Practical Uses Quotes

Those who incline to very strictly utilitarian views may perhaps feel that the peculiar powers of the Analytical Engine bear upon questions of abstract and speculative science rather than upon those involving everyday and ordinary human interests.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe.

There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

My favourite sites are all about web accessiblity, like Jakob Nielsen's site, but I'm afraid I've got quite utilitarian in my uses of the web. I buy things for friends and family in America on it. I find train times on it. I get a quick short article on a subject from it. I do not surf for fun much.

Industrial hemp is a safe substance with many practical commercial applications.

Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.

My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge.

Cooking, decorating, diet/self-help and gardening books are guilty pleasures and useful time fillers.