Top 100 To Do Nothing Quotes
#1. Ll that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing. I supposed old Edmund Burke had meant to include women in that. And if he hadn't, well, screw him.
Rachel Caine
#2. To do nothing for the gomers was to do something, and the more conscientiously I did nothing the better they got.
Samuel Shem
#3. The way to use life is to do nothing through acting, The way to use life is to do everything through being.
Laozi
#4. ... whenever you were in a fix or at a crossroads in an investigation, there were always two choices: to do nothing and worry, or to take some sort of action and deal with its associated risks.
Jessica Lawson
#5. Every man of character will have that character questioned. Every man of honor and courage will be faced with unjust criticism, but never forget that unjust criticism has no impact whatsoever upon the truth. And the only sure way to avoid criticism is to do nothing and be nothing.
Andy Andrews
#6. I try to do nothing. I drink rosemary when I have a lot of work to do. People take coffee, they take speed, whatever. I take rosemary.
Agnes Varda
#7. To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
Oscar Wilde
#8. Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.
Regina Brett
#9. All his [Laurent's] great powerful body wanted was to do nothing, to wallow in never-ending idleness and self-indulgence. He would have liked to eat well, sleep well, satisfy his passions liberally, without stirring from one spot or risking the misfortune of a bit of fatigue.
Emile Zola
#10. It is always easier to do nothing than to try a new line of action.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#11. My old drama coach used to say, 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.
Clint Eastwood
#12. The only thing necessary for evil to conquer is for us and those like us to do nothing.
Julie Kagawa
#13. Sometimes the only way to make something happen is to do nothing.
Marty Rubin
#15. God's greatest blessings often come costumed as disasters. Any doubters need to do nothing more than ascend the hill of Calvary.
Max Lucado
#16. If one of you has seriously sinned, repent - now. It is not good to violate the commandments of the Lord. It is worse to do nothing about it. Sin is like cancer in the body. It will never heal itself. It will become progressively worse unless cured through the medicine of repentance.
Richard G. Scott
#17. To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don't have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#18. It's always better to act on your silly idea and watch what becomes it, than to do nothing with it and call your self silly.
Sade Fadipe
#20. The wrong thing to do about any given circumstance or situation is to do nothing.
L. Ron Hubbard
#21. The best way to avoid a bad action is by doing a good one, for there is no difficulty in the world like that of trying to do nothing.
John Clare
#22. To do nothing was disgraceful; therefore I made use of my understanding.
Horatio Nelson
#24. It is better to waste your old age than to do nothing at all with it.
Julian Barnes
#25. It's better to do nothing with your money than something you don't understand.
Suze Orman
#26. It's said on my world that the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Will Bradshaw
Arthur Daigle
#27. Humans are passionate in all they do, even should they wish to do nothing. They battle, they rage, they kill, they love, they are capable of mercy in the most impossible of circumstances, and they are monstrous.
Pippa DaCosta
#28. I am only mortal, desperate, urgent. Spirits have endless ages in which to do nothing, if they so choose, but humans have death to hurry them on. Near or far, the end is always in sight. We have no time to stand and stare. Make your choice, Fernanda.
Jan Siegel
#29. Meditation, stillness, time simply to 'be', to do nothing at all and to do it with joy
Margaret Silf
#30. Regarding his friend's insight after losing her spouse to cancer: "She told me she had plenty of people to do things with but nobody to do nothing with.
Peter Bach
#31. The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little.
Edmund Burke
#32. If you once believed that everything always turns out well in the end, you can be persuaded that nothing turns out well in the end. If you once did nothing because you thought progress is inevitable, then you can continue to do nothing because you think time moves in repeating cycles.
Timothy Snyder
#33. And who was ever bold enough to do nothing because every action is senseless in infinity?
Emil Cioran
#34. This is another day, O Lord ...
If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly.
If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.
Kathleen Norris
#35. The Tea Party folks may be sincere, loyal citizens, but their notions about how the economy works are exactly that: mere notions. Their core notion is that government needs to do nothing more than get out of the way of business in order for the economy to boom and bloom.
David Horsey
#36. But we don't always have to be studying something, I thought, it's perfectly enough merely to think, to do nothing but think and give our thoughts free rein. To give in to our philosophical worldview, simply submit to our philosophical worldview, but that's the hardest thing, I thought. Wertheimer
Thomas Bernhard
#37. We humans can never claim to do nothing, we breath, we pulse, we regenerate.
Suzanne Weyn
#38. All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
Amanda Hocking
#39. All of us are feeling scattered and distracted as we try to keep up with an accelerating world. But nearly all of us have an answer in our hands, in simply choosing to do nothing and go nowhere for a while.
Pico Iyer
#40. That is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Patricia Briggs
#41. It's hard to do nothing because you tend to do something and then you have to drop everything.
Jerry Seinfeld
#42. I want to be sure ... that nothing is done on these veterans. Is that understood? ... Is the word out? That they are not to touch em, they are not to do a thing? ... Get a hold of the district police; they're not to touch them, they're to do nothing: Just let em raise Hell.
Richard M. Nixon
#43. I think we're a deeper team, a better team, we still have work to do ... nothing is guaranteed, but hopefully we got the mentality to play on the road, and we're starting to get our home thing back in order now-if we can do that we'll be just fine.
Karl Malone
#44. It often requires more strength and judgment to resist than to embrace an opportunity. It is better to do nothing than to do other than well.
Sydney Thompson Dobell
#45. To do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly career.
Benjamin Disraeli
#46. I think when we don't know what to do it's wise to do nothing. Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply.
Maya Angelou
#47. The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.
David Tepper
#49. It is a mistake to do nothing just because you think you can only do a little.
Karen Duffy
#51. The worst thing a government can do now in Spain is to do nothing.
Mariano Rajoy
#52. The worst thing we can do is to do nothing.
Brad Henry
#53. Vicinity to the sea is desirable, because it is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else, and because bathing and basking on the shore cannot be considered an employment but only an apotheosis of loafing. ("Expiation")
E.F. Benson
#54. The newly-minted captain is told to let nothing stop him but to do nothing that would risk his ship or his crew.
Patrick O'Brian
#55. An idiot will do anything, no matter how stupid, because he is afraid of what everybody will think of him if he does nothing. A genius, on the other hand, is content to do nothing, no matter what people think, if he can't find anything worth doing.
Tom Upton
#56. For He (God) seems to do nothing of himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.
C.S. Lewis
#57. The lesson here is this: Do what God says to do, nothing more and nothing less. There is no game here. There is one move, and it belongs to God. Your job is to follow it.
Roberts Liardon
#58. It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything.
Winston Churchill
#59. I do nothing I regret, man, because I try to do nothing abominable. As long as there is not an abomination, there is nothing to regret, you understand?
Peter Tosh
#60. Even choosing to do nothing is still making a choice.
Mark Batterson
#61. Time. Either you are for it or against it. So be here now. Not later. Do what you want to do, and with the people you love. Learn to appreciate time and make doing so a habit. And if you want to do nothing, then enjoy doing it well. Why do anything by half? Why live a life diluted? What's the use?
Carew Papritz
#62. The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 Death, Grief, and Mourning, had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new "ethical duty to enjoy oneself," a novel "imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others.
Joan Didion
#63. You go to school to get a job, and you get a job to take time off to do nothing. Why not do nothing to begin with?
Pierre Anthon
Janne Teller
#64. A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.
Warren Buffett
#65. When I was bald, I went through a period where I seemed to do nothing except TV programmes about being bald.
Gail Porter
#66. If you'd had all the experiences I've had, you'd know that there are times in life when the most comfortable thing is to do nothing at all. Things happen to you and just let them happen.
James Hamilton
#67. The worst thing we can do, the absolute worst, is to do nothing.
Fritz Gerlich
#68. The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire
#69. The media has brainwashed the electorate to expect the government to do something. The best economic policy of any government is to do nothing but reduce the size of the government, reduce the size of the laws, and reduce the size of regulations.
Marc Faber
#70. He who has learned to do nothing with his whole mind and body will have everything done for him.
William S. Burroughs
#71. You can blame people who knock things over in the dark or you can begin to light candles. You're only at fault if you know about the problem and choose to do nothing.
Paul Hawken
#72. Sometimes it's best to do nothing ast all where social networking is concerned.
L. H. Cosway
#73. Albert knew that one could never be sure about magic, but a lack of certainty is not a good reason to do nothing.
Howard L. Anderson
#74. By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.
Emil Cioran
#75. Everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me.
Hermann Hesse
#76. If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.
Blaise Pascal
#77. And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world. (p. 40)
Rebecca Goldstein
#78. I like to sleep. I like to do nothing. Nothing is my favorite kind of something.
Callan McAuliffe
#79. All that's required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
Richard Paul Evans
#80. The sentence that best expresses a snail's way of life: 'The right thing to do is to do nothing, the place to do it is in a place of concealment and the time to do it is as often as possible.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey
#81. One way to avoid criticism is to do nothing and to be a nobody. The world will then not bother you.
Napoleon Hill
#82. Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciousl y set aside time to do nothing but pray.
D. A. Carson
#83. It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
William Hazlitt
#84. Every summer my husband and I pack our suitcases, load our kids into the car, and drive from tense, crowded New York City to my family's cottage in Maine. It's on an island, with stretches of sea and sandy beaches, rocky coasts, and pine trees. We barbecue, swim, lie around, and try to do nothing.
Hope Davis
#85. I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy I am here to give voice to the invisible.
Carlos Santana
#86. What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.
Barbara Jordan
#87. All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for enough good women to do nothing.
Kate Atkinson
#89. Unless our hands go hand in hand with our heads, we will be able to do nothing whatsoever.
Mahatma Gandhi
#90. Men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.
Lloyd Jones
#91. I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.
Jenny Joseph
#92. It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.
Sydney Smith
#93. There's something about rushing water that I can watch for hours and feel as if I need to do nothing more. It's alive in a way that's greater than any description of it ...
Mark Helprin
#94. All That Is Needed For Evil To Succeeded, Is For Good People To Do Nothing
Edmund Burke
#95. The way to do a great deal is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be continually resolving that you will do everything.
Charles Spurgeon
#96. It is better to make a mistake than to do nothing.
Adolf Hitler
#97. How did it ever come to this?" I asked him. "The same way it always has and - to our great misfortune - probably always will. With fierce hate harbored by a few and complacency displayed by the rest. All it takes for evil to take hold and flourish is for men and women of conscience to do nothing.
Lisa Shearin
#99. All that is necessary for evil to triumph, said Burke, is for good men to do nothing; and most good men nowadays can be relied upon to do precisely that. Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.
Theodore Dalrymple
#100. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.
Jonathan Safran Foer
