world that we create. Whose life is truer, the rational man of action pursuing practical goals of personal happiness and wealth or the philosophic man who lives in a world of theoretical and metaphysical ideas? We ascribe the value quotient to our lives by making decisions that we score as either valid or invalid based upon our personal ethics and how we think and behave.

Kilroy J. Oldster

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Henry David Thoreau

One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?

E.A. Bucchianeri

In meetings philosophy might work,on the field practicality works.

A photograph shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.