Important But Useless Information Quotes

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous. ~ Thomas Merton

Whatever Elly does - is useless, but for him it's important to do it. (regarding Elly Kleinman - Paul's grandfather) ~ Paul Kleinman

Don't try to leave for there's so very much to do, and you still have over eight hundred years to go on the first job.' 'But why do only unimportant things?' 'Think of all the trouble it saves. If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing. ~ Norton Juster

Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. ~ Joe Queenan

The forced influence of advertising has given us completely useless TV. You don't want that on the Net. But most on-line information providers need to attract advertising - which slows download times and clutters the screen with windows. ~ Robert Cailliau

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one's life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.
[Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking (The Creativity Post, December 6, 2011)] ~ Michael Michalko

But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them.
"Think of all the trouble it saves," the man explained, and his face looked as if he'd be grinning an evil grin
if he could grin at all. "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren't for that dreadful magic staff, you'd never know how much time you were wasting. ~ Norton Juster

Dear Daniel,
How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"?
Lily
Charlotte, NC

Dear Lily,
The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this.

And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." ~ Daniel Handler

Wade sighed. "I'll never understand why women wear bras to start with. They look uncomfortable as hell."
"They're not that bad."
"Turn around so I can fasten the damn thing for you."
She refused to let go. Suddenly it seemed important to do this one small task alone. "I can do it, Wade. I need to get used to doing things with this cast."
He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her struggle. "Is it so hard to ask for help from me, Gracie?"
She tried the two small hooks once more, but failed to get them both attached. "No, it's just that I'm not used to people offering, I guess."
He moved around her and helped fasten the contrary hook. When she turned to tell him thanks, he placed his finger over her lips and murmured, "If you thank me, I'll spank you. Knowing I haven't been able to catch your stalker, that he broke into your home and trashed your things and I wasn't able to stop him makes me feel as fucking useless as tits on a bull. The least I can do is fasten your bra. ~ Anne Rainey

What's that?" he asked.
"A balance sheet," I said. "To keep track of your payments."
He asked whether Pop had written it or me. When I answered truthfully, he handed the paper back like the useless thing it was. "Thank you," he said. "I won't be needing this."
Which took me by surprise and set me stammering how it was proof he was making his payments, and how he should take it because it was the right and proper way to do business.
"The rules aren't the same for me as they are for you," Joseph replied, shaking his head. "Don't you know that, Will?" Which put my nose out of joint so bad that I told him he was being rude, and that I was only trying to do him a favor at no small risk to myself.
Joseph's face went blank as the cloudless sky overhead. He eyed the receipt. Said, "Thank you, Mr. William. But I can't accept." And got back on his bicycle.
"That all you got to say?" I near shouted, frustrated at how easily he'd turned my good intentions into a fool's errand. And the quickest flash of hate you ever did see danced across the dark of his eyes.
I stood there, feeling awkward and a fool. Joseph put one foot on a pedal and said, real quiet, "If you'll excuse me, I've a funeral to attend."
Only then did I notice the band of mourning black around his upper arm.
"Who died?" I asked stupidly.
Joseph's eyes were flat. "Nobody important, Mr. William. Only a Negro boy like me. ~ Jennifer Latham

The most important thing however is the money. What use would it be to us, to have a a mighty stadium but a useless team, because we couldn't afford anything better? ~ Franz Beckenbauer

I had to cast out a good many lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the fish I did not for a moment suppose it was my fish. But I listened to what I was told out of a constitutional liking for useless information, and I found myself in possession of a very curious story, though, as I imagined, not the story I was looking for. ~ Arthur Machen

They [Otaku] despise physical contact and love media, technical communication, and the realm of reproduction and simulation in general. They are enthusiastic collectors and manipulators of useless artifacts and information. They are an underground, but they are not opposed to the system. They change, manipulate, and subvert ready-made products, but at the same time they are the apotheosis of consumerism and an ideal workforce for contemporary Japanese capitalism. They are the children of the media. ~ Volker Grassmuck

Ritsu: "I'm a complete failure. At everything I do, I'm absolutely worthless. I know this, and yet I continue to burden the human race with my presence. Every day I rob the world of valuable air by breathing. I'm a thief, and I hate myself for it. I don't deserve to exist. But even though I know it's the right thing to do, I'm such a useless coward. I don't even have the courage to jump!"
Tohru: "No, don't! Don't jump! It's okay that you don't have that kind of courage. The important thing is you're alive. And life hurts sometimes and sometimes it can be hard, but it won't always be that way. There's gotta be a reason for you to live. ~ Natsuki Takaya

But of course, the most important trick in beating the S-chool game is to know that it is a game, as abstract, unreal, and useless as chess, and that beating it is a trick. The game is important only because (as with chess) there are rewards for playing it well, and (unlike chess) penalties for playing it badly. This is something that almost all successful students know, almost by instinct. I sensed it at ten, and knew it thoroughly and consciously by the time I was thirteen. ~ John Holt

That night Koch... tacked Chalmers down at a cocktail party for the conferencees and chastised him for his speech. It is precisely because philisophical approaches to consciousness have all failed that scientists must focue on the brain, Koch declared in his rapid-fire German-accented voice, his rubberneckers gathered. Chalmers's information-based theory of consciousness, Koch continued, liek all philosophical ideas, was untestable and therefore useless. "Why don't you just say that when you have a brain the Holy Ghost comes down and makes you conscious!" Koch exlaimed. Such a theory was unnecissarily complicated, Chalmers responded drily, and it would not accord with his own subjective experience. "But how do I know that your subjective experience is the same as mine?" Koch sputtered. "How do I even know you're conscious? ~ John Horgan

We learn that many great thinkers were convinced that the Bible contained the Ancient Mysteries, but not in the literal words - that the words on the pages were codes, and that the Bible is comprised of heavy-handed and useless story covering up something much more important and interesting. I get the feeling that [Dan Brown] is trying to tell me something, but I am not biting, reader. ~ Maureen Johnson

Why is it that there was always a unit on history, math, science and god knows what other useless, totally forgettable information you taught those seventh graders year after year, but never any unit on death? No exercises, no workbooks, no final exams on the only subject that matters? ~ Nicole Krauss

The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security - national, individual, spiritual - wasn't a bad joke being played on them by a bored and capricious destiny. To be told that there was no connection between then and now, that they didn't need to wear a black armband or have a bad conscience about their power and their wealth and everybody else's lack of it; to feel rotten that no-one could or would explain why the wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many. We kindly pretended that it was about buying and selling chairs, about them asking questions about price and heritage, and us replying in like manner.

But it wasn't about price and heritage, it wasn't about that at all.

The tourists had insistent, unspoken questions and we just had to answer as best we could, with forged furniture. They were really asking, 'Are we safe?' and we were really replying, 'No, but a barricade of useless goods may help block the view.' And because hubris is not just an ancient Greek word but a human sense so deep-seated we might better regard it as an unerring instinct, they were also wanting to know, 'If it is our fault, then will we suffer?' and we were really replying, 'Yes, and slowly, but a fake chair may make us both feel better about it. ~ Richard Flanagan

You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction
they're all just fuel. ~ Haruki Murakami

Quantum entanglement allows you to send information faster than light, which upset Einstein. But Einstein has the last laugh. The information you send on quantum entanglement is random, useless information. So Einsein still has the last laugh. ~ Michio Kaku

Don't be an idiot - Idiots repeat as for my opinion to repeat is a useless process better check out one book it's not possible to learn everything and use everything it's insane. But you can do one thing, focus on the important stuff which have impressed you, use them - delete the book, make an essay and think on this few days you can think and check out some other books, videos and so on and so on... If you didn't get it, okay then listen again until you get it... It's imporntant to don't repeat and to understand it! ~ Deyth Banger

[On the British Museum:] It was manifestly impossible to read all the books in that huge, gloomy structure, but I made a good try and accumulated a fund of useless information guaranteed to cast a pall over any dinner table. ~ Elsa Maxwell

Most of the time I paid it no mind. I kept to myself and everyone in my town of Henryetta liked it that way. While my grandma saw helpful information such as droughts and locust infestations, I was cursed with seeing useless and mundane things like Mrs. White's toilet overflow or the ear infection in Jenny Baxter's baby. None of that would be so bad if I kept what I saw to myself, but my visions didn't work that way. Without any volition of my own, whatever I saw just blurted right out of my mouth. Most of the people who knew me thought I was a snoop or a gossip, the only rational explanation to reason away my knowledge. But Momma had another opinion. She declared me demon-possessed. ~ Denise Grover Swank

I stopped humans to talk about the weather. I wasn't the chatty type, but their surprise at my noticing them seemed odd. I always noticed -- the way they moved, the way they smelled -- I just didn't engage in useless conversation. Even now. This convo about the weather was important because the weather was not acting like itself. ~ Faith Hunter

It is not that the average is never useful. Averages have their place. If you're comparing two different groups of people, like comparing the performance of Chilean pilots with French pilots - as opposed to comparing two individuals from each of those groups - then the average can be useful. But the moment you need a pilot, or a plumber, or a doctor, the moment you need to teach this child or decide whether to hire that employee - the moment you need to make a decision about any individual - the average is useless. Worse than useless, in fact, because it creates the illusion of knowledge, when in fact the average disguises what is most important about an individual. ~ Todd Rose

Poetry isn't important in today's culture, but the fact that it's useless and people still continue to write it makes it important, in that weird paradoxical, poetic sort of way. ~ Aaron Mc Collough

The supreme God that we serve has the final say in all matters. There is no higher law and there is no greater power. Hebrews 6:13 states, "He could swear by none greater, so He swore by himself." Since God has a supreme status, When the ideas of man conflict with the laws of God, the ideas of man are doomed. When the concepts of false teachings purvey useless information, they may flounder and flop around on the canvass of human curiosity for some time, but when they rear their ugly head against God's law they are on a collision course with extinction. ~ From the book Supremacy Clause by Pastor Myers ~ David Myers

It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose. ~ Ian McKellen

But there's so much to learn," he said, with a thoughtful frown.
"Yes, that's true," admitted Rhyme; "but it's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters."
"That's just what I mean," explained Milo as Tock and the exhausted bug drifted quietly off to sleep. "Many of the things I'm supposed to know seem so useless that I can't see the purpose in learning them at all."
"You may not see it now," said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, "but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. ~ Norton Juster

The brain may die, but my compulsion for useless trivia lives on. ~ Molly Harper

Losing excess fats through exercise is important, but losing useless friends is urgent. Treat urgent things first! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

The importance of the Beats is twofold: first, they act out a critique of the organized system that everybody in some sense agrees with. But second-and more important in the long run-they are a kind of major pilot study of the use of leisure in an economy of abundance. ~ Paul Goodman