Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion.
Very few societies on Earth developed science as we know it today. On the other hand, the number is not zero - the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Maya did, among others. Once invented, science proved so useful that it spread like mold on a petri dish.
And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.
Anybody who gives away money is mostly looking at things where they think they can make a difference. I'm trying to help people who helped me, educational institutions that helped me with scholarships, or organizations that were very useful to me in growing up.
Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority.
Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.
In schools giving students a full education, not to create great artists but about the right to have full expression and imagination and creativity, along with an acknowledgement that everybody learns differently. You try and you fail and you try again. All those skills are useful in the workplace, too.
The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature.
I take it for what it is, and sometimes the criticism is actually useful and constructive and actually informs what I do, but most of the time, it's sort of mindless, or they're receiving something on a different frequency than I was sending it.
In film, I find it very useful always to do some preparation before you start rehearsals or start shooting, because there's so much that's against you on a film set.
What they are doing is taking something that otherwise creates pollution and turning it into something useful.
The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community - these are the most vital things education must try to produce.
I wish we could do something useful with tobacco - like making fertilizer out of it.
If the government can manage to collect and release personal information in a secure and useful way, so can private companies, which will empower consumers to become better shoppers.
The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.
Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen and less in bars, which makes it rather less useful for getting stories about people throwing up over one another, which is what one's after.
What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.
I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.
The beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.
A really useful quality to have as an actor is a lack of self-awareness. I try and get into the character's thinking, and some of them just aren't really that bothered about how they come across or aware of how they come across.
The criminal law needs to be improved to meet new forms of crime, but to denounce financial devices which are useful and legitimate because use is made of them for fraud, is ridiculous and unworthy of the age in which we live.
When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.
Tart cherries lower the levels of inflammation in the body, which may be particularly useful for those who suffer from gout. They have also been used to improve sleep.
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.
To lose your temper is only useful once a year.
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.
The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.
Seeing the funny side of life is useful, and I've always had a sense of humour.
There have been many people whom I have admired, emulated and even modeled parts of my life after. I study how they do things, and then I go through a period of 'trying on' those same thinking patterns and behaviors. After awhile, what is not essentially me falls away while the useful parts remain.
One of the things that has happened with technology is that it can only be helpful if it is useful, of course, but it can only be helpful too if it's accessible, and it can only be helpful if it's affordable.
I was actually accepted into medical school in Italy. But then I wanted to come back and learn medicine in Germany. And while waiting, I decided to join a business school. I figured it would be useful for doctors to know some business as well!
The advice would be the same for any kind of fiction. Keep writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be added, but this is fundamental.
I'm a classic Church of England member, but part of its strength is the fact that it doesn't ask us to sign up to too much of a canon... but I've always found the teachings of Jesus and the Bible quite useful as a sort of handy guide.
I've never been interested in philosophy, but some of Jung's ideas seem useful in helping people understand pictures and so forth.
It was very useful to learn the history, the theory, and the art of building from a practical background.