A Quote by Umberto Eco

The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.

Umberto Eco

Quote Topics

Away Instruments Only Thrown Truths Useful

Quote Author

Umberto Eco
Italian - Novelist
January 5, 1932 - February 19, 2016

Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law.

Francis Schaeffer

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.

Charles Caleb Colton

A party is a political tool. If it's no longer useful, it should be crumpled up and thrown away.

Shintaro Ishihara

There are several kinds of truths, and it is customary to place in the first order mathematical truths, which are, however, only truths of definition. These definitions rest upon simple, but abstract, suppositions, and all truths in this category are only constructed, but abstract, consequences of these definitions ... Physical truths, to the contrary, are in no way arbitrary, and do not depend on us.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

There are truths, that are beyond us, transcendent truths, about beauty, truth, honor, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen - they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths.

J. R. R. Tolkien

There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away.

Will Shetterly

The instruments of darkness tell us truths.

William Shakespeare

Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

Alan Watts

Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.

Lord Chesterfield

At that time, 73 and 74, I became aware that there were a number of us making instruments. Max Eastley was a good friend and he was making instruments, Paul Burwell and I were making instruments, Evan Parker was making instruments, and we knew Hugh Davies, who was a real pioneer of these amplified instruments.

David Toop

Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths. Governments specialize in small and intermediate truths. They have to be instructed by their people in great truths.

Norman Cousins

The only truths we can point to are the ever-changing truths of our own experience.

Peter Weiss

I have no faith at all in believers, because they are so far from the truths! Have respect only to those who are close to the truths!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Not only are we not using any programmed loops or computers onstage, we're also improvising with our instruments. We're playing our instruments probably more so than most people that I see play their instruments. I think we all sort of strive for that - we all want magical things to happen onstage. We don't say "mistakes" in this band, we call them "highlights."