Laziness Quotes - Page 18

• If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Struggle, Government, People

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• There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

  Samuel Johnson

  Business, Sloth, Kind

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.291

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• Nobody has ever thought himself to death. The chief danger confronting us is not age. It is laziness, sloth, routine, stupidity, - forcing their way in like wind through the shutters, seeping into the cellar like swamp water.

  Gilbert Highet

  Wind, Water, Stupidity

  Gilbert Highet (1976). “The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning”, Random House Incorporated

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• A general “law of least effort” applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Law, Skills, People

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.39, Macmillan

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• The only time a lazy man ever succeeds is when he tries to do nothing.

  Evan Esar

  Men, Lazy Man, Trying

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• Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride, or laziness of mind.

  Karl Popper

  Ignorance, Pride, Simple

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• Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from the expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear-and doubt. Self-discipline allows a pitcher to feel his individuality, his inner strength, his talent. He is master of, rather than a slave to, his thoughts and emotions.

  Harvey Dorfman

  Freedom, Fear, Thinking

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• There is a - deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there's a laziness in me.

  Roger Ailes

  Thinking, Deep Down

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• When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing tastes, interests and capacity of his audience. These no less than the language , the marble, the paint, are part of his aw material.; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius, it is laziness and incompetence.

  C. S. Lewis

  Artist, Culture, Genius

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• If we don't come apart; we will come apart.

  Vance Havner

  Leisure, Ifs

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• I just would never go audition, and yet I was in very visible places where people would come looking for actors. I say I'm lazy, though I'm sure if I were in therapy for a lot of years, it would turn out to be a lot more than laziness. After awhile, it was, like, too embarrassing for me not to go on auditions. I had to be humiliated into it.

  Ellen Barkin

  Years, People, Lazy

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• You've got to make haste while it's still light of day. My godmother used to say, I don't want to rust out, I just want to work out. If you stand still long enough, people will throw dirt on you.

  Ben Vereen

  Light, Long, People

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• The slothful are always ready to engage in idle talk of what will be done tomorrow, and every day after.

  John Lyly

  Sloth, Done, Tomorrow

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• Mathematics is being lazy. Mathematics is letting the principles do the work for you so that you do not have to do the work for yourself

  George Polya

  Hard Work, Science, Lazy

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• Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Broken, Lazy, Rules And Regulations

  "MacArthur Close-Up". Book by William Addleman Ganoe, 1962.

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• Generations of women have sacrificed their lives to become their mothers. But we do not have that luxury any more. The world has changed too much to let us have the lives our mothers had. And we can no longer afford the guilt we feel at not being our mothers. We cannot afford any guilt that pulls us back to the past. We have to grow up, whether we want to or not. We have to stop blaming men and mothers and seize every second of our lives with passion. We can no longer afford to waste our creativity. We cannot afford spiritual laziness.

  Erica Jong

  Daughter, Mother, Spiritual

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• In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fix'd: 't is fix'd as in a frost; contracted all, retiring to the breast; but strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

  Alexander Pope

  Being Strong, Exercise, Lazy

  Alexander Pope, George Croly (1854). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope; with a Memoir of the Author, Notes, and Critical Notices on Each Poem. By the Rev. George Croly ... New Edition. [With a Portrait.]”, p.263

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• If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.

  Joe DiMaggio

  Inspirational, Motivational, Sports

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• We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

  Henry Adams

  Order, Sloth, Obstacles

  'The Education of Henry Adams' (1907) ch. 29

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• Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

  John Ruskin

  Clever, Work, Men

  John Ruskin, Christine Roth (2004). “The Two Paths”, p.69, Parlor Press LLC

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• I think that laziness in many ways is the human condition, and that's what has led us to this place where, as we've developed technology.

  Nick Offerman

  Technology, Thinking, Way

  "Nick Offerman on Parks And Recreation and his comically oversized penis". Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. July 18, 2012.

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• My comedy is romanticized laziness.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Comedy

  "Q&A With Jim Gaffigan: ‘Hot Pocket’ Comedian Reaches Out to Our Wounded Soldiers (VIDEO)". Interview with Joshua Kors, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 8, 2012.

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• Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it - especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Faith, Intellectual, Negative

  "Stranger in a Strange Land " by Robert A. Heinlein, (p. 233), 1991.

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• Folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done.

  George Eliot

  Luck, Mind, Use

  George Eliot (2016). “Adam Bede”, p.143, George Eliot

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• A lazy man's wife is generally the power behind the drone.

  Evan Esar

  Men, Lazy Man, Wife

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