Ineffectiveness Quotes

Churches are notorious for creating competing systems, wherein unclear direction and conflicting information threaten to cause a breakdown and paralyze the ministry. Instead of replacing old systems, we tend to just download and add whatever is new to what already exists. Soon our capacity becomes fragmented and we find ourselves confronted with the signs of ineffectiveness: some ministries seem routine and irrelevant; the teaching feels too academic; calendars are saturated with mediocre programs; staff members pull in opposite directions; volunteers lack motivation; departments viciously compete for resources; and it becomes harder and harder to figure out if we are really being successful. Too many churches desperately need an upgrade. They need to reformat their hard drives and install a clean system. They need to rewrite their code so everyone is clear about what is important and how they should function. ~ Andy Stanley

To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they "talk for effect"; and then the writers answer: "What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness? ~ G.K. Chesterton

Politicians lie with almost every breath they mustered, and didn't hesitate to slit each other's throats for gain. They were whores willing to sell their vote to the highest bidder. The second was ineffectiveness. Politicians did not represent the people who elected them. They might have held onto the delusion that they served the public, but the only thing they represented was big business ~ Richard Stephenson

The remedy for the mental unrest, which is in itself an illness, lies not in an enlightened knowledge of the harmfulness and ineffectiveness of worry, not even in the acquirement of an unconscious conscience, but in the living of a life so full and good that worry cannot find place in it. That ~ Herbert J. Hall

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it! ~ William Hutchison Murray

Rob Petrie is who I really am - in personality and general ineffectiveness. ~ Dick Van Dyke

To have the external pressure of a job removed is very astonishing. Your own will is now your only motor and it has no horse-power. Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o'clock every morning, do not realize this and take more credit for initiative and industry than they deserve. And it is why all the bright women of the world, who if more were expected of them, might do important work, but who instead have a chronic feeling of ineffectiveness and sloth. ~ Brenda Ueland

Good units walk a thin line between indiscipline and ineffectiveness. Ignore the rules too often and you've got a mob, but enforce the rules too strictly and you've got a herd. ~ Henry V. O'Neil

There is no waste in the world that equals the waste from needless, ill-directed, and ineffective motions. ~ Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.

Yes, think what a lot of nonsense one can figure out with plenty of time. Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness. ~ Maj Sjowall

Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking. ~ Stephen Covey

This combination of the abandonment of evangelism, the divorce between evangelism, apologetics and discipleship, and the failure to appreciate true human diversity is deeply serious. It is probably behind the fact that many Christians, realizing the ineffectiveness of many current approaches and sensing the unpopularity and implausibility of much Christian witness, have simply fallen silent and given up evangelism altogether, sometimes relieved to mask their evasion under a newfound passion for social justice that can forget the gaucheness of evangelism. At best, many of us who take the good news of Jesus seriously are eager and ready to share the good news when we meet people who are open, interested or in need of what we have to share. But we are less effective when we encounter people who are not open, not interested or not needy - in other words, people who are closed, indifferent, hostile, skeptical or apathetic, and therefore require persuasion. ~ Os Guinness