Practicality Quotes

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. ~ Irvin Anthony

The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality. ~ Theodor Adorno

Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole. ~ James S.A. Corey

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. ~ Dalal Gabara

I'll play a character who is getting married to a woman to avoid the draft. Ultimately they fall in love with each other, but at first it's only out of practicality. ~ Elijah Wood

Described in this way, utilitarianism has little in common with the prosaic, visionless notion of the 'merely utilitarian,' in the sense of a narrowly or mundanely functional or efficient option. No such limited horizon confined the thought and character of the great English-language utilitarian philosophers, whose influence ran its course from the period just before the French Revolution through the Victorian era. Happiness, for them, was more of a cosmic calling, the path to world progress, and whatever was deemed 'utilitarian' had to be useful for that larger and inspiring end, the global minimization of pointless suffering and the global maximization of positive well-being or happiness. It invokes, ultimately, the point of view of universal benevolence. And it is more accurately charged with being too demanding ethically than with being too accommodating of narrow practicality, material interests, self-interestedness, and the like. ~ Bart Schultz

...on a number of occasions this book has made reference to magic, and each time you've shaken your head, muttering such criticisms as "What does he mean by 'magic' anyhow? It's embarrassing to find a grown man talking about magic in such a manner. How can anybody take him seriously?" Or, as slightly more gracious readers have objected, "Doesn't the author realize that one can't write about magic? One can create it but not discuss it. It's much too gossamer for that. Magic can be neither described nor defined. Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to slice roast beef."

To which the author now replies, Sorry, freeloaders, you're clever but you're not quite correct. Magic isn't the fuzzy, fragile, abstract and ephemeral quality you think it is. In fact, magic is distinguished from mysticism by its very concreteness and practicality. Whereas mysticism is manifest only in spiritual essence, in the transcendental state, magic demands a steady naturalistic base. Mysticism reveals the ethereal in the tangible. Magic makes something permanent out of the transitory, coaxes drama from the colloquial. ~ Tom Robbins

If you believe in learning, you believe in inquiry.
If you believe in education, you believe in literacy.
If you believe in knowledge, you believe in curiosity.
If you believe in understanding, you believe in practicality.
If you believe in reason, you believe in sanity.
If you believe in wisdom, you believe in sagacity.
If you believe in dreams, you believe in fantasy.
If you believe in diligence, you believe in prosperity.
If you believe in exellence, you believe in mastery.
If you believe in brilliance, you believe in longevity.
If you believe in wealth, you believe in luxury.
If you believe in justice, you believe in liberty.
If you believe in tolerance, you believe in equality.
If you believe in respect, you believe in courtesy.
If you believe in manners, you believe in civility.
If you believe in honor, you believe in decency.
If you believe in culture, you believe in history.
If you believe in tradition, you believe in stability.
If you believe in order, you believe in harmony.
If you believe in time, you believe in eternity.
If you believe in fate, you believe in destiny.
If you believe in life, you believe in reality.
If you believe in permanance, you believe in infinity.
If you believe in virtue, you believe in morality.
If you believe in peace, you believe in humanity.
If you believe in love, you believe in divinity.
If you believe in Go ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

She didn't believe there was anything like perfect, fairytale love. Most people were flawed and prone to mistakes. She thought herself a romantic but treated love with the same practicality she did most things. They'd had fall-outs and misunderstandings but she'd never been free to be herself like she was with Edward. She couldn't imagine being with another person after him. ~ Myne Whitman

Practicality continues to be a challenge for me - it's at odds with being an artist. I actually had a career on stage in New York - not a brilliant career or I'd still be doing it - but I got enough work to keep my agent and my union health insurance. ~ Debra Dean

Stella McCartney, not only is she a designer, she is a mother of four, and she lives for practicality. She understands what a woman needs to wear to work and what a woman needs to wear when it's time to go out and put on the Ritz! ~ Andre Leon Talley

Creative ideas make people uncomfortable. It turns out that, at least subconsciously, we can have a hard time recognizing ideas as both new and useful at the same time. This cognitive dissonance between creativity and practicality may actually create a subtle bias against creative ideas. ~ David Burkus

In choosing to be a Psychology major, I decided to learn for the joy of learning for the first time in my life. I'd always been fascinated by human nature. What makes us act the way we do? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over? But I guess my interest is purely theoretical. I'm a Psychology major
who has no desire to work with people. This was poor planning on my part, I suppose. My parents definitely think so. But choosing passion over practicality seemed so honorable when I was a first-year student and graduation seemed so very, very far away . . .

But now, a semester away from unemployment, I realize how much better off those Engineering students really are. Sure, they're boring conversationalists that make you want to kill yourself because every story begins, "The other day? In the lab?" But people become a whole helluva lot more interesting when they're pulling down six figures, don't they? If I'm going to drag my friends out to my cardboard box, the pressure's on to provide some pretty goddamned sparkling conversation once they get there. And even with all my noble knowledge for knowledge's sake, I'm not sure I can. ~ Megan McCafferty

I've always mistrusted that sort o' learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. ~ George Eliot

If we had always thought from a so-called practical angle – we would've never had anything new in this world. We would've hidden under the security of practicality and taken no risk, we would have never discovered heart transplantation as a new possibility, we would've never thought curing cancer patients a possibility, and we would've never discovered a new galaxy in the universe. Taking the cover of practicality is more or less like hiding under the cover of security for fear of failure. ~ Ravindra Shukla

I have trouble imagining what I could do that's beyond the practicality of what I can do. ~ David Byrne

You must try to combine in your life immense idealism with immense practicality. You must be prepared to go into deep meditation now, and the next moment you must be ready to go and cultivate the fields. You must be prepared to explain the intricacies of the scriptures now, and the next moment to go and sell the produce of the fields in the market ... The true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman's heart. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The way she saw it, there were some matters of style that simply needed to take precedence over practicality, and right at the top had to be the rule that said one did not wear black dress pants and pink Uggs to a meeting with the FBI. Not anyone who didn't want to look like a jackass, anyway. ~ Julie James

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from. ~ David Whyte

Practicality rules our perceptions.
To survive, our tiny brains need to tame the blizzard of
delusion generator
information that threatens to overwhelm us. Our perceptions
are wondrously flexible, transforming our worldview
automatically and continuously until we find safe harbor in
a comfortable delusion. ~ Scott Adams

My things really are written with an appalling lack of practicality! ~ Johannes Brahms

Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced from all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting, and desire for good exists, though it's in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands. Anyway, there's no practicality. Practicality goes well shod. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One who sees communication in wisdom should also see creativity and practicality in intelligence. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

I repeatedly refuse to make any practical decisions. I get a feeling of nausea about practicality. ~ Francesco Clemente

I have known many human beings with a full soul to their name who do not have half so much compassion or practicality as you. ~ Olivia Atwater

take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful. ~ Plutarch

I'm telling you, as a doctor who spent about half of his time in the office taking care of our seniors on Medicare, it is a program that intentions to work are much better than the way it's working today in terms of practicality. ~ John Barrasso

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

Every movie goes through that U-shape where you start with 'Oh that's a great idea. I love it.' Everything's possible and then you face 'Oh, we can't do that, and that's impossible, and that's a bad choice.' You go the practicality of it. And then you come up to 'Great.' But that middle part is when you don't have results yet. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson

The Research Excellence Framework is starting to ask what sorts of curiosity our culture can afford, and that scares me even more than the demise of the silly survey because it strikes at the heart of what it means to be civilised, to have instincts other than survival. If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn't have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap. ~ David Mitchell

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

A man must earn his daily bread by some means some-where, and if his bread fails to nourish his soul, at least his body will be nourished while his soul suffers. ~ Jose Saramago

To be true to an idea, you have to value expression over perfection, vitality over finish, movement over the static, and form over function. Put your personality before practicality and your individuality into everything. Ironing out impracticalities irons out what is unique. ~ Rod Judkins

Practical! On Wednesday afternoons I could be practically anything. What's up? ~ Kit Williams

A business woman needs a successful mix of design and practicality. ~ Donatella Versace

I must study war and politics so that my children shall be free to study commerce, agriculture and other practicalities, so that their children can study painting, poetry and other fine things. ~ John Adams

Live your life as a practical example to others ~ Sunday Adelaja

Coming from a business family, she shied away from abstractions. ~ Stephen L. Carter

Technology isn't what makes us "post-human" or "transhuman," as some writers and scholars have recently suggested. It's what makes us human. Technology is in our nature. Through our tools we give our dreams form. We bring them into the world. The practicality of technology may distinguish it from art, but both spring from a similar, distinctly human yearning. ~ Nicholas Carr

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

Practicality is overrated. ~ Nicola Yoon

I was six years old when my mother died. For a long time afterward, the sweet and earthy magnolia scent of her would permeate my dreams. No matter what I was dreaming about, good or frightening, my mother's smell would waft through my nighttime adventures, infusing them with her unseen presence, reassuring me even through their darkest moments. I never told anyone about this. I felt that, somehow, my mother had found a way to communicate with me from heaven even though I knew from the down-to-earth practicality of my Baptist Sunday School lessons that it was likely impossible. Still, I have heard it said more than once that with God, nothing is impossible. Is it so hard to imagine that He, in His infinite compassion, might have, for a moment in time, comforted a scared little girl with her mother's familiar scent? ~ Earlene Fowler

Prep clothes are sensible: rain clothes keep you dry; winter clothes keep you warm; collars are buttoned down so they don't flap in your face when you're playing polo. Layering is a natural response to varying weather conditions. ~ Lisa Birnbach

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

If practicality and morality are polarized and you must choose, you must do what you think is right, rather than what you think is practical. ~ Philip K. Dick

Of course, if one does not fully trust the promise of God's Kingdom, he will have a hard time taking risks and making sacrifices in this life. A gospel centered around the temporal self - fleeting happiness, earthly success, vain prosperity, things such as these - is the primary ambition of the half-hearted Christian; the one who somewhat believes he is subject to an eternal death; the one who just might believe in men before God, who morbidly fears seeming less than anyone else. The man of this school feels deeply that he has but one life to live, that this must be his only chance, and therefore must have it all in his favor - from glory to comfort to riches - and have it right this instant. He is but hinting that he is overcome because he insists always that he must overcome, that his judgment comes now and by the persons around him. The point is, however, in this sense, that by grace the Christian is indeed free, but only for as long as he wants to be free - the practicality of true freedom: that of God which offers not so much freedom to be like the world as it does freedom from the pressures of having to be like the world. For Divine Law is based solely on love and freedom; whereas secular law, pressure and imitation. ~ Criss Jami

You can't stop the storm from coming so you better run for cover. ~ Marty Rubin

At some point, practicality requires that you reach out to people in the business. You have to take care of business if you value your work. ~ Sefi Atta

Should my decease happen in Newcastle I desire that my remains may be laid near the south porch in Saint Andrews churchyard near the remains of my dear wife, and that the least possible expence may be laid out on my interment. Charles Avison ~ Charles Avison

Common sense is not so common. ~ Voltaire

Spirituality is connected with practicality. ~ Choa Kok Sui

Once an idea is learned, once it settles in, it becomes comfortable and hard to discard, like an old hat. And trust me, I have many old hats. Some I haven't worn in years, but I still keep them. Emotion gets in the way of practicality. By virtue of time spent, even ideas become old friends, and if you can't bear to lose an old hat that you never wear, imagine how much harder it is to abandon ideas you grew up with. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

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. ~ Oscar Wilde

A little later, as we talked of the Maniot dirges by which I was obsessed, I was surprised to hear this bloodshot-eyed and barefoot old man say: "Yes, it's the old iambic tetrameter acalectic." It was the equivalent of a Cornish fisherman pointing out the difference, in practicality incomprehensible dialect, between the Petrachian and the Spenserian sonnet. It was quite correct. Where on earth had he learnt it? His last bit of information was that, in the old days (that wonderful cupboard!) the Arabs used to come to this coast to dive for the murex. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

The hour has arrived to abandon theories and go directly to what is practical. ~ Samael Aun Weor

I know that life is busy and hard and that there's crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don't. Please don't. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making your art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable. ~ Shauna Niequist

I have coded my colors! I have the code of my creativity. My creation has inception that perception alone has progression in anticipation. I yield my creation. I create the animation that perfections alone in dominations has inventions of
my creation. I give life practicality! My practical creativity I give life to all. The tactical creature all invent the artifact's venture as nature doeth creature with practice. In mother nature I venture with the creature to reveal the inventor of practice in all nature. the latest creativity is not the final of novelty, be passionately creative and creatively communicative. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

So at most companies, an unspoken compact emerges: It's okay to be ambitious, but if you play too rough, your peers will unite against you. On the other hand, if you focus on boosting your own department, rather than undermining your rival, you'll probably get taken care of over time. ~ Charles Duhigg

If you find yourself pulled beyond all practicality toward doing something
writing poetry, building a business, restoring old cars, planting a secret garden; if at four in the morning the right word comes to you, the perfect flower to plant in that particular spot
you are playing your invisible instrument. ~ Joan Oliver Goldsmith

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

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

And which new designers are most likely to have the right habits? The ones who have formed the right truces and found the right alliances. Truces are so important that new fashion labels usually succeed only if they are headed by people who left other fashion companies on good terms. ~ Charles Duhigg

The modern world is full of pundits, poseurs, and mall ninjas. Preparedness is not just about accumulating a pile of stuff. You need practical skills, and those come only with study, training, and practice. Any armchair survivalist with a credit card can buy a set of stylish camouflage fatigues and an "M4gery" carbine encrusted with umpteen accessories. Style points should not be mistaken for genuine skills and practicality. ~ James Wesley, Rawles

I believe I have stumbled on at least one possibility: if you are compelled to tell others virtually everything you learn from God, you might be a teacher! My friends who have other spiritual gifts can learn something from God without feeling the overwhelming need to share it with everyone they know. Not me! The second I receive the least spiritual insight or learn anything at all about the practicality of Scripture slapped on the hot pavement of real life, I want to make the world's biggest conference call. ~ Beth Moore

She cast a glance at Diana. "This all probably seems really silly to you, right?"
Diana wasn't entirely sure what ritual she'd just witnessed, so she said, "The dresses? Attire is important. It sends a message to everyone you meet."
"Yes!" Nim declared, fists held aloft in victory.
"Nooo," wailed Alia, burying her head in the pillows. Now there's two of you."
"You said as much in the drugstore," Diana pointed out, leaning against the desk.
"But there's a difference between looking respectable and saying, Look at me!"
"Perhaps you should think of it as armor," suggested Diana. "When a warrior readies herself for battle, she doesn't just worry about practicality."
Alia rolled onto her side and propped her head on one hand "I'd think not dying would be the big concern."
"Yes, but the goal is also to intimidate. A general wears her rank. The same is true of athletes when they compete. ~ Leigh Bardugo

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. ~ Hilary Mantel

You know well as I do that when we are talking on the human plane, questions of justice only arise when there is equal power to compel: in terms of practicality the dominant exact what they can and the weak concede what they must. (Said by Athenian envoy to the Melians) ~ Thucydides

You've always been so agreeable," he remarked with something of a rueful tone. "I don't understand why you haven't told me to sod off."
She couldn't help but chuckle. "Other than the simple fact that I would never say those words to anyone?"
He glanced at her, eyes sparkling. "Even so. I am humbled by your easy acceptance of me. I behaved abominably toward you years ago and yet you act as though nothing ever happened."
Rose twirled the handle of her parasol. "We cannot change the past, Mr. Maxwell. I reckon I would be a much happier woman if I could. No, all we can do is go forward."
His brow furrowed. "Does that mean you forgive me?"
She laughed again. "Yes, it does. I understand why you had to abandon your courtship after my father's misfortune and I do not blame you for it."
Kellan shook his head. "You are too good."
"No," she insisted with a sharp shake of her head. "I am not." Lord, if he but knew just how not good she could be! Of course, if they were married he'd realize that on their wedding night, wouldn't he? Or could she deceive him and make him believe she was a virgin? It wouldn't be right, but she would do it to spare his feelings, and keep her secrets. "But, I can be practical when the situation calls for it."
"Is that why you're here with me now?" he asked with amusement. "Practicality?"
Rose's smile was coy in reply. "Perhaps. Or perhaps I like giving the gossips something to natter about."
Kellan laughed alou ~ Kathryn Smith

In that moment, Iseult knew what she had to do. Logic didn't matter, nor Threadwitch practicality, nor even the opposing halves of her heart.
What mattered was doing the right thing.
So Iseult made her choice, and she ran. ~ Susan Dennard

Look here we shall die! Bear this in mind always & then the spirit within will wake up. Only then will meanness vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigor in mind & body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The more you win a debate intellectually, the more you lose it practically. ~ Daya Kudari

I love the book. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the compactness of it, the shape, the size. I love the feel of paper. The sound it makes when I turn a page. I love the beauty of print on paper, the patterns, the shapes, the fonts. I am astonished by the versatility and practicality of The Book. It is so simple. It is so fit for its purpose. It may give me mere content, but no e-reader will ever give me that sort of added pleasure. ~ Susan Hill

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget. ~ G.K. Chesterton

But Nicholas had no room for practicality when there was fun to be had. There was no one as capable of taking a seemingly innocuous situation and turning it into a raving adventure.
Jane. What a boring, and obviously fake, name. This oughta be fun. ~ Sarah M. Cradit

Sometimes, the only obstacle in your success is your heart. You stop making sane decisions and become too emotional that you put on stake everything you've and left with nothing. ~ Himmilicious

The timid practicality that is the major message that our kids absorb today is alibied-and camouflaged, and soothed-with a hollow commercialized rebellion. ~ William Deresiewicz

[she] confessed her preference for trousers; every active woman likes low heels and sturdy materials. The significance of woman's attire is evident: it is decoration, and to be decorated means to be offered. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

There's no way you can shoot low-budget stuff on lots of locations. It's just a practicality thing because every time you move, it costs time and money. ~ Ben Wheatley

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

Her (Jane Austen) moral message is infused with ideological insistence on the merits of good conduct, good manners, sound reason, and marriage as an admirable social institution. She never scorns love, but balances it often . . . with a firm advocacy of . . . the qualities of self-knowledge, self-discipline, and practicality. ~ Andrew Sanders

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. ~ Wendell Berry

My practicality consists in this, in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall - that is my strength, my only strength. ~ Antonio Gramsci

And, while Jessica had faith enough in Providence, she preferred to seek help from more accessible sources. Her assistant was Phelps, the coachman. ~ Loretta Chase

...a mini-hearse. It had the practicality of a mini-van and the handy carrying capacity of a hearse combined. If you get annoyed with your kids at soccer practice, you can always kill them on the way home and take them directly to the cemetery. ~ David David Katzman

The shoes themselves were light green, with lowish heels (which were very important for comfort and walking; high heels were always a temptation, but, like all temptations, one paid for them later). ~ Alexander McCall Smith

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

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night. ~ Philip K. Dick

And when you start talking about the practicality of winning a race like that - you've got to remember we're not talking about winning 51 percent of the vote. We're talking about winning 36, 37, 38 percent of the vote. ~ Hamilton Jordan

I hope the average woman feels she needs practicality but with a little bit of fantasy. Otherwise, it's just not fashion. ~ Francisco Costa

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

Zealots are one-trick ponies. They love nothing so much as their own cause. Don't get in their way without expecting to be hurt. ~ Patricia Briggs

What is practicality but one moment betrayed for the next? - ~ R. Scott Bakker

I'm not a leather kind of Dom when it comes to practicality. He Smiled " I'm much more a demin kind of Dom." Shayla arched her brow at him. " A demin Dom huh?" he nodded . " Better then a sweating-my-ass-off Dom. ~ Tymber Dalton

Relationships that are merely based on practicality or utility will ultimately make us feel lonely. ~ Tatjana Ostojic

What we can imagine as plausible is a narrow band in the middle of a much broader spectrum of what is actually possible. [O]ur eyes are built to cope with a narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies. [W]e can't see the rays outside the narrow light band, but we can do calculations about them, and we can build instruments to detect them. In the same way, we know that the scales of size and time extend in both directions far outside the realm of what we can visualize. Our minds can't cope with the large distances that astronomy deals in or with the small distances that atomic physics deals in, but we can represent those distances in mathematical symbols. Our minds can't imagine a time span as short as a picosecond, but we can do calculations about picoseconds, and we can build computers that can complete calculations within picoseconds. Our minds can't imagine a timespan as long as a million years, let alone the thousands of millions of years that geologists routinely compute. Just as our eyes can see only that narrow band of electromagnetic frequencies that natural selection equipped our ancestors to see, so our brains are built to cope with narrow bands of sizes and times. Presumably there was no need for our ancestors to cope with sizes and times outside the narrow range of everyday practicality, so our brains never evolved the capacity to imagine them. It is probably significant that our own body size of a few feet is roughly in the middle of the range of sizes we can imag ~ Richard Dawkins

I love the practicality of a good car. You know what I mean? And when I say 'practicality,' I mean the complete practicality of a Ferrari 458, a wonderfully fantastic every day car. ~ Hunter Hayes

Comfort, simplicity, practicality - these are all American words. It is simplicity in fabric and way of cut. You cannot produce complicated clothes or spend ten days making a dress. Mine is all done by scaling measurements. I use the body as the land, as when building a house. ~ Zoran

They wish to build a new and better world, and I would be glad if they could succeed, and if I saw any hope of success I would join them. I ask for their plans, and they offer me vague dreams, in which as a man of affairs, I see no practicality. Is is like the the end of Das Rheingold: there is Valhalla, very beautiful, but only a rainbow bridge on which to get to it, and while the gods ma be able to walk on a rainbow, my investors and working people cannot. ~ Upton Sinclair

Even though I'm a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I'm looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

I don't think there's any one definition, but to do effective political work you have to have vision and practicality, and learn how to persuade people that what you feel needs to be done does need to be done. ~ Alan Cranston