Life has obliged him to remember so much useful knowledge that he has lost not only his history but his whole original cargo of useless knowledge history languages literatures the higher mathematics or what you will - are all gone.

Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that because useful knowledge should be remembered any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too.

The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal society can not exist unless it goes on.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance therefore not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

One is to ensure that the war fighters and the intelligence analysts get the information that they need when they need it in a format that's useful to them.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

To those who have chosen the profession of medicine a knowledge of chemistry and of some branches of natural history and indeed of several other departments of science affords useful assistance.

I don't seem to be able to learn from experience or anything useful. History doesn't help me. Precedents don't inform my experience.

We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.