Quotes about productivity
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Chuck Palahniuk photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Erich Fromm photo
Richard Bach photo

“If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

page 119
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Chuck Palahniuk photo
Ram Dass photo

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now
Jasper Fforde photo
Victor Hugo photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Rick Warren photo

“we are product of our past but we don't have to be prisoners of it.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Variant: We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Mark Helprin photo
Michael Pollan photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo
Seth Godin photo
Michel Foucault photo

“The individual is the product of power.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

James Surowiecki photo
Flannery O’Connor photo
Dean Ornish photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Albert Einstein photo

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Peter F. Drucker photo
Ayn Rand photo
Max Lucado photo
Brené Brown photo

“Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Steven Pressfield photo
Holly Black photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Kennedy's "focus on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution of human institutions." was quoted by Barack Obama in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
1963, American University speech
Context: I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace — based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions — on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace — no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems.

“Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
H. Beam Piper photo

“Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.”

Marcus Buckingham (1966) British writer

Source: First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

Wilkie Collins photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Erich Fromm photo

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"

John Maynard Keynes photo
Sam Harris photo

“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)
Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Stephen R. Covey photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Essay "Distractions I" in Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Christopher Isherwood

Audre Lorde photo
Harper Lee photo
Guy Debord photo

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 1.

Haruki Murakami photo
Terry Goodkind photo

“Right and wrong are not the product of census.”

Source: Naked Empire

Charles Baudelaire photo

“Evil happens without effort, naturally, inevitably; good is always the product of skill.”

Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalité; le bien est toujours le produit d'un art.
XI: "Éloge du maquillage" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%89loge_du_maquillage
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

William Blake photo

“Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”

Variant: Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 10

Ayn Rand photo
Rick Riordan photo
Maya Angelou photo
Warren Buffett photo
Vandana Shiva photo

“Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

Source: Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace

William Styron photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't.”

Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16<!-- p. 228-->
Source: Brave New World (1932)
Context: I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.

Ann Brashares photo

“Our lives may be more productive, but less inventive.”

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Ayn Rand photo

“Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Stephen R. Covey photo
Wendell Berry photo
Leo Rosten photo

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

"The Myths by Which We Live", in The Rotarian, Vol. 107, No. 3 (September 1965), p. 55
Variant: The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.

Augusten Burroughs photo
James Cramer photo
Harry Harrison photo
Clay Shirky photo
Sean Spicer photo

“The President had an incredibly productive set of meetings and discussions with Prime Minister Joe Trudeau of Canada”

Sean Spicer (1971) American political strategist and former White House Press Secretary and Communications Director for President…

Sean Spicer appears to call Prime Minister 'Joe Trudeau,' Twitter Loses it http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/02/14/sean-spicer-joe-trudeau-video_n_14748486.html?ncid=fcbklnkcahpmg00000001 (February 14, 2017)
Variant: The President had a very cordial conversation with Prime Minister Trumble...

Antonio Negri photo
David Draiman photo

“Communism further alleges that religion is not of divine origin but is simply a man-made tool used by the dominant class to suppress the exploited class. Marx and Engels described religion as the opiate of the people which is designed to lull them into humble submission and an acceptance of the prevailing mode of production which the dominant class desires to perpetuate. Any student of history would agree that there have been times in history when unscrupulous individuals and even misdirected religious organizations have abused the power of religion, just as all other institutions of society have been abused at various times. But it was not the abuse of religion which Marx and Engels deplored as much as the very existence of religion. They considered it a creation of the dominant class, a tool and a weapon in the hands of the oppressors. They pointed out the three-fold function of religion from their point of view: first, it teaches respect for property rights; second, it teaches the poor their duties towards the property and prerogatives of the ruling class; and third, it instills a spirit of acquiescence among the exploited poor so as to destroy their revolutionary spirit. The fallacy of these allegations is obvious to any student of Judaic-Christian teachings. The Biblical teaching of respect for property applies to rich and poor alike; it admonishes the rich to give the laborer his proper wages and to share their riches with the needy.”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Joyce Brothers photo

“No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you'd be more productive.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Succeeding Sane : Making Room for Joy in a Crazy World (1998) by Bonnie St. John Deane, p. 122

Martin Heidegger photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“Our real experiences, day by day and moment by moment, are so intrinsically organised and definite, it does not at first occur to us that the principles which organise and define them, rendering them intelligible, and consciously apprehensible, are and must be the spontaneous products of the mind's own action.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.297

Robert A. Dahl photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Fryderyk Skarbek photo
James Wilks photo
Ted Budd photo
Bernard Harcourt photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Quoted from “The Labor Charter: The Corporate State and its Organization”, promulgated by Mussolini's Grand Council of Fascism, Article 9, (April 21, 1927) Copy found in Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, Charles F. Delzell, The MacMillan Press, (1971) p. 122. Also in Benito Mussolini’s “Doctrine of Fascism”, published as “Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions” (1935), Rome: Ardita Publishers, p.135-136.
1920s

Mitt Romney photo

“I'm not happy exporting jobs but we must move ahead in technology and patents. I don't like losing any jobs but we'll see new opportunities created selling products there. We'll have a net net increase in economic activity, just as we did with free trade. It's tempting to want to protect our markets and stay closed. But at some point it all comes crashing down and you're hopelessly left behind. Then you are Russia.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

"Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's Message: Globalize or Die", CRN.com, 2005-12-16 http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=HV04UPK5RVOU2QSNDBNCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=174300587
2003–2007 Governor of Massachusetts

Mary Parker Follett photo