Top 100 Quotes About Doing Nothing
#1. The man who does things makes mistakes, but he doesn't make the biggest mistake of all-doing nothing.
Benjamin Franklin
#2. The ideal holiday for the truly active man is one doing nothing in beautiful surroundings ... and the ideal exercise for this best form of leisure is the old, natural, spontaneous movement of the body
the walk.
Salvador De Madariaga
#3. You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.
Mortimer Adler
#4. If it was a choice between making movies and doing nothing, he'd probably still wish me to make movies, So he made me keep going.
Ang Lee
#5. Sometimes an active policy is best advanced by doing nothing until the right time - or never.
James Baker
#6. I like to spend Christmas with family and friends, pigging out, exchanging gifts and basically doing nothing.
George Kotsiopoulos
#7. The real art of governing consists, so far as possible, in doing nothing.
Laozi
#8. Most of us spend all our working life dreaming of doing nothing, then when we end up doing nothing, we long for something. When we have neither longing, I think that is what they call living for the moment.
Robert Black
#9. I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing - to live like a gentleman, as fools call it.
William Morris
#10. Who says nothing is impossible? I've been doing nothing for years.
Henny Youngman
#11. The cost of doing something would be terrific; the cost of doing nothing even greater.
Diane Chamberlain
#12. There are some who dream their lives away, but end up doing nothing, and others who do their lives away, and end up never dreaming.
Laurence Overmire
#13. Doing nothing would stress me out. So I am still pretty much active practicing judo with my friends, who are former judo athletes, to maintain our fitness as well as the friendships among us. In my spare time, I usually go jogging around the Gelora Bung Karno stadium or head to the gym.
Joe Taslim
#14. It will take hard work, but doing nothing on Social Security, for example, simply makes sure the system will go broke. It's time to make some reforms.
Joni Ernst
#15. Music is my life. I love doing it, so I just do it nonstop all day. And with dancing, I wanted to put on a show for people. I don't want to just be sitting there doing nothing, so that's when I started to dance.
Austin Mahone
#16. In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.
Ben Sherwood
#17. By and large musicians are pretty lazy; they don't do a whole lot. They're usually very busy doing nothing.
Buzz Osborne
#18. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#19. It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#20. Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.
Max McKeown
#21. Every pound of muscle burns approximately 50 calories every day, just doing nothing.
Jorge Cruise
#23. The basic problem most people have is that they are doing nothing to solve their basic problem.
Bob Richardson
#24. Struggle is less effective than doing nothing.
Marty Rubin
#25. It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#26. Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.
Gertrude Stein
#27. The one path that never works is the most common one: doing nothing at all.
Seth Godin
#28. If I know I'm going to be in a little different system, I'm 39, I can plan for that; we can plan for that. Doing nothing, the status quo, is going to guarantee cuts for current seniors ... reforming the system is the only way you shore it up.
Sean Duffy
#29. You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind. Your mind gets bored and therefore tired of doing nothing.
Norman Vincent Peale
#30. The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.
Maureen Johnson
#31. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?
John C. Dvorak
#32. Retirement is wonderful. It's doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it.
Gene Perret
#33. The two boys stood and looked at each other. There was no amusement and no scorn in Attean's eyes. How very strange, Matt thought. After all the brave deeds he had dreamed of doing to win this boy's respect, he had gained it at last by doing nothing, just by staying here and refusing to leave.
Elizabeth George Speare
#34. Blackmail. The age-old path to the land of milk and honey. The one sure way of being paid for doing nothing.
Ursula Curtiss
#35. The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.
John Garamendi
#36. But it's also true that my memory is a card shark, reshuffling the deck to hide what I fear to know, unable to keep from fingering the ace at the bottom of the deck even when I'm doing nothing more than playing Fish in the daylight with children.
Lorene Cary
#37. Your reality is yours. Stop wasting time looking at someone else's reality while doing nothing about yours.
Steve Harvey
#38. I think a lot of people were under the impression that property development was a way of becoming a millionaire in six months, while doing nothing, and I don't think that's the case. And I'm not sure it ever has been, really.
Sarah Beeny
#39. You see ... it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?
Norton Juster
#40. Why is it you get more tired from sitting and doing nothing than from running around doing too much?
Anita Diamant
#41. All I could do was think. You try doing nothing but thinking for a few months. It's a very useful exercise for shaking some of the chaff out of your life.
Patricia Ryan
#42. I need so much time for doing nothing that I have no time for work.
Pierre Reverdy
#43. I've always liked working really hard and then doing nothing in particular. So, consequently, I didn't overexpose myself; I guess I maintained a kind of mystery. I wasn't ambitious.
Barbra Streisand
#44. Doing nothing can be as rewarding as doing something. And doing very little can be as productive, in a creative sense, as doing a lot.
Fennel Hudson
#45. Have you ever tried doing nothing? It's actually really hard. There are so many distractions. But it's the best feeling in the world. If I could prescribe a bottle of nothing to people, it would make life so much better.
Katie Kacvinsky
#46. When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?
Ralph Marston
#47. Why should old people get [Social Security]? They just sit around all day doing nothing.
Pat Paulsen
#48. If I was a complete slacker who was just doing nothing but traveling, I don't know if I would have the discipline to be productive and create this job, and on the other hand, if I was always disciplined and productive, I don't think I would have that mystical connection that lead to great work.
Karan Bajaj
#49. Being silent and doing nothing is never the right answer. What happens in one state can happen in another.
Alan Wilson
#50. Those who wait for the right time to act on their life are doing nothing.
Santosh Kalwar
#52. Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.
Emil Cioran
#53. The Soviet Union's propaganda clearly wishes to use public opinion in this country to get the West to reduce its own arms while doing nothing themselves. In this way they would gain nuclear superiority. This is simply not on.
James Callaghan
#54. You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#55. Fine writing, next to doing nothing, is the best thing in the world.
John Keats
#56. What's the point of eternal life if one spends it doing nothing? There is none. It's waste of eternity.
Courtney Allison Moulton
#57. When I work I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.
Pablo Picasso
#58. Doing nothing can sometimes be the most effective form of action.
Kevin Kwan
#59. You either fight active evil or you accept it. Doing nothing is acceptance. There is no in-between.
Bill O'Reilly
#60. I know hereby what advantage belongs to doing nothing (with a purpose).
Lao-Tzu
#61. Admirals extolled for standing still, or doing nothing with a deal of skill.
William Cowper
#62. We've been on a long break and I've just been kicking back, doing nothing. Like our government.
Bill Maher
#63. Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.
George MacDonald
#64. We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.
Noah Baumbach
#65. Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
Paul Valery
#66. Fishing can come as close to doing nothing as anything I can think of.
Ruth Rudner
#67. You need to take out the stuff that's just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!
Stephen King
#68. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
#69. When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.
Hannah Arendt
#70. My heart's in stage. Making 'Quadrophenia' was exciting because we were riding around on scooters with no crash helmets. But 'hurry up and wait' is the anthem of films. Everybody wants you ready, and then you sit doing nothing.
Phil Daniels
#71. If you can't be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.
Seth Godin
#72. You have to learn to convince yourself that the possibility is greater than the inevitability of doing nothing. Listen,
Steve Harvey
#73. The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you're apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times.
Brian Eno
#75. Some people are ok with doing nothing all day after they retire, but then some people if they had nothing to do would go mad and start banging their heads against a wall.
Abdul Qadeer Khan
#76. If you want freedom you have to come to terms with being okay in the now doing nothing.
Doug Duncan
#77. At times, productivity means doing nothing at all.
Gina Greenlee
#78. For some people, their fear to lose is greater than their desire to succeed, so they end up doing nothing and their dreams become impossible.
Rodolfo Costa
#79. Of all the evil man can do, the greatest is doing nothing.
Jury Nel
#80. I don't want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.
Michael Caine
#81. Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.
Victor Hugo
#82. Holiday? Is like, what? I'm a hyperactive girl, so it may be boring for me to be on the beach doing nothing. I just need to find a place for three weeks and work but sleep in the morning, maybe write a little bit, have a glass of red wine. That's my perfect holiday.
Melanie Laurent
#83. I'm not a big one for sitting by the pool doing nothing.
Ashley Jensen
#84. A lot of people think Heaven is sitting around on a cloud playing a harp all day, doing nothing except being holy - and they don't find it very appealing! Thank God that is not what Heaven is like!
David Berg
#85. If you try to bring 'teen drama,' you end up doing nothing but pouting.
Max Irons
#86. In a region with a growing population, if you're doing nothing, you're losing ground.
Stewart Udall
#87. It's impossible to be neutral when even doing nothing is a decision.
Lisa Cypers Kamen
#88. Again Mosca felt she was up in the rafters, watching the mice. Little mouse, witless with fear. Running the wrong way. And here she was, just watching. Becoming a part of it by doing nothing.
Frances Hardinge
#89. I would rather fail trying than succeed at doing nothing.
Denis Waitley
#90. Am I bothered? Am I bothered though. I ain't doing nothing cause I ain't bothered.
Catherine Tate
#91. I am not good at aligning myself with any movement that comes along but also I don't like the thought of sitting back and doing nothing.
Vashti Bunyan
#92. I need to be doing something, because doing nothing is just as harmful as facing danger head-on.
David Levithan
#93. The trouble with doing nothing is it's too hard to tell when you're finished.
Suzanne Woods Fisher
#94. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.
Austin Kleon
#95. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do.
Jerome K. Jerome
#96. in business doing nothing is often the hardest thing. (And not just in business. Harold Macmillan, prime minister during the Cuban missile crisis, mused then 'on the frightful desire to do something, with the knowledge that not to do anything was prob. the right answer'.)
Simon Kuper
#97. The problem with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.
Nelson DeMille
#98. Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
Sharon Salzberg
#99. Think about it, but don't think too much. If you think too much you'll end up doing nothing.
Dalia Sofer
#100. We can't stay here. When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act.
Andy Andrews
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