Quotes & Sayings About Practical Thinking

There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something which is. — Aristotle.

But if you think about a practical implication of enriching your life and giving you a sense of being part of a larger cosmos and possibly being able to use this [gravitational waves] as a tool in the future maybe to listen not just to black holes colliding, but maybe listen to the big bang itself, those kind of applications may happen in the not too distant future. — Brian Greene

I don't like words coming out of a character's mouth that I adore because not only is he a little bit duplicitous but he's kind of practical in the way he thinks, and he thinks in terms of everyone's humanity and how quickly we can go against what we think we meant when we said it or what we believe or blah, blah, blah. — Robert Downey Jr.

There can be no doubt that the knowledge of logic is of considerable practical importance for everyone who desires to think and to infer correctly. — Alfred Tarski

My song are more about the practical message of not wearing ourselves out just to get rich and looking at what life is really about and enjoying each and every day as opposed to the opposite of that. About living your life in a freer sense and not being bound by what people think of you and looking forward to seeing the grander scheme of who God is, what He's done and what He's doing and what He'd going to do. — Peter Furler

Through the survival of their children, happy parents are able to think calmly, and with a very practical affection, of a world in which they are to have no direct share. — Walter Pater

The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this world is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be expressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists in wanting it still harder. — Gerald Stanley Lee

I can't help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use. — Claude Levi-Strauss

If they took the idea that they could escape poverty through education, I think it would make a more basic and long-lasting change in the way things happen. What we need are positive, realistic goals and the willingness to work. Hard work and practical goals. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think therapeutic spirituality has largely been a help in the modern world. So the fact that people can approach religion with practical needs. — Mitch Horowitz

On practical level I can't pick up the camera until I think I know what I want. I don't wander around. It's almost impossible for me to pick up a camera ... it's really hard. — Bill Henson

I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value. — Frederick Douglass

His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this-or more accurately, because of this-his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz-at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form. — Gunther Schuller

The cultural and political backgrounds of the two sides diverge in important aspects. The American approach to policy is pragmatic; China's is conceptual. America has never had a powerful threatening neighbor; China has never been without a powerful adversary on its borders. Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems. Americans seek an outcome responding to immediate circumstances; Chinese concentrate on evolutionary change. Americans outline an agenda of practical "deliverable" items; Chinese set out general principles and analyze where they will lead. Chinese thinking is shaped in part by Communism but embraces a traditionally Chinese way of thought to an increasing extent; neither is intuitively familiar to Americans. China — Henry Kissinger

She went to bed thinking more about another person than about herself. This goes to prove that even minor poetry may have its practical uses. — Dorothy L. Sayers

If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter. — Edmund Burke

I think what's important and extraordinarily practical about Buddhism, is that it offers very concrete methods for people to work with. — Pankaj Mishra

Jobs would complain about the new generation of kids, who seemed to him more materialistic and careerist than his own. "When I went to school,it was right after the sixties and before this general wave of practical purposefulness had set in,"he said. "Now students aren't even thinking in idealistic terms, or at least nowhere near as much. — Walter Isaacson

I think I have a reputation for being really serious. In interviews I use big words, but I'm just an emotional goofball. I play practical jokes all the time. — Darren Hayes

... it can hardly be over-exaggerated that speculative thinking is always drawn from the necessities of the time, that it is always practical, that it always shifts with the interests of the times, with the changes of social, economic, and political conditions, and finally, that it is vain to hope to find an eternal, fixed, and immutable system of philosophy, and still hope for progress. A fixed system is applicable only to a dead society. — Holly Estil Cunningham

Violence is sometimes a very practical solution but I don't think it is the ultimate solution. Owning a gun is not OK for me. But I could argue both sides. Why shouldn't people own them? I'm not fundamentally against citizens having access to a weapon but I think it has complications. It's probably not the wisest idea. Obviously, it has consequences. Personally, I do not own a weapon. — Keanu Reeves

Taking the time to polish a pun or fine-tune a practical joke is a way of saying, 'I'm thinking about you and I want to please you.' — Andrew Hudgins

Being a feminist in principle is easy compared to being a feminist in practice. For men and women, living each day in practical defiance of thousands of years of gender-based streaming is so much harder than walking in marches, running workshops, and writing blog posts. It means questioning everything you do, moment by moment, day by day. It means thinking differently and making dozens of conscious decisions every day that you might have made on auto-pilot before. It's hard. It's taxing. It's tiring. — Terry Fallis

I love when you take bizarre, non-human things and somehow make them human or accessible. I think that's why I like the practical effects. You can look at a creature and still see vulnerability or the character behind the creature. To get character behind CG creatures, that's so few and far between. — Kevin Munroe

I think, people are generally willing to imagine robots of all shapes, as humanoid robots are not practical. — Colin Angle

I'm practical, very data-driven, and process-oriented. If I look at a radar and see a giant green blob coming toward me, I'm thinking it's probably going to snow. — Kevin Jorgeson

Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace. Repentance is the most practical of all words and the most practical of all acts. It is a feet-on-the-ground-kind-of-word. It puts a person in touch with the reality that God creates. — Eugene H. Peterson

If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions. — Max Horkheimer

Theta clearing is about as practical and simple as repairing a shoe lace. It is nothing to do with hypnotism, voodooism, charalatanism, monkeyism or theosophy. Done, the thetan can do anything a stage magician can do in the way of moving objects around. But this isn't attained by holding one's breath or thinking right thoughts or voting Republican or any other superstitous or mystic practice. So for the reason I brought up, rule out, auditor, any mumbo jumbo or mysticism, spiritualism, or religion. — L. Ron Hubbard

Progress is always the product of fresh thinking, and much of it thinking which to practical men bears the semblance of dreaming. — Robert Gordon Sproul

Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and I have supported the oppressed. I think it is the person's right to live his freedom and it is her and his right to face the injustice imposed on each by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor's injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female. — Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

One thing I was thinking about is that they probably get their come-uppance about the same percentage that people in real life do. Basically, stealing for all practical purposes might as well be legal in New York. — Mike Judge

Victory over all the circumstances of life comes not by might, nor by power, but by a practical confidence in God and by allowing His Spirit to dwell in our hearts and control our actions and emotions. Learn in the days of ease and comfort, to think in terms of the prayer that follows, so that when the days of hardship come you will be fully prepared and equipped to meet them. — Eric Liddell

I think what the book did in addition to its practical uses, is it gave us a more attentive way of thinking. — Nicholas G. Carr

Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an' they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature. — Miles Franklin

I'm not cynical about love at all. I'm very practical. I think love takes up a lot of time. — Zooey Deschanel

What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the "life of the mind": thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding. — Gary Gutting

Echolalia is a mental disease which makes people immediately repeat things that well people around them say. But Billy didn't really have it. Rumfoord simply insisted, for his own comfort, that Billy had it. Rumfoord was thinking in a military manner: that an inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons, was suffering from a repulsive disease. — Kurt Vonnegut

I think the American people would be compassionate and practical. But we need to be talking about assimilation as well, something that is politically incorrect, I know, to say that people should learn English, should learn American exceptionalism, shouldn't come here to use our freedoms to undermine the freedoms we give to everybody. But there's nothing wrong with saying people who want to come here should want to be Americans. — Bobby Jindal

Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they've got to be harnessed and put to work to have value.
Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good-size forest. Yet from these bushels of seeds perhaps only one or two acorns will become a tree. The Squirrels destroy most of them, and the hard ground beneath the tree doesn't give the few remaining seeds much chance for a start. So it is with ideas. Very few bear fruit. Ideas are highly perishable. If we're not on guard, the squirrels (negative-thinking people) will destroy most of them. Ideas require special handling from the time they are born until they're transformed into practical ways for doing things better. — David J. Schwartz

There is so much uncertainty in cricket. One day you can get a hundred, the next day you can be dismissed for a zero. It makes you become practical about things. Teaches you to accept both success and failure. I think I have learnt a lot about life from cricket. — Mahela Jayawardene

Today we are in a situation in which the free movement of people can have enormous, monumental dimensions, and I don't think that any country in Western Europe or in America can any longer adopt the idea of totally free movement of people. I t would simply overwhelm their social facilities, their societies and create migratory dynamics on the scales of tens and tens of millions of people. That simply is not practical. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

I think people should consume their music any way they want. If it's more practical for them to listen to it on an iPod or something, that's fine by me. — Tristan Perich

Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'. — D.R. Khashaba

Buy with your heart, not your head. You can look at all the aspects that make a purchase practical, but that kind of thinking makes it an investment rather than a home. — Barbara Corcoran

This practical musicality was a comprehensive craft that involved thinking creatively and realizing it in sound. Music meant more than merely following instructions. The rote repetition of other people's music, including Bach's own, was used as example and was not the end itself. Students were encouraged to alter scores by adding notes, reducing the time value of notes, dropping notes, and changing or adding ornamentation, dynamics, and so on. One couldn't even get into Bach's teaching studio without first showing some rudimentary composing ability. — Scott Jarrett

It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. — C.S. Lewis

You can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs. It's not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brilliant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself into your listener's shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives what you say is even more real, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself. — Frank Luntz

If you give up on your principles I don't think that's being pragmatic ... Doing the wrong thing, even partially, isn't being practical ... if you have the right ideas and are forceful enough ... I think you can get the support you need. — Ron Paul

She believed in magic - the magic of places, the magic of people, the magic of coincidences, serendipity, and fortune. She enjoyed wandering through the world with the open mind and curiosity of a four-year-old child. In her world the mystical, mythical, and magical inhabited the same space and time as the ordinary and the practical. At Bethesda Terrace, she always felt close to a source of magic and creativity. It was as if she was tapping into the place where dragons, angels, gods, sorceresses, and demons came to life. — Jamie Le Fay

I also believe on a practical level, if you're taking time away from people, besides entertaining them, I think it's important that there's something to react to. — Nicolas Winding Refn

Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do. — William James

This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt for what he calls theorizing and what people who can do it call thinking. He will not wait for logic-that is, in the most exact sense, he will not listen to reason. It will therefore appear to him an idle and ineffectual proceeding to say that there is a reason for his present failure. Nevertheless, it may be well to say it, and to try and make it clear even to him. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The crazy thing is that practical solutions exist. We don't need to perpetuate these problems. I think our hardest job is to convey a sense of optimism, show how things can get better, and get people to invest in solutions. — Mark Powell

The goal of religious thinking is exactly the same as that of technological research
namely, practical action. Whenever man is truly concerned with obtaining concrete results, whenever he is hard pressed by reality, he abandons abstract speculation and reverts to a mode of response that becomes increasingly cautious and conservative as the forces he hopes to subdue, or at least to outrun, draw ever nearer. — Rene Girard

Indeed, the best practical reason to think that social media can help bring political change is that both dissidents and governments think they can. All over the world, activists believe in the utility of these tools and take steps to use them accordingly. And the governments they contend with think social media tools are powerful, too, and are willing to harass, arrest, exile, or kill users in response. — Clay Shirky

Enlightenment doesn't mean we were never wounded; it means we've found a way to evolve beyond our wounds. Enlightenment isn't idealistic; it's practical. What's idealistic is thinking we can live from our wounds, stay in our weakness, and ever transform the world. — Marianne Williamson

What we need in the world is manners ... I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical. — Eleanor Roosevelt

From a policy point of view, I don't think it's the right approach. I don't like the idea of having millions of people here for their entire life without being able to assimilate into America ... From a political point of view, we've got 55 Democrats sent and a 72 percent support for a path to citizenship. It's just not practical to think we'll be able to pass any bill in the United States Senate without a path to citizenship. — Lindsey Graham

I simply don't understand. I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor's woes can be. Practical troubles, griefs that can be assuaged if only there is enough to eat - these may be the most intense of all burning hells, horrible enough to blast to smithereens my ten misfortunes, but that is precisely what I don't understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves? — Osamu Dazai

Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

People think that you're supposed to marry your type well, I didn't marry my type. It's much more practical, and based in a day-to-day existence. So when you have that, and you're happy, and you love her, don't waste time. Because time - and I've learned that at this point in my life - time is my most precious commodity. Nothing is more precious than time. Because when it runs out that's it — Michael Ealy

I think that a lot of people who like training with guns are probably drawn to it not only for practical reasons, but also in that same restless quest for physical excellence that draws people to a martial arts dojo. — Jonathan Gottschall

The Republican Party is slightly ahead of Democrats when it come to devaluing any traditional understanding of foreign and national security policy. This is not surprising, because in all other matter of public policy, the GOP has strictly subordinated practical governance and problem solving to the emotional thematics of an endless political campaign. Whether the topic is Iran, Russia, or the proper level of defense spending at a time of high deficits, the GOP's stance has little to do with the merits of the situation; it is a projection of domestic political sloganeering. Taking a position on anything, whcther it be Ukraine or the efficacy of drones, boils down to a talking-point projection of focus groups-tested emotional themes: strength versus weakness, standing tall versus cutting and running, acting versus thinking." pp. 157-158 — Mike Lofgren

The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective. — Arnold J. Toynbee

The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position. — Alan Watts

Don't be 'practical' in politics. To be practical in that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines, and in the grooves that those who rob you would desire you to think. — James Connolly

A lot of great thinkers- like Einstein and Newton- come up with their best ideas when they're young because they don't yet think in the way that the establishment teaches them. Sometimes your lack of knowledge frees your mind to be creative and think in a different way. But you still have to be logical and figure out a practical way to get things done, even though you're looking at things differently. — George Lucas

Clothes should be practical. I like the concept of easy wear. I think [86-year-old] actress Emmanuelle Riva was extremely chic. She's super stylish. At the Cesars, she was wearing this beautiful red silk dress. I don't know whose it was. — Christophe Lemaitre

Well, it's not all Americans. But I understand those polls. But as a result of that, that's not going to change my position. I mean I don't think it is even practical and I don't think it's right. I mean just because somebody happens to be of the Muslim faith, doesn't make them a terrorist or make them a threat to America. And we've had relations with people all over the world of the Muslim faith. — John Kasich

I feel they should be discussed informally, truthfully, honestly, and in some cases, I think, without forgetting ... long-term vision. They should be practical. — Dalai Lama

Not only has this subject been long associated with the ideas of thinking men over the ages but its practical importance is attested to by the huge resources of men and material thrown into this type of work. — Robert Hofstadter

Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Why did math matter so much? Some reasons were practical: More and more jobs required familiarity with probability, statistics, and geometry. The other reason was that math was not just math. Math is a language of logic. It is a disciplined, organized way of thinking. There is a right answer; there are rules that must be followed. More than any other subject, math is rigor distilled. Mastering the language of logic helps to embed higher-order habits in kids' minds: the ability to reason, for example, to detect patterns and to make informed guesses. Those kinds of skills had rising value in a — Amanda Ripley

Whether I'm at home and researching online or whether I'm in the studio just drawing, I think I'm more interested in practical research - discussing with other people, trying to find the exact formula of putting things on the canvas, what is the consistency of paint that works best. — Camille Henrot

They say rubbers mainly for perverts. Dont know why. Think its very practical, actually. I mean, you spill anything on it and it just comes off. I suppose that could be why the perverts like it. — Charlotte Coleman

We have heard enough about being practical and efficient and prudent. We heard it preached through several decades that these things would save the world. I think that, with the salty taste of blood and sweat on our lips, we are learning that we had best talk once again about doing what is right. — Ellis Arnall

Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marketing, in the lifetimes of many generation; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of thee survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method. — J.L. Austin

Our guns go from safe to single shot to full auto, which is nice and linear and logical, but they (Russians) knew that would mean ninety-nine times in a hundred their guys would panic and ram the selector all the way home, and thereby fire off a whole magazine on the first hasty and unaimed shot. Which would leave them with an empty weapon right at the start of a firefight. Which is not helpful. So the AK selector goes safe, then full auto, then single shot. Not linear, not logical, but certainly practical. Single shot is a kind of default setting, and full auto is a deliberate choice. — Lee Child

We are beginning to see practical support. And this is a very significant sign of the movement towards a new era, a new age ... We see both in our country and elsewhere ... ghosts of the old thinking ... When we rid ourselves of their presence, we will be better able to move toward a new world order ... relying on the relevent mechanisms of the United Nations. — Mikhail Gorbachev

Should we have a leader or should we think for ourselves? Obviously the latter in principle. But-sometimes there lies a gulf between what is theoretically right and that which is practical. — Philip K. Dick

I don't think I am a traditional romantic who thinks about candlelight dinners and wonders if my husband is going to bring me flowers, though I'm delighted if he does. I'm more practical-minded. I find it incredibly romantic that my husband does the dishes. — Nora Roberts

That is how the atom is split. But what does it mean ? To us who think in terms of practical use it means - Nothing ! — Peter Ritchie Calder

Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself-these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The study of medicine consists on the one hand in storing up in the mind an enormous number of facts, which are simply memorized without any real knowledge of their foundations, and on the other hand in learning practical skills, which have to be acquired on the principle "Don't think, act!" Thus it is that, of all the professionals, the medical man has the least opportunity of developing the function of thinking. — C. G. Jung

In human relationships, those who do not love are rarely loved: those who will not be friends end up by having none. [p. 15 apud Thinking Strategically; on the "Intransigence strategy"] — David Schoenbrun

As Christians, we call ourselves people of faith, but how much practical faith do we really have? — Lisa Bedrick

We need to inject some old-fashioned American values and common-sense, practical thinking into our energy policy. — Michael Bloomberg

I think one of the most interesting things about automation isn't on the practical side. I think it's about creating magic and wonder and moments of splendor. — Genevieve Bell

In general, I think what Donald Trump's message is, is: I'm a very practical, execution-oriented entrepreneur who built a successful business. I've demonstrated an ability to go global with my business. I can get along with a lot of different people. There are certain problems in the United States right now born from faulty policy. So what is happening right now is the lower and middle class are being left behind by the globalization and by the global elite. I think that's basically his message, and Bernie Sanders' is similar. — Anthony Scaramucci

When you strip the bark off of Donald Trump, I think he's a very practical person. I think he's a very smart person. He's got an analytical mind. I think he's tapped into something. His son said he's the "blue collar billionaire." — Anthony Scaramucci

Meanwhile, the self can stand in the way of the Not-Self, interfering with the free flow of spiritual grace, this maintaining the self in a state of blindness, and also with the flow of animal grace, which leads to the impairment of natural functions and, in the long run, of the slower processes called structure. For each individual human being, the main practical problems are these: How can I prevent my ego from eclipsing the inner light, synteresis, scintilla animae, and so perpetuating the state of unregenerate illusion and blindness? And these practical problems remain unchallenged, even if we abandon the notion of an entelechy or physiological intelligencer, of an atman or pneuma and think, instead, in terms [of] systems... — Aldous Huxley

I try to do everything from thinking about big issues like how a building fits into the larger stream of architectural history to practical issues such as how it feels to navigate your way through its interior. — Paul Goldberger

My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, 'Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song ... ' — Al Jarreau

Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use- which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing- for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound. — Alan Watts

I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups. — Michael Horton

And Your modest ambition is to be a good housekeeper, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, Papa; but not only that. I was thinking about it afterward by myself, and I think housekeeping is a the practical part of it - and that's a good big part too - but What I really want to be is a lovely, good, womanly woman, like Aunt Alice, you know. — Carolyn Wells

Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands. — Camille Paglia

The thinking of the one, therefore, will be determined by eternal truth, the actions of the other more by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the absolute abstract soundness of his idea ... — Adolf Hitler

I avoid the carwash when I think it might rain anytime in the near future, which means I drive around the majority of the time in a pollen and bird poop covered car. This presents a stand off between Neat Freakshow and Practical Pennypincher, and Neat Freak usually triumphs. And then it rains. — Kristin Armstrong