Top 94 Unproductive Quotes
#1. In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#2. I would dearly love to resist the temptation, if you can call it that, to worry. It's boring, it's anti-social, it's unproductive and it's depressing.
Peter Mayle
#3. The U.S. and Iraq will work together next year to shift Iraqi resources from unproductive subsidies to productive uses that enable Iraqis to earn livelihoods.
Zalmay Khalilzad
#4. But my point is not just that the psychological theory is inadequate; it is that the practice is unproductive. If we do not address the ultimate cause of a problem, the problem will not get solved. This is not to say
Alfie Kohn
#5. When we set goals, we are in command. Clearly understood goals bring our lives into focus just as a magnifying glass focuses a beam of light into a burning point. Without goals our efforts may be scattered and unproductive
Ezra Taft Benson
#6. Generally I get up at around 7. But oftentimes, I'll be lolling in bed a little bit earlier - sometimes as early as 5:45 - filing in my mind all the things I have to get done. Which is, of course, totally unproductive.
Mo Rocca
#7. Neglecting passion blocks creative flow. When you're passionate, you're energized. Likewise, when you lack passion, your energy is low and unproductive. Energy is everything when it comes to being successful.
Gabrielle Bernstein
#8. On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.
Thomas Malthus
#9. God's grace does not make you lazy and unproductive. On the contrary, it makes you labor more abundantly for His glory.
Joseph Prince
#10. I write all day every day, so when I feel unproductive, it magnifies everything else.
Blake Butler
#11. ... now a Chinese Fire Drill is just mildly offensive slang denoting a chaotic and unproductive situation like most police calls handled by more than two cops. Those I really try to avoid. Hey, screw it. I'm no hero.
A.J. Hoover
#12. For quite a while I called myself a workaholic. I was proud of that label. Then one day it hit me; a workaholic is a label for an unproductive person.
Mike Michalowicz
#13. If you want to understand the nature of something, to find out the truth, that is one thing. If you want to play semantics, make up wild thought 'experiments', that is another thing. I am not so interested in the latter, though I do appreciate that it can be fun, however unproductive.
Patricia Churchland
#14. Rest and comfort are two different things. Rest is a planned temporary time to refresh and refocus the leader. Comfort is when you settle into unproductive routines and accept satisfactory or unsatisfactory results.
Gary Rohrmayer
#15. If I discover a manure which will enable me to make a piece of land produce 20 per cent more corn, I may withdraw at least a portion of my capital from the most unproductive part of my farm.
David Ricardo
#16. We have now well established the fact in our own nation that one can do more work in six days, even in five, than in seven. A run-down person is an unproductive person.
Charles L. Allen
#17. The older, thinner, and less productive grass lands, however, frequently can be made to produce much larger yields of feed in corn than if left, as they are, in unproductive grass.
David F. Houston
#18. As a rule, panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.
John Mills
#19. In product development, our greatest waste is not unproductive engineers, but work products sitting idle in process queues.
Donald G. Reinertsen
#20. Asian colleges would do well to use a broad range of criteria in selecting students and move beyond the unproductive "examination hell. "
Henry Rosovsky
#21. Even if a life has traveled down an unproductive path, you can find your faith again; pure faith, which is loyalty to God himself. Dark seasons of trial can also become the backdrop for an even greater revelation of truth.
Beverly Crawford
#22. I realized in 1988 that my life as a spy specializing in secrets was not only unproductive, it was in sharp opposition to what we actually need: full access to true information, and consequently, the ability to create Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT).
Robert David Steele
#23. Super achievers don't waste time in unproductive thoughts, esoteric thoughts or catastrophic thoughts. They think constructively and they know that their level of thinking determines their success.
Shiv Khera
#24. [T]hroughout the ages to be educated meant to be unproductive ... our word "school" - and its equivalent in all European languages - derives from a Greek word meaning "leisure.
Peter Drucker
#25. We were meant to grow. When we don't grow, we seek diversions
some harmless (if unproductive), others destructive
to fill the emptiness.
Jim Clemmer
#26. Productivity = creating value and delivering it to people. All other busywork is unproductive fluff and should be minimized.
Steve Pavlina
#27. If we can limit the unproductive interactions, we will be able to better focus on productive ones.
Rachel G. Scott
#28. The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
Alain De Botton
#29. By using vertical space more effectively, you not only make more room for greenery but shorter commutes also mean less pressure on CO2 emission problems and by freeing up time now spent on unproductive commuter trains, people would have more options in their lives.
Minoru Mori
#30. Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.
Joseph Sobran
#31. Where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith? ...
Thomas Malthus
#32. As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative.
Brigid Schulte
#33. My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#34. A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind. Another question: why do some people remain open and elastic into extreme old age, whereas others become rigid and unproductive before they're fifty?
Aldous Huxley
#35. You don't need to prove the existence of aliens.
That's unproductive, unless we make a bet on it.
Toba Beta
#36. A life filled with excuses is defeated, unproductive, and miserable.
Stephanie Lahart
#37. Objective leaders identify their unproductive mental models and tweak them for greater effectiveness.
Elizabeth Thornton
#38. The unproductive tillage of human cattle takes that which of right belongs to free labor, and which is necessary for the support and happiness of our own race.
David Wilmot
#39. You cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit.
Daniel Hannan
#40. My gift to you will be to take away your freedom of choice for a while. Freedom can be very unhealthy and unproductive. Instead, you'll have freedom from choice.
Amanda Filipacchi
#41. Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.
Fran Lebowitz
#42. Unproductive worry - like Parkinson's proverbial law - tends to expand to fill the time available.
Neal A. Maxwell
#43. Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.
Epictetus
#44. The received image of a writer is that of an unproductive sensitive who suffers from the vapors, is enslaved by his gonads, falls victim to romantic swoons and passes out at deadlines.
George V. Higgins
#45. I don't want to do something unproductive with my time, so I decided to do something musical. So it felt good to say, 'Yeah, I'm producing.' It gave me a fresh vibe - inspiring in a different way.
Sean Paul
#46. Anger flared through him, but anger was unproductive so he twisted it into pragmatism while he searched for a flaw.
Victoria Schwab
#47. Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.
Elizabeth Peters
#48. This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.
Kerry Gleeson
#49. priority. FIG. 23 In business, profit and productivity are also driven by priority and purpose. Personal productivity is the building block of all business profit. The two are inseparable. A business can't have unproductive people yet magically still have an immensely
Gary Keller
#50. Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose.
Gilbert Parker
#51. This is a little dirty secret of mental health economics: if you're depressed, you don't think you're worth the cost of treatment. You feel guilty enough about being unproductive and unreliable.
Richard O'Connor
#52. Man is by nature restless. When left too long in one place he will inevitably grow bored, unmotivated, and unproductive.
Ricardo Semler
#53. British colonists promoted a dual agenda: one involved reducing poverty back in England, and the other called for transporting the idle and unproductive to the New World. After
Nancy Isenberg
#54. But reflection without action is ultimately as unproductive as action without reflection.
Robert Kegan
#55. You should break away from unproductive routines that do not positively benefit you or make your life better.
Tasha Hoggatt
#56. With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art.
Virginia Postrel
#57. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective - doing less - is the path of the productive.
Timothy Ferriss
#58. I'd become one of those mistakes you sometimes find in an office, a not unpleasant but mostly unproductive presence bobbing along on the energy tides of others, a walking reminder of somebody's error in judgement.
Sam Lipsyte
#59. Worry is just imagination used in an unproductive way.
Andy Andrews
#60. Human nature demands recognition. Without it, people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless, and unproductive.
Ricardo Semler
#61. Most meetings are too long, too dull, too unproductive - and too much a part of corporate life to be abandoned.
Lois Wyse
#62. No day is wholly unproductive of good.
Hesiod
#63. Historically, usury was defined as any interest whatever on an unproductive loan.Our whole banking system I have ever abhorred, I continue to abhor, and I shall die abhorring.
John Adams
#64. A computer can be a useful and indispensable tool. But if we allow it to devour our time with vain, unproductive, and sometimes destructive pursuits, it becomes an entangling net.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#65. All observations point to the fact that the intellectual woman is masculinized; in her, warm, intuitive knowledge has yielded to cold unproductive thinking.
Helene Deutsch
#66. My two most unproductive days of the week have always been yesterday and tomorrow. Keeping that in mind, I try to focus majority of my attention on today.
Mark W. Boyer
#67. Without proper rest during the weekend our new week could be unproductive.
Sunday Adelaja
#69. Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative - these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.
Angela Davis
#70. Currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive and totally immoral. It should be stopped.
Mahathir Mohamad
#71. The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle age, soured, cynical, unproductive.
Peter Drucker
#72. We can never have Knowledge (Gnan) without worship (bhakti). Such knowledge would be considered shushka-gnan [unproductive knowledge]. It cannot be considered True Knowledge.
Dada Bhagwan
#73. God did not intend for us to be idle and unproductive. There is dignity in work.
Billy Graham
#74. If my boss knew how unproductive I am on Fridays, he wouldn't want me here either.
James Johnson
#75. By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus.
Paul A. Baran
#76. [Y]ou are here to learn something. Don't try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.
Steven L. Peck
#77. An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.
John Sterling
#78. During the times we think we're being "unproductive," the seeds of new worlds are germinating within us, and they need peace to grow.
Martha Beck
#79. I believe welfare makes you lazy and unproductive.
Charles Evers
#80. Napping is too luxurious, too sybaritic, too unproductive, and it's free; pleasures for which we don't pay make us anxious. Besides, it seems to be a natural inclination ... Fighting off natural inclinations is a major Puritan virtue, and nothing that feels that good can be respectable.
Barbara Holland
#81. It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#82. Be disciplined enough to choose your network and be willing to sacrifice the circles that reduce your effectiveness and make you unproductive.
Archibald Marwizi
#83. Until it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of absolute, unproductive beauty ...
Marcel Proust
#84. Well, I'm nothing if not strangely beautiful but a little unproductive.
Bella Forrest
#85. I could see that making judgments about people so that they are tried and sentenced in your head, without asking them for their perspective, is both unethical and unproductive. So I learned to love real integrity and to despise the lack of it.
Ray Dalio
#86. Of course, being angry is pointless. Unproductive. They don't understand yet. That they are all waiting for that one phone call that will change everything. That every one of them will feel like me eventually. Because someone they love will die. It's one of life's cruel certainties.
Cynthia Hand
#87. The prospects are dim for a society that makes mascots out of the unproductive and condemns the productive.
Walter E. Williams
#88. Many people find that they frequently slip into negative, unproductive moods, and, once in these moods, it can be difficult to shift out of them. We suggest that this happens because most people have an interpretation of mood and emotion that limits their power to observe and change their moods.
Fernando Flores
#89. You came here because we do this better than you and part of that is letting our creatives be unproductive until they are.
Don Draper
#90. It is really hard for me to invest time into a relationship because I get kind of freaked out by the thought of doing something that part of my mind keeps telling me is "unproductive".
Reese Roper
#91. Accordingly, we shall find angels and men to be dry, heaven to be empty, the earth to be unproductive, and, in short, all things to be of no value, if we wish to be partakers of the gifts of God in any other way than through Christ.
John Calvin
#92. In his life, after all, he had achieved nothing, had been totally unproductive. He couldn't make anyone else happy, and, of course, couldn't make himself happy. Happiness? He wasn't even sure what that meant.
Haruki Murakami
#93. I've seen guys sit the whole day doing nothing, and I hate it when people are unproductive. I don't like a guy who sits on the couch all day.
Olga Kurylenko
#94. Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values - silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude - able to be harvested by any traveler who visits.
David Douglas
#95. In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#96. I would dearly love to resist the temptation, if you can call it that, to worry. It's boring, it's anti-social, it's unproductive and it's depressing.
Peter Mayle
#97. The U.S. and Iraq will work together next year to shift Iraqi resources from unproductive subsidies to productive uses that enable Iraqis to earn livelihoods.
Zalmay Khalilzad
#98. But my point is not just that the psychological theory is inadequate; it is that the practice is unproductive. If we do not address the ultimate cause of a problem, the problem will not get solved. This is not to say
Alfie Kohn
#99. When we set goals, we are in command. Clearly understood goals bring our lives into focus just as a magnifying glass focuses a beam of light into a burning point. Without goals our efforts may be scattered and unproductive
Ezra Taft Benson
#100. Generally I get up at around 7. But oftentimes, I'll be lolling in bed a little bit earlier - sometimes as early as 5:45 - filing in my mind all the things I have to get done. Which is, of course, totally unproductive.
Mo Rocca
