Counter Productive Quotes

Trying to effect change in others is a lost cause especially if you are unwilling to first change yourself. It's easier to focus on other people's issues or shortcomings rather than look inward. It's counter-productive to try to clean someone else's house, while your house is a disaster. Not to mention, hypocritical. Start with yourself and then worry about others. ~Jason Versey ~ Jason Versey

Putting labels on people is so counter-productive. Most of us on some issues could be considered conservative, on other issues could be considered progressive, on other issues might be thought of as being moderate, on other issues might be thought of as being rather forthright. ~ Tony Abbott

Tara. I'm a vampire," Pearl said.
"Yeah, whatever, and I'm queen of the sea."
"Your Marine Majesty, I'm a vampire," Pearl said.
Concentrating, she slid her fangs out. "Tara. Tara!" She curled back her lips to expose the points. "See"
Tara screamed.
"I won't hurt you," Pearl said. Calm down. Sheesh."
Tara continued to scream.
Pearl considered biting her merely to shut her up. Regrettably that would be counter productive. Studying her nails, she waited for Tara to quit screaming. She noticed that Tara didn't try to exit the car, which was an interesting choice.
"You aren't running away," Pearl said.
"Duh, it's raining outside," Tara said. ~ Sarah Beth Durst

Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion. ~ Richard Dawkins

The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime. ~ Antony Beevor

I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk. ~ Chuck Schumer

Reform has to be based on opening your mind and opening the mind does not come from decrees or laws. It comes from a whole set of circumstances, which if you do not have, anything you do will be not productive or will be counter-productive. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

I learned a long time ago that place matters to me, on many levels, and maybe more than it should, but it is generally counter-productive for me to resist it. ~ Val Kilmer

I think the word is counter-productive. Capitalism is counter-productive to art, just as the Catholic Church was counter-productive to art four hundred years ago. ~ Mick Farren

War is an irrational, counter-productive way to handle conflicts. ~ Lawrence S. Wittner

I've found that sitting around and obsessing about projects moving forward, when there's actually nothing I can do about it, at a certain point, is really counter-productive. ~ Danny Strong

We needed to be uncompromising with our workforce, to expect 100 percent of our employees to comply 100 percent of the time with complex and ever-changing government mandates. Striving to comply with every law does not mean agreeing with every law. But, even when faced with laws we think are counter-productive, we must first comply. Only then, from a credible position, can we enter into a dialogue with regulatory agencies to demonstrate alternatives that are more beneficial. If these efforts fail, we can then join with others in using education and/or political efforts to change the law. ~ Charles Koch

The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive. ~ Linus Torvalds

We are all on a collision course with ourselves. Inevitably, our existing habits will be counter-productive to achieving our bigger picture goals. To avoid the crash, we need to regularly review how we are doing things and make adjustments as needed. ~ John Fairclough

The fact is, race is a constant factor in American life. Yet reacting to every incident, real or imagined, is crippling, tiring, and ultimately counter productive. I grew up in a family that believed that you might not be able to control your circumstances, but you can control your reaction to them. There was no room for being a victim or depending on the white man to take care of you. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival. ~ Jacque Fresco

Pushing myself against my own will really, because some of this stuff is hard. I don't consider myself to be a great guitar player, so pushing myself as a guitar player or pushing myself as a singer, as a performer, and just riding that fine line between being so hard on yourself that it's counter-productive and being so hard on yourself that nothing is ever good enough is what drives me. ~ Cody Johnson

The more you watch users carefully and listen to them articulate their intentions, motivations, and thought processes, the more you realize that their individual reactions to Web pages are based on so many variables that attempts to describe users in terms of one-dimensional likes and dislikes are futile and counter-productive. Good design, on the other hand, takes this complexity into account. ~ Steve Krug

When you work with someone you don't quite know, you have to figure the director out and you can come up with ideas that are counter-productive. ~ Stellan Skarsgard

We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults.

There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small gr ~ Wendell Berry

The way the [welfare] programs are organized, poor people are only paid to do things that are counter-productive - such as breaking up their families, such as not earning above a certain level of income. ~ Thomas Sowell

Julia Roberts was really rather lovely. I had to interview her on Pebble Mill At One years ago. You learn not to be starstruck if you're trying to get a decent interview out of someone. If you fall apart it's counter productive. ~ Alan Titchmarsh

I have a problem with people saying feminine means anti-feminist, and I think it's counter-productive to immediately associate anything 'girly' with vanity or stupidity. ~ Tavi Gevinson

Moreover, seeing ourselves as a majority led at times to both a theological downgrade and a counter-productive public stance. The application of the promises to Israel to the United States of America, for example, caused many to miss, as we will see in the next chapter, the meaning of the kingdom of God, and thus to bypass Jesus Christ himself. The idea of America as a Christian nation is able to get "Amens" in the churches only as long as the churches believe America is, at least in some ways, with us and not against us. But what happens when the cultural climate starts to shift in obvious ways? If the church believes the United States is a sort of new Israel, then we become frantic when we see ourselves "losing America." We then start to speak in gloomy terms of America as, at best, Babylon, a place of hopeless exile, or, at worst, Gomorrah, slouching toward the judgment of God. ~ Russell D. Moore

The vast carnival of cruelty called animal exploitation goes on and on
and it is all so needless, even counter-productive. There is already an adequate (often superior) non-animal substitute for virtually everything obtained by animal suffering and slaughter ... ~ H. Jay Dinshah

I don't like to be labeled, to be anything. I've made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it's counter-productive. ~ Neil Young

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued ... America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive. ~ Samantha Power

Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets. ~ Michael J. Sandel

It's a Monday morning, 9:13 a.m. on the dot, and the counter person, Mark J., takes exactly seventeen seconds to acknowledge my presence. He then offers to ~ Julia Kent

A book--a real book--is one choice, taken from a pile, opened and entered as its own singular, separate world. Once chosen, you are not holding the constant opportunity to alter or improve your choice, or simply change it just for the sake of restless change. You are there, now, without the relentless pressure of the fact that you could always be, and maybe you should be, maybe you'd be happier or more productive or different, doing something else. It's a choice I hope my kids will decide to make, often. ~ K.J. Dell'Antonia

Faced with a time shortage, we squeeze tasks into the nooks and crannies of our calendar, leaving less and less time to switch between them. As a result, we become less and less productive exactly when we need to be most productive. ~ Sendhil Mullainathan

Superstructure and the productive forces is admitted, is it still possible to maintain that production determines the superstructure, rather than the other way round? It is the old chicken-and-egg problem all over again. The productive forces determine the relations of production to which correspond the ideas of the society. These ideas lead to the further development of productive forces, which lead to new relations of production, to which correspond new ideas. In this cyclical movement it makes no more sense to say that productive forces play the determining role than to say that the egg ensures the continued existence of chickens rather than the other way round. ~ Anonymous

As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metal work as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter. ~ Pat Conroy

The trusted quality and power of the believed sponsor of your words will have a big impact on the power released in and through your words. You should have sufficient sponsorship to counter the kind of words you do not want to influence your life, thoughts and mission. Contrary words and convincing voices will encounter you on the route to your destiny and they need to be countered with strong conviction and authority. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Questions are far more effective than defensive statements. They do not imply agreement, but they do convey interest and a desire to understand and facilitate an environment for peak performance, a central thread of effective leadership ... The next time someone accuses you of virtually anything, ask some questions. Resolving the situation may take more time, but the outcome will likely be more productive for both of you. ~ Stephen Young

Yeah. She's still just observing though. She's too useless to even carry plates at the moment, so please just think of her as some Russian ornament."
Tom laughed at the owner's blunt response, and asked another question.
"Chief, how do I say something like, 'you're beautiful', in Russian?"
" ... 'Vi ocharovatelny'."
"Err ... Bee, acherabatennen."
However, hearing this, the Caucasian woman looked confused at Tom, and spoke to the owner behind the counter.
" ... What is this man saying? It is unintelligible. I question its relation to the Japanese language."
With a bitter smile, the owner turned his head towards the woman, and spoke to her.
"'Vi ocharovatelny'."
" ... Why do you suddenly speak these social compliments? Please concisely explain your reasoning."
"That's what that young man over there just tried to say to you."
"In which language, exactly?"
Listening to their conversation, ~ Ryohgo Narita

Compound actions on shared state, such as incrementing a hit counter (read-modify-write) or lazy initialization (check-then-act), must be made atomic to avoid race conditions. Holding a lock for the entire duration of a compound action can make that compound action atomic. However, just wrapping the compound action with a synchronized block is not sufficient; if synchronization is used to coordinate access to a variable, it is needed everywhere that variable is accessed. Further, when using locks to coordinate access to a variable, the same lock must be used wherever that variable is accessed. ~ Brian Goetz

Literally from the moment I came in the door of MIT, it was very clear that a highly productive 40-year partnership between U.S. research universities and the federal government was badly eroding. ~ Charles Vest

All former counter-insurgency officers categorically denied having perpetrated torture during the Terror. In the case of at least one such research participant, anecdotal evidence from mutual contacts suggested otherwise. It is impossible to tell who, if any, of the former counter-insurgency officers featured in this chapter perpetrated torture during the Bheeshanaya. Eliciting confessions is not the aim of this book. My interest lies, instead, in exploring the ways in which 'perpetrators' of violence remember and reconstruct their disturbing pasts, and how they come to terms with it in the present. ~ Dhana Hughes

In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. But now, mainstream culture isn't complacent, it's stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That's not wimpy - it's powerful and productive. ~ Michael Azerrad

They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive. ~ Idries Shah

Psychology, unlike chemistry, unlike algebra, unlike literature, is an owner's manual for your own mind. It's a guide to life. What could be more important than grounding young people in the scientific information that they need to live happy, healthy, productive lives? To have good relationships? ~ Daniel Goldstein

Knowledge is power. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not hiding it. ~ Peter Drucker

Pied Beauty -
Glory be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced
fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Maybe it was the lack of stimulation that made you so productive and sort of... determined. ~ Susan Maushart

It's an old principle, as old as the Buddha or Marcus Aurelius: We need at times to step away from our lives in order to put them in perspective. Especially if we wish to be productive. ~ Pico Iyer

I don't like a lot of social programs either because it makes you non-productive. ~ Charles Evers

If husbands could realize what large returns of profit may be gotten out of a wife by a small word of praise paid over the counter when the market is just right, they would bring matters around the way they wish them much oftener than they usually do. Arguments are unsafe with wives, because they examine them; but they do not examine compliments. One can pass upon a wife a compliment that is three-fourths base ~ Mark Twain

The Kitchen





Half a papaya and a palmful of sesame oil;
lately, your husband's mind has been elsewhere.

Honeyed dates, goat's milk;
you want to quiet the bloating of salt.

Coconut and ghee butter;
he kisses the back of your neck at the stove.

Cayenne and roasted pine nuts;
you offer him the hollow of your throat.

Saffron and rosemary;
you don't ask him her name.

Vine leaves and olives;
you let him lift you by the waist.

Cinnamon and tamarind;
lay you down on the kitchen counter.

Almonds soaked in rose water;
your husband is hungry.

Sweet mangoes and sugared lemon;
he had forgotten the way you taste.

Sour dough and cumin;
but she cannot make him eat, like you. ~ Warsan Shire

We look back on history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling; revolutions and counter-revolutions succeeding one another; wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed; one nation dominant and then another. As Shakespeare's King Lear puts it, "the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon." In one lifetime I've seen my fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, and the great majority of them convinced – in the words of what is still a favorite song – that God has made them mighty and will make them mightier yet. I've heard a crazed Austrian announce the establishment of a German Reich that was to last for a thousand years; an Italian clown report that the calendar will begin again with his assumption of power; a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I've seen America wealthier than all the rest of the world put together; and with the superiority of weaponry that would have enabled Americans, had they so wished, to outdo an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of conquest. All in one little lifetime – gone with the wind: England now part of an island off the coast of Europe, threatened with further dismemberment; Hitler and Mussolini seen as buffoons; Stalin a sinister name in the regime he helped to found and dominated totally for three decades; Americans haunted by fears of running out of the precious ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it's all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters. ~ Samuel Fuller

British business is disappointed that the MPC felt unable to act more boldly to counter the worsening economic circumstances and the sharp slowdown in the pace of economic activity,. ~ David Frost

I was one of those kids who liked a lot of attention. I was always the kid in class who'd be telling jokes and getting in trouble. Theater was a natural way for me to channel that and also become a productive member of society. ~ Lauren Worsham

Many emerging countries are facing the same issue of overheating and inflation because they have been vigorously expanding fiscal and monetary policy to counter the 2008 shock. ~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Silence is a productive coating over pain." -We Were Liars ~ E. Lockhart

To be productive, effective and to live a life of understanding and wisdom is not to waste time ~ Sunday Adelaja

I'm used to being productive, ever since I was young. ~ Robert Pozen

In my opinion, being an effective leader requires being an effective listener. The most productive leaders are usually those who are consistently willing to listen and learn. ~ John Wooden

Kit burst out laughing. Ty looked even more astonished than he had when Kit had said he'd miss him. But after a second, he started to laugh too. They were both laughing, Kit doubled up over the blankets, when Magnus came into the room. He looked at the two of them and shook his head.

"Bedlam," he said, and went over to the counter where the glass tubes and funnels had been set up. ~ Cassandra Clare

One of the most productive ways a government can spend money on the people is by building more prisons. That's what makes the US so great. That's what freedom is all about. ~ Jarod Kintz

I unloaded several archive boxes from my trunk and began filling one with books. They compiled a cross-section of the counter-culture bestseller list of the sixties and seventies: Stranger in a Strange Land, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Walden, On the Road, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Catch 22. I ~ Dan Duffy

The god believed by the Ancient Egyptians to have taught the principles of astronomy to their ancestors was Thoth: "He who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars, the enumerator of the earth and of what is
therein, and the measurer of the earth. ~ Graham Hancock

We are condemned to be modern. We can't escape the facts of our history or of living in an age dominated by instrumental rationality, even as we look for ways out of it ... But it has become our historic responsibility to acknowledge the continuing importance of myth, at a level beyond science, in realizing a more organic, holistic relation to the world. A future social ecology would transcend both anti-Enlightenment reaction and [a] reified Enlightenment counter-reaction, which remain only fragmented polarities within bourgeois modernity. ~ David Watson

Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one's time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Sadly like cancer, we may never fully find a way to STOP bullying. But we can continue to work diligently to help empower children to rise above its despair and lead them to live healthy productive lives in their future.
Bullying Ben ~ Timothy Pina

Harry, you're small," I said. "You're tiny, little, inadequate, diminutive, meager, undersized, and paltry - and the only way we'll see eye to eye is if you stand on top of a lunch counter."
Then I assumed fighting stance number forty-one, the ass of the aardvark. It's a simple position to assume but difficult to hold without getting arrested. ~ Joe Canzano

Just then, Toot buzzed back into the apartment from somewhere. He zipped in frantic, dizzying circles, starting at the point he'd last seen Lacuna, until his spiral search pattern took him to the kitchen. Then he swooped down to Lacuna, landing neatly on the counter.

I peered at the two little faeries. Toot held out to Lacuna a wrapped watermelon Jolly Ranger, as if he were offering frankincense and myrrh to the Christ child. "Hi!" he said brightly. "I'm Major General Toot-toot!"

Lacuna looked up from her food and saw Toot's gift. Her eyes narrowed.

And then she sucker punched Toot-toot right in the face.

My little bodyguard flew back a couple of feet and landed on his ass. Both of his hands went up to his nose, and he blinked in startled bewilderment.

Toot had dropped the Jolly Rancher. Lacuna calmly kicked it into the disposal drain of the kitchen sink. Then she turned her back on Toot, ignoring him completely, and went back to eating her meal.

Toot's eyes were even wider as he started at Lacuna. "Wow!" he said. ~ Jim Butcher

Joe arched an eyebrow at me, leaning against the counter. He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles bulging from the residual pull of the moon. He was beautiful because he was Joe. He was beautiful because he was mine. "Hey, ~ T.J. Klune

Get me your manager." Dove held her head high and tried to seem older and more self-assured.
The teenager barely registered her request.
"Do it now. My friend here is about to crap his pants. Do you want to smell it?" Dove slapped her hands down on the counter, snapping the life into the girl. "Do you want to smell his shit? ~ Debra Anastasia

If you're worrying about yourself too much, help someone wlse who has real worries. Turn your anxiety into something productive. ~ Jessica Thompson

Before you can become a millionaire, you must learn to think like one. You must learn how to motivate yourself to counter fear with courage. Making critical decisions about your career, business, investments and other resources conjures up fear, fear that is part of the process of becoming a financial success. ~ Thomas J. Stanley