Top 100 Most Productive Quotes
#1. One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.
Ken Thompson
#2. I focus best and am most productive when I'm working in a friend's empty apartment. It's hard for me to work at home. Too easy to procrastinate online, too easy to be distracted by the state of perpetual domestic chaos that rules my home.
Elissa Schappell
#3. The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs.
Ben Bernanke
#4. Out of the best and most productive years of each man's life, he should carve a segment in which he puts his private career aside to serve his community and his country, and thereby serve his children, his neighbours, his fellow men, and the cause of freedom.
David Lilienthal
#5. Often buyers make the mistake of believing they must have a specific home in mind first. That's counterproductive, counter-successful thinking. Moving through the loan application process early is the most productive and most successful.
Keller Gary
#6. As it's often been said, the rest of your life is the best of your life. I'm reaching for your hand now to help you reassess your attitude on living and jump into the happiest, healthiest, most productive years you will ever have.
Jack LaLanne
#7. I think the market driven economic system is the most productive system, but to have that work in the world, you've got to also have social investments to go along with that.
Mike Lowry
#8. Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue.
Emma Goldman
#9. The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.
Alexander Hamilton
#10. Sometimes, I wake up feeling
crazier than usual.
Those are my favorite
and most productive days.
B. Diehl
#11. I had it drummed into me from an early age that personalizing everything was not a good thing. Besides, I don't think that kind of commodity-driven system makes for the most productive architecture.
James Polshek
#12. The most productive, healthy and satisfying relationships are based, not on a quid pro quo but an ebb and flow of mutual support over time. Don't just be a giver. Be an extremely helpful giver who demonstrates an awareness of what that person most needs.
Kare Anderson
#13. Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
#14. Kelso's hangover had gone, to be replaced by that familiar phase of post-alcoholic euphoria - always in the past, his most productive time of day - a feeling that alone was enough to make getting drunk worthwhile.
Robert Harris
#15. Determine when you are most productive when working away from the office, and maximize those periods.
Chuck Martin
#16. Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.
Marcus Buckingham
#17. Take power breaks every hour. Schedule tougher tasks for the time when you are most productive.
Mani S. Sivasubramanian
#18. That's always the most productive research - research into tone, into voice. Facts are nice, too, but facts are more raw material than creative inspiration.
Jonathan Dee
#19. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can
Oliver Sacks
#20. I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.
Seth Godin
#21. I believe that the artist's feelings are in some way generative. And I suspect that much of the artist's most productive emotion - not all of it but much of it - is felt in the course of playing around with form.
Carter Ratcliff
#22. Every person under your supervision is different. They're all different. They're identical in most ways, but not in all ways. You have to study and analyze every individual under your supervision and try to work with them in a way that will be most productive.
John Wooden
#23. One of the most productive times in my early writing life was while I had a full-time job as a word processor in a law firm and also worked part-time at night, often working until 11:00 P.M.
John Lescroart
#24. In my opinion, being an effective leader requires being an effective listener. The most productive leaders are usually those who are consistently willing to listen and learn.
John Wooden
#25. It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.
James F. Cooper
#26. The WPA was one of the most productive elements of FDR's alphabet soup of agencies because it put people to work building roads, bridges, and other projects ... It gave men and women a chance to make some money along with the satisfaction of knowing they earned it.
Ronald Reagan
#27. If I'm not at my desk by 4 AM, I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours. In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hour glass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do pushups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing.
Dan Brown
#28. If nothing's working for you, if you feel as though you're pushing forward against the grain, the most productive and proactive thing you can do is nothing. Nature is turning you inward, to gain power through peace, rather than outward to gain power through activity.
Martha N. Beck
#29. When I write on 'SNL,' I've found I'm most productive while collaborating and joking with friends and not being firmly attached to any one idea.
Cecily Strong
#30. Great managers play favorites and spend most of their time with their most productive people. Not because they discriminate, but because they deserve the attention and have so much to teach you.
Curt Coffman
#31. Faced with a time shortage, we squeeze tasks into the nooks and crannies of our calendar, leaving less and less time to switch between them. As a result, we become less and less productive exactly when we need to be most productive.
Sendhil Mullainathan
#32. We have a constantly-changing portfolio of social media experiments. The first time we tried applying social technologies in a customer service department it became the most productive department in the company.
Sandy Carter
#33. Acceptance is different than apathy. It is important to strive to be your best self, your healthiest, most productive, joyful self. But that is going to be a different answer to everyone.
Teri Hatcher
#34. Even the most productive writers are expert dawdlers.
Donald Murray
#35. I have often found the most productive people appear not to be working at all.
Jeffrey Fry
#36. We are so used to multi-tasking. 2014 was probably the most productive year of my life ... But I noticed during the last couple of months when I would get alone with God it was hard to do one thing at a time.
Francis Chan
#37. The most destructive thing we can possibly do in life is to make another person doubt his worth and identity as a child of God. The very most productive thing we can do is to help ourselves and others realize that as children of God, our worth is infinite.
Toni Sorenson
#38. To learn from the past is good, but to live there is a waste. To plan for the future is good, but to live there is a waste. You are happiest and most productive in life when you are living in the present.
Kenneth H. Blanchard
#39. The Harvard researchers wrote.24 In 1985, Car and Driver magazine printed an issue with the cover line "Hell Freezes Over," announcing NUMMI's accomplishments. The worst auto factory on earth had become one of the most productive plants in existence, using the same workers as before. Then,
Charles Duhigg
#40. All I know is that the six months when I recorded this music was the most productive time of my life, and I'll always remember it as the first time in my life that I ever felt like I was one with my dreams.
John Frusciante
#41. Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens - characters keep coming out of nowhere and doing things I never expected them to do. The most persistent and most productive of these has been Paul Christopher, whom I didn't expect to see again after he appeared in 'The Miernik Dossier.'
Charles McCarry
#42. The Clinton tax increase - which was an increase in taxes primarily on upper-income people - not only made the tax code more nearly progressive, it preceded one of the most productive economic periods in American life.
Barney Frank
#43. Some of our best and most productive moments arise from a period when we are silent and reflective.
Lozetta Hayden
#45. Here in Seattle, I'm the most productive I've ever been. I don't allow myself personal distractions. I'm extremely disciplined here.
Donald Byrd
#46. The remote valley of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf) in Kenya is now one of the world's most productive sites for early human remains,
Bill Bryson
#47. Some of the most untidy writers have also been the most productive. Iris Murdoch, for instance, wrote a good 30 books in a house strewn with rubbish.
Craig Brown
#48. Where I feel the most productive and engaged is when I'm buried in code, buried in some project, tweaking some designs. I'm certainly introverted.
David Karp
#49. (The Nutty Professor) was a labor of love. It was a total film. It was the most productive, creative work of my life.
Jerry Lewis
#50. Housework is the most productive procrastination close to a deadline.
Grant McLachlan
#51. For most of the 20th century, we didn't just enjoy economic success in Michigan, we defined it. Our innovators and entrepreneurs created the world's most productive companies, and our unions made sure that productivity led to broad middle class prosperity.
Jennifer Granholm
#52. The most deeply motivated people - not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied - hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves. Motivation
Daniel H. Pink
#53. In the real world, those of us who are most productive, successful, and satisfied focus not on fixing feelings or manipulating thoughts, but on what needs to be done-and then doing it-no matter what thoughts or feelings arise.
Dan Millman
#54. I find I am most productive with at least six hours of sleep.
Mandana Dayani
#55. Design is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
#56. One of the most productive things that we ever do in our lives is to think. To be able to think is to be able to decide, to judge, to have opinions and convictions, and to entertain a point of view. To be able to think is to be able to love, to believe, to work, to originate, and to organize.
Sterling W. Sill
#57. It was in 1969 that I was able to give up my administrative responsibility. As I worked hard my research never suffered during this period and as a matter of fact these were probably some of my most productive years.
George Andrew Olah
#58. Peace is the best time for improvement and preparation of every kind; it is in peace that our commerce flourishes most, that taxes are most easily paid, and that the revenue is most productive.
James Monroe
#59. Women in Africa are really the pillar of the society, are the most productive segment of society, actually. They do agriculture.
Mo Ibrahim
#60. When we let our minds wander, we set our brains free. Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive.
Sherry Turkle
#61. If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.
J. Cole
#62. If you have laser-like brain it's not always focused on the most productive things. If you want to play Halo: Reach all day, that's fine, but if you want to accomplish some other things, here are some ways to do that using your innate nerd gifts.
Chris Hardwick
#63. I'm at my most productive before I even have my first cup of coffee. I only get slower and stupider as the day progresses.
Anthony Bourdain
#64. In 1925 Woolf began an affair with Sackville-West, who was married to Harold Nicolson, the diplomat and writer, and the development of their close relationship, which does not seem to have undermined either woman's marriage, coincided with Woolf 's most productive years as a writer.
Jane Goldman
#65. Extravagant wastefulness in time might prove the most productive thing you choose for yourself.
Shelly Miller
#66. Some argue shareholder capitalism has proven more efficient. It has moved economic resources to where they're most productive, and thereby enabled the economy to grow faster.
Robert Reich
#67. We're more than friends and neighbors and allies; we are kin, who together have built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the world today.
Ronald Reagan
#68. Safety Tip: Over the years I have learned that tackling the hard stuff in the morning is the most productive way to start your day. After the hard stuff is done, you get to do some fun stuff later, and this allows you to be more productive.
John Richard Pierce
#69. In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#70. As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.
John Podhoretz
#71. Having a better and more productive life than my monster father has been my most significant accomplishment.
Stephen Hunter
#72. Humans, the most intelligent, gregarious(in biology), productive creatures on this planet but also the most selfish, destructive, heartless, insincere, insatiable creatures.
Myself
#73. Soil is a living ecosystem, and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil.
Howard Warren Buffett
#74. There are three things healthy people most need to do - to be creatively productive, to render service, and to act in accordance with their moral impulses. In all three respects modern society frustrates most people most of the time.
E.F. Schumacher
#75. Doing nothing was much more productive than people thought; Jackson often had his most profound insights when he appeared to be entirely idle. He didn't get bored, he just went into a nothing kind of place.
Kate Atkinson
#76. We must never limit God's ability to turn even the worst, most vile experience in our lives into something productive, beneficial and positive.
Charles Stanley
#77. Through his long, productive career, Paul Theroux has mixed nonfiction books about exotic travel with novels set in exotic places. Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Honduras - he lives in and writes about places most of us never see.
Floyd Skloot
#78. The lady ... is not a producer; in most communities productive labor is by consent unladylike. On the other hand she is the heaviest of consumers, and theorists have not been wanting to maintain that the more she spends the better off society is.
Emily James Smith Putnam
#79. The happiest times in our lives are times when we are thinking the most motivating, intelligent and productive thoughts.
Nicki Joy
#80. I've been accused many times of not talking very much, but I guess I don't believe in talking things to death. You can talk too much on most anything and it stops being productive. There is a time for action. Eventually you have to pull the trigger.
Edward Whitacre Jr.
#81. I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.
J.C. Lillis
#82. Greed is good to most economists. It's greed that makes people work harder, be more productive and helps the economy grow.
Rebecca M. Blank
#83. It's very easy to confuse confident motion with being productive - and they're not the same thing. Productive to me means measurable outcomes that apply to my most important to-dos that positively affect my life. That's it.
Timothy Ferriss
#84. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot.
Steve Harvey
#85. The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.
Stephen Covey
#86. What's more, engagement and flow tend to prompt a virtuous cycle of sorts: we become more motivated and aroused overall, and, consequently, more likely to be productive and create something of value. We even become less likely to commit some of the most fundamental errors of observation
Anonymous
#87. As the earth spins through space, a view from above the North Pole would encompass most of the wealth of the world - most of its food, productive machines, doctors, engineers and teachers. A view from the opposite pole would encompass most of the world's poor.
Barry Commoner
#88. Haiti is the best cure against melancholy; it is also the most creative place for me to be. My productivity has increased enormously since I moved to Haiti. That's where I write my stories, develop my ideas and write nonstop, so it's a productive time, not a sleepy time.
Jorgen Leth
#89. Putting labels on people is so counter-productive. Most of us on some issues could be considered conservative, on other issues could be considered progressive, on other issues might be thought of as being moderate, on other issues might be thought of as being rather forthright.
Tony Abbott
#90. Proactive and productive change is something that does not come easy for most people, yet is one of the main reasons successful people succeed.
Michelle Moore
#91. I live alone in a house, so for me it's very good to just be able to re-charge and just disappear and escape from reality and that's usually when I write most of my lyrics and my songs. It's a very happy productive place.
Adam Young
#92. By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
Tim Ferriss
#93. One of the most valuable gifts that a person can give (or receive) is a productive mentality. It is with a productive mentality that people change their lives for the better, in ways profound.
Innocent Mwatsikesimbe
#94. What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death.
William Blake
#95. When I think of organizations, I think of the capabilities an organization has more than its morphology or structure. The ability of an organization to have a shared purpose and the ability for employees to be productive are critical capabilities for most organizations today.
Dave Ulrich
#96. If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.
David Ricardo
#97. The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.
Thomas Sowell
#98. If capital produces most of the economy's wealth and income is distributed on the basis of productive input, the individual can hardly reach his goal - an affluent level of income - solely by means of his labor.
Louis O. Kelso
#99. The most important thing we stressed is that we want those kids to be productive citizens.
Troy Vincent
#100. Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.
Jean De La Bruyere
