A group of theunwilling, picked fromtheunfit, to dothe unnecessary.

-Harkness, Richard Long
  Definition of a committee. In the NewYork Herald Tribune, 15  Jun.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

-Hoffman, Hans
  Search for the Real.

What vain, unnecessary things are men, How well we do without 'em!

-Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of
c.1674^1675  'Fragment of a Satire on Men', l.1^2 (published in full1953).

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  An InlandVoyage,'At Maubeuge'.

   What is called science today consists of a haphazard heap of information, united by nothing, often utterly unnecessary, and not only failing to present one unquestionable truth, but as often as not containing the grossest errors today put forward as truths, and tomorrow overthrown.

-Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich
  What is Art? (translated byV Tchertkoff).