Productive Work Quotes

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  Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

  Francis of Assisi

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  President Gellhaus’ Speech, annualmeeting.acog.org. 2016.

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• Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

  Stephen King

  Inspirational, Writing, Procrastination

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• Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.

  Peter Drucker

  Procrastination, Productive Life, Government

  Peter Drucker (2013). “Managing for the Future”, p.156, Routledge

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• The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

  Tom Peters

  Positive, Simple, People

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• The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

  Thomas Sowell

  Procrastination, Productive Life, People

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.319, Hoover Press

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• Focus on being productive instead of busy.

  Tim Ferriss

  Focus, Kick Ass, Busy

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• One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens.

  Joshua Foer

  Procrastination, Challenges, Age

  "How I learned a language in 22 hours" by Joshua Foer, www.theguardian.com. November 09, 2012.

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• Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Business, Thinking, Creative

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.105, Penguin

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• Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live.

  Ayn Rand

  Acceptance, Facts, Acquiring Knowledge

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.963, Penguin

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• Understanding your employee's perspective can go a long way towards increasing productivity and happiness.

  Kathryn Minshew

  Inspirational, Leadership, Long

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• Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Investing Money, Investment Success

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.118, John Wiley & Sons

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• Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.

  Erich Fromm

  Peace, Able, Quiet

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.107, Routledge

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• Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an "individual," has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.

  Erich Fromm

  Integrity, Men, Self

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.33, Open Road Media

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• Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.

  Noam Chomsky

  Home, Opportunity, Mad

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.179, Pantheon

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• Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values-that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Inspirational, Success, Acceptance

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.105, Penguin

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• In my view, wholesome pleasure, sport, and recreation are as vital to this nation as productive work and should have a large share in the national budget.

  Walt Disney

  Sports, Fun, Should Have

  "The Quotable Walt Disney". Book by Disney Book Group, 2001.

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• We are rapidly moving into the post-industrial age, when we must redefine what is "productive" work, as more and more jobs are being replaced by automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

  Riane Eisler

  Jobs, Moving, Age

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• For both Adam Smith and Karl Marx the essential work of caring for people, starting in early childhood, was "just women's work" - and in their minds not even classified as "productive work."

  Riane Eisler

  Caring, People, Childhood

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• I would like to see a critical mass of very gifted anarchists come together in an appropriate place in order to do highly productive work. That's it. I don't know why that can't be done except for the fact that I think that people mistrust their own ideals today. I don't think that they don't believe in them; I think they mistrust the viability of them. They're afraid to commit themselves to their ideals.

  Murray Bookchin

  Believe, Thinking, Order

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.

  Ivan Illich

  Military, Race, Safety

  Ivan Illich (1970). “The Dawn of Epimethean Man, and Other Essays”

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• In the U.S. for instance, the value of a homemaker's productive work has been imputed mostly when she was maimed or killed and insurance companies and/or the courts had to calculate the amount to pay her family in damages. Even at that, the rates were mostly pink collar and the big number was attributed to the husband's pain and suffering.

  Gloria Steinem

  Pain, Husband, Numbers

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.392, Open Road Media

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• All of us have just got to find that time to look after our bodies. That helps us make sure that our mind is sharp. I know that when I'm feeling great and really fit, I can get in three or four hours more of really productive work.

  Richard Branson

  Feelings, Mind, Three

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. 2013.

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• I hope I don't sound like an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud, but when I hear about people making vast fortunes without doing any productive work or contributing anything to society, my reaction is: “How can I get in on that?

  Dave Barry

  People, Sound, Mud

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• If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Emotional, Ties

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• Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal.

  Ayn Rand

  Goal, Achievement, Competition

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.99, Penguin

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