Definition of Utility

Utility

The quality or state of being useful; usefulness; production of good; profitableness to some valuable end; as, the utility of manure upon land; the utility of the sciences; the utility of medicines.

Adaptation to satisfy the desires or wants; intrinsic value. See Note under Value, 2.

Happiness; the greatest good, or happiness, of the greatest number, -- the foundation of utilitarianism.

Related Definitions:

Adaptation, As, Being, End, Foundation, Good, Happiness, Intrinsic, Land, Manure, Note, Number, Of, Or, Production, Quality, Satisfy, See, Some, State, The, To, Under, Upon, Useful, Usefulness, Utilitarianism, Utility, Valuable, Value

Utility Quotations

Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
Thomas A. Edison

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.
Karl Marx

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
Edmund Burke

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.
Benito Mussolini

The value and utility of any experiment are determined by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used, and thus in the case before us it cannot be immaterial what plants are subjected to experiment and in what manner such experiment is conducted.
Gregor Mendel

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
Marshall McLuhan

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
Ray Charles

Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.
Mortimer Adler

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.
Robert Browning

Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.
Friedrich Schiller

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.
Peter Singer

The fishes are also employed for the same purpose on any yard, which happens to be sprung or fractured. Thus their form, application, and utility are exactly like those of the splinters applied to a broken limb in surgery.
William Falconer

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three - and paradise is when you have none.
Doug Larson

Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought.
Herman Kahn

With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects - the building is there to be used, and times change.
Arne Jacobsen

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
Karl Jaspers

Nearly all of our existing power sources are generators which use a heat cycle. This includes our coal, oil, and gas fired utilities, our automobiles, trucks, and trains, and even our nuclear fission utility power plants.
Wilson Greatbatch

To remove this obstacle I repeat or refer to such knowledge as has come under my notice, my own previously expressed views, and also describe and exhibit my last experiments and explain their novelty and utility.
Lawrence Hargrave

The only reason of the institution of civil government; and the only rational ground of submission to it, is the common safety and utility.
Jonathan Mayhew

All I ever promised was that I was sure I could develop a new pharmacological agent which might answer a physiological question. Any utility would be implicit in that answer.
James W. Black

Finally, gentleman, from the considerations above mentioned, as I cannot consistently with my own honor, nor with utility to my country, considering the manner in which Business is transacted here, remain any longer in this chair, I now resign it.
Henry Laurens

The utility model of computing - computing resources delivered over the network in much the same way that electricity or telephone service reaches our homes and offices today - makes more sense than ever.
Scott McNealy

Whenever you play dance music, it serves a function. It becomes a utility; you have to worry about the tempos and what you're going to play for people. But when you're playing for listening, you're free.
Stan Kenton

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission.
Vannevar Bush

There's always the tendency to transform the Church into an ethical agency, and of measuring the Church by the yardstick of social and cultural utility.
Karl Lehmann

The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web.
Edwin Way Teale

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.
Laura Riding

I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman - whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals.
Lord Salisbury

Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures.
James McHenry

More Utility Quotations

Utility Translations

utility in Dutch is utility
utility in German is Dienstprogramm
utility in Latin is utilitas
utility in Portuguese is utilidade

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