Uselessness Quotes

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Knowledge is something which you can use.
Belief is something which uses you.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it's for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn't matter where on what, it's the light itself, against the darkness, it's what's left of God's purpose when you take away God.”
― Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

“The reassuring smile was now useless. I was plastic. Everything was veiled. Objectivity, facts, hard information--these were things only in the outline stage. There was nothing tying anything together yet, so the mind built up a defense, and the evidence was restructured, and that was what I tried to do on that morning--to restructure the evidence so it made sense--and that is what I failed at.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“What do you think you know about me!? This is all I am! I have high hopes even though I'm powerless; I have all these dreams even though I'm dumb; I keep trying even though I can't do anything! I hate myself! I'm always nothing but talk! I'm worse than useless, but I'm still a world-class complainer! Who the hell do I think I am?! How dare I live such a shameful life this long?! I'm empty. I've got nothing inside me. Until I came here, until I met all of you, do you know what I was doing?! I wasn't doing anything. I didn't do anything... I didn't do one little thing! With all that time to do it! With all that freedom! I should have done lots of stuff, but I didn't do any of it! And this is the result! The man I am now is the result! I'm powerless, talentless, and all of it, all of it, is because of my rotten personality! I want to achieve something when I haven't done anything before--conceited doesn't even begin to describe it... I was lazy and imposed on other people; I wasted my whole life away; I killed you. I thought I could live here, but not a single thing's changed about me. That old man saw right through me, didn't he? During those days of training, the old man had spoken of those who wield the sword, but he had shaken his head and said, 'There is little point lecturing someone about what it takes to become stronger when he has already abandoned the choice to do so.' It's not like I really thought I'd get stronger or I'd be able to do anything... I just went through the motions. I was just a poser trying to justify myself. I wanted to say, I couldn't help it! I wanted other people to say it couldn't be helped! That's all it was! That's the only reason I pretended to put myself on the line like that! Even when you were helping me study, I was just putting on a show to cover up the embarrassment! I'm a small, underhanded, filthy guy down to the bone, always worrying about what other people think of me, and none of that's ever changed!”
― Tappei Nagatsuki, Re：ゼロから始める異世界生活 6 [Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu, Vol. 6]

“Already, in the last few decades, you have realized the utter futility of of encumbering yourselves with superfluous possessions that have no useful virtue, but which, for various sentimental reasons, you continue to hoard, thus lessening your life's efficiency by using for it time and attention that should have been applied to the practical work of life's accomplishments. (The Miracle of the Lily - 1928)”
― Clare Winger Harris, The Dreaming Sex: Early Tales of Scientific Imagination by Women

“People skills are useless with cats, because cats are immune to training, and do whatever they decide in any situation... And most importantly they aren’t human.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out - a fence there could serve no purpose. Their work was pointless. Years later, while I was waiting for a boat to take me across the river, I watched two Vietnamese women methodically hitting a discarded truck tire with sticks. They did it for a good long while, and were still doing it when I crossed the river. They were part of the dream from which I recognized the Welches, my defeat-dream, my damnation-dream, with its solemn choreography of earnest useless acts.”
― Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life

“No one really belongs; at least not in this world. If there were a heaven, maybe there, but, even if there were, in it would be the souls who could bear witness to the undeniable cruelty of life, the poverty of the unwanted.”
― Kenneth Eade, Unwanted

“It's one thing to be powerless and another to be useless.”
― Adam Silvera, Infinity Son

“Woe to him who becomes useless to human progress!”
― Ernest Renan, L'Islam et la science

“Why is art beautiful? Because it’s useless. Why is life ugly? Because it’s all aims, objectives and intentions.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“All the holy scriptures are useless without people having faith into their hearts.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“While knowledge without integrity is dangerous, integrity without knowledge is weak and useless.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“It poverty that makes some men think all a woman want is money.”
― Gugu Mofokeng

“The usefulness of a thing is dependent not on what it is, or how it can be used, but on the needs or wants of the user.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It is possible for God to live in a man and for the man to still be useless.”
― Sunday Adelaja, Create Your Own Net Worth

“A man though carrying God may be of no worth to himself, to his family, to his nation and to the people around him.”
― Sunday Adelaja, Create Your Own Net Worth

“It is unpardonable for you to leave this world without recording some greatness in your account.”
― Sunday Adelaja, How To Overcome The Fear Of Death

“If you leave this world without solving the problems for which you were born, then you are a failure.”
― Sunday Adelaja, How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?

“You are useless to GOD as you make a practice of sin, earthliness, and selfishness but when you truly surrender to GOD along the narrow way and turn from your sin earthliness and selfishness begin to fade away.”
― John M Sheehan, Purgatory; A place of pruning Book 1: Shaylee Escapes Hell

“Useful information badly written is way more valuable than useless information well written.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The things useless are the things most useful under different circumstances (to give one example: a little stone lazy by a stream, which becomes important when you happen to hear its sermon), he will see that the aspect of uselessness in poetry is to be doubly valued since its usefulness is always born from it like the day out of the bosom of night.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“When one knows that the things useless are the things most useful under different circumstances (to give one example: a little stone lazy by a stream, which becomes important when you happen to hear its sermon), he will see that the aspect of uselessness in poetry is to be doubly valued since its usefulness is always born from it like the day out of the bosom of night”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“Nothing reduces useless negativity like dropping DEAD WEIGHT!”
― Carlos Wallace, Life is not Complicated, You Are

“The courage of hindsight and imagination may be the boldest, but it is also the most useless.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Everything has a reason to exist. Even you the person asking this question. 'I'm useless' is the answer you give yourself.”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“Life, according to Tarde, is the search for the impossible by way of the useless, which is what Omar Khayyám would have said, if he had said it.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“To write is to lose myself, yes, but everyone loses himself, because everything gets lost. I, however, lose myself without any joy - not like the river flowing into the sea for which it was secretly born, but like the puddle left on the beach by the high tide, its stranded water never returning to the ocean but merely sinking into the sand.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The role of useless ideas is to help us see the useful ones.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov