Unproductive Quotes - Page 3

• I write all day every day, so when I feel unproductive, it magnifies everything else.

  Blake Butler

  Writing, Feels

  Interview with David Rice, logger.believermag.com. October 16, 2014.

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• The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

  Alain de Botton

  Greek, Rewards, Leisure

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• Currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive and totally immoral. It should be stopped.

  Mahathir Mohamad

  Unnecessary, Currency, Should

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• 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

  Usury, Banking, Loan

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• 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

  Thinking, World, Needs

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• 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

  Running, Facts, Six

  Charles L. Allen (1984). “God's Psychiatry: Healing for the Troubled Heart and Spirit”, p.28, Baker Books

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• Productivity = creating value and delivering it to people. All other busywork is unproductive fluff and should be minimized.

  Steve Pavlina

  Creating Value, People, Should

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• Never has the divide between the iPhone world and the politics world been so clear: I saw a bunch of people very well-served by their computers and telephones (very often Apple products) but undeniably shortchanged by our government-run cartel education system. And the tragedy for them - and for us - is that they will spend their energy trying to expand the sphere of the ineffective, hidebound, rent-seeking, unproductive political world, giving the . . .politicians. . .an even stronger whip hand over the Steve Jobses and Henry Fords - and we will be the poorer for it.

  Kevin Williams

  Running, Government, Hands

  "A Jobs Agenda". www.nationalreview.com. October 5, 2011 Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279321.

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• 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

  Block, Passion, Successful

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• 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

  Mind, Kind, Hard

  Source: mousertime.blogspot.com

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• 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

  Musical, Different, Want

  "Sean Paul's "Imperial Blaze" will still be 'Meaningful'" by Jayson Rodriguez, www.mtv.com. July 20, 2009.

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• I thank the Prime Minister for his remarks about me. Debating with him at the Dispatch Box has been exciting, fascinating, fun, an enormous challenge and, from my point of view, wholly unproductive in every sense. I am told that in my time at the Dispatch Box I have asked the Prime Minister 1,118 direct questions, but no one has counted the direct answers-it may not take long.

  William Hague

  Fun, Views, Long

  House of Commons, Prime Minister's Questions, July 18, 2001.

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• Where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?.

  Thomas Malthus

  Looks, Adam, Consumption

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1836). “Principles of Political Economy: Considered with a View to Their Practical Application”, p.406

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• 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

  Encouragement, Giving, Balance

  Thomas Robert Malthus, Edward Anthony Wrigley, David Souden (1986). “The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus: Principles of political economy. Part 2”

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• 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

  Running, Government, Evil

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.389

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• Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Flower, Men, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (1949). “Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”

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• Most meetings are too long, too dull, too unproductive - and too much a part of corporate life to be abandoned.

  Lois Wyse

  Long, Dull, Too Much

  Lois Wyse (2011). “Company Manners: How to Behave in the Workplace in the 90s”, p.126, Crown Business

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• An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.

  John Sterling

  Truth, Patents, Scales

  John Sterling (1848). “Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues”, p.167

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• No day is wholly unproductive of good.

  Hesiod

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• 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

  Sleep, Fighting, Pay

  "Literature,one screen at a time" by Alex Beam, www.nytimes.com. November 16, 2005.

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• 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

  One Day, Labels, Proud

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• 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

  Choices, Freedom Of Choice, Unhealthy

  Amanda Filipacchi (2014). “Vapor: A Novel”, p.64, Open Road Media

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• 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

  Essentials, Roles, Economics

  Paul A. Baran (1968). “Political Econ of Growth”, p.25, NYU Press

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• 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

  Women, Thinking, Intellectual

  Helene Deutsch (1973). “Girlhood”

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• 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

  Aspect, Trifles, Concern

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