These unproductive quotes will motivate you. Unproductive, not producing or able to produce large amounts of goods, crops, or other commodities.
Below you will find a collection of inspiring, happy, and encouraging unproductive quotes, unproductive sayings, and unproductive proverbs.
Best Unproductive Quotes
- “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
- “Man is by nature restless. When left too long in one place he will inevitably grow bored, unmotivated, and unproductive.” ~ Ricardo Semler
- “If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me.” ~ John Bunyan
- “When you know something or someone in your life is unhealthy or unproductive, that you have grown beyond where they are and where they want to keep you, you must let go. If you tell yourself you do not see it when you do, or if you tell yourself it will get better, you are not being honest with yourself. Stop trying to fix things or change things. Simply let go.” ~ Iyanla Vanzant
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“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
- “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
- “The prospects are dim for a society that makes mascots out of the unproductive and condemns the productive.” ~ Walter E. Williams
- “Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.” ~ Joseph Sobran
- “In any walk of life, a positive, upbeat outlook trumps any adversarial act. Revenge is counterproductive. Unproductive emotions limit one’s ability to move forward, to focus, to think positively, to act creatively.” ~ Jon Huntsman, Jr.
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“If my boss knew how unproductive I am on Fridays, he wouldn’t want me here either.” ~ James Johnson
- “Unproductive worry – like Parkinson’s proverbial law – tends to expand to fill the time available.” ~ Neal A. Maxwell
- “Psychologically I should say that a person becomes an adult at the point when he produces more than he consumes or earns more than he spends. This may be at the age of eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty-five. Some people remain unproductive and dependent children forever and therefore intellectually and emotionally immature.” ~ Henry C. Link
- “[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
- “No slave system has ever been able to continue to function on the slaves provided by its own biological reproduction because the rate of human reproduction is too slow and the expense from infant mortality and years of unproductive upkeep of the young make this prohibitively expensive. This relationship is one of the basic causes of the American Civil War, and was even more significant in destroying ancient Rome.” ~ Carroll Quigley
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“Human nature demands recognition. Without it, people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless, and unproductive.” ~ Ricardo Semler
- “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
- “Straightway is a power word. Straightway is an action word. It means immediately, without delay or hesitation. It means at once. Also, it is associated with having no curve or turn-a straight course, track, or path. Procrastination would be the very opposite of straightway. To procrastinate is to put off intentionally and habitually something that should be done. Procrastination is unproductive delay.” ~ Marvin J. Ashton
- “Today when the public thinks of the products of science it is likely to think about environmental problems, an unproductive armament industry, careless or dishonest ‘scientific’ reports, Livermore cheers for ‘nukes forever’ and a huge amount of self-serving noise on every subject from global warming to ‘the face of God’.” ~ Leo Kadanoff
- As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative.” ~ Brigid Schulte
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“Worry is just imagination used in an unproductive way.” ~ Andy Andrews
- “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
- “Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative – these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.” ~ Angela Davis
- “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
- “We spoke of ourselves as “emancipated” when we got the vote. Yet we are still slaves to the superficial and the superfluous. We are concerned with the length of our skirts, with the latest lipstick, with the newest thrill in hats. We are impressed by advertisements that insist we must be alluring; we must adopt a time-consuming coiffure, we must spend hours with the “beautician,” we must attend fashion shows. As long as women are preoccupied with nonessentials we shall be afflicted with infantilism, passivity, and the eventual disillusionment that results from trivial, unproductive lives.” ~ Mary Barnett Gilson
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“Without goals our efforts may be scattered and unproductive.” ~ Ezra Taft Benson
- “Not rarely, and this is especially true of wives and mothers, the motive behind assuming a disproportionate share of work and responsibility is completely unselfish. We want to protect, to spare those of whom we are fond. We forget that, regardless of the motive, the results of such action are almost always destructive and unproductive.” ~ Hortense Odlum
- “Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view.” ~ Arthur C. Clarke
- “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
- “It is time… to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over ‘originalism’ versus ‘dynamism’ or ‘evolution’ and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers.” ~ Diane Wood
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“Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose.” ~ Gilbert Parker
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.” ~ Barbara Mertz
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“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
- “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
- “Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.” ~ Dov Frohman
- “Commercial interests with their advertising industry do not want people to develop contentment and less greed. Military interests in economic, political, ethnic or nationalist guises, do not want people to develop more tolerance, nonviolence and compassion. And ruling groups in general, in whatever sort of hierarchy do not want the ruled to become too insightful, too independent, too creative on their own, as the danger is that they will become insubordinate, rebellious, and unproductive in their alloted tasks.” ~ Robert Thurman
- “This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.” ~ Kerry Gleeson
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“I believe welfare makes you lazy and unproductive.” ~ Charles Evers
- “The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.” ~ Will Durant
- “You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.” ~ Vladimir Lenin
- “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
- “Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems
with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who
never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has
a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the
bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don’t follow anyone
who’s not going anywhere.” ~ Colin Powell -
“Currency trading is unnecessary, unproductive, and totally immoral. It should be stopped.” ~ Mahathir Mohamad
- “Henry Ford has several times sneered at unproductive stockholders…. Well, now. Let’s see. Who made Henry Ford’s own automobile company possible? The stockholders who originally advanced money to him. Who makes it possible for you and me to be carried to and from business by train or streetcar? Stockholders…. Who made our vast telephone and telegraph service possible? Stockholders…. Were stockholders all over the country to withdraw their capital from the enterprises in which they are invested, there would be a panic … on a scale never before known.” ~ B. C. Forbes
- “Will customers keep supporting the enormous overhead required to sustain ineffectual, unproductive stock picking across an array of thousands of individual funds devoted to every investing ‘style’ and economic sector or regional subgroup that some marketing idiot can dream up? Not likely. A brutal shakeout is coming and one of its revelations will be that stock picking is a grossly overrated piece of the puzzle, that cost control is what distinguishes a competitive firm from an uncompetitive one.” ~ Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
- “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
- “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
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“I write all day every day, so when I feel unproductive, it magnifies everything else.” ~ Blake Butler
- “Asian colleges would do well to use a broad range of criteria in selecting students and move beyond the unproductive “examination hell. “” ~ Henry Rosovsky
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Productivity = creating value and delivering it to people. All other busywork is unproductive fluff and should be minimized.” ~ Steve Pavlina
- “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
- “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
- “It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewise it is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “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
- “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
