Quotes About Doing Nothing

“When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.”

— Erma Bombeck

“But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.”

— Anne Tyler

“In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.”

— Ben Sherwood

“It occurred to Raule that all children were monsters in the world and were instinctively aware of it. They were reminded of their anomalous nature by adults, whom they failed to resemble, and with whose habitations and tools their bodies were at odds. This was surely why the little girl played with the sequins so solemnly and with such intense concentration. She was doing nothing less than conjuring, out of pattern and colour, a world that conformed to her desires and obeyed her will. The boy, on the other hand, showed with the whole attitude of his being that he knew there was only the one world and he would kill it if he could.”

— K.J. Bishop

“Never let the sacrifice of others be for nothing by doing nothing.”

— L.M. Fields

“You either fight active evil or you accept it. Doing nothing is acceptance. There is no in-between.”

— Bill O'Reilly

“Brothers and sisters, if your spouse doesn't feel good about something, show respect for those feelings. When you take the easy way out by saying and doing nothing, you may be enabling destructive behavior.”

— Larry R. Lawrence

“He finds his way up the side of my neck, biting me just a little, moving lightly back and forth, like he's searching for a special spot. When he finds it, I make small sound I've never heard myself make before, like a gasp. He traces his tongue in slow circles around that spot. I realise my hands are just lying in my lap, doing nothing. I concentrate on lifting my arm and reaching for his face, but he catches my hand and holds it tightly at the wrist. His lips leave the spot and find their way back to my mouth, which is waiting, hoping for his return. He plants a gentle kiss on my lower lip and then whispers in my ear, I just got lucky, Rose.”

— Louise Rozett

“For some people, their fear to lose is greater than their desire to succeed, so they end up doing nothing and their dreams become impossible.”

— Rodolfo Costa

“Have you ever tried doing nothing? It's actually really hard. There are so many distractions. But it's the best feeling in the world. If I could prescribe a bottle of nothing to people, it would make life so much better.”

— Katie Kacvinsky

“I won't let anyone talk to my wife that way, Gray said, his voice with a steely edge. I know that underneath that expensive tux you're nothing but a mama's boy sucking off your father's money and looking for a wealthy woman to keep you doing nothing for the rest of your life. I just want you to understand that beneath my tux is a rough and tumble cowboy who will kick your ever-loving ass to hell and back if you ever talk about my wife in derogatory terms again.”

— Carla Cassidy

“Doing nothing is hard. You never know when you're done.
T-SHIRT”

— Darynda Jones

“When good enough gets the job done, go for it. It's way better than wasting resources or, even worse, doing nothing because you can't afford the complex solution.”

— Jason Fried

“Doing nothing is opting for the sweetness of stillness ... Instead of fighting with that which you cannot control, you might as well just see it through ...”

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

“Doing nothing was much more productive than people thought; Jackson often had his most profound insights when he appeared to be entirely idle. He didn't get bored, he just went into a nothing kind of place.”

— Kate Atkinson

“Children understood at a very young age that doing nothing was an expression of power. Doing nothing was a choice swollen with omnipotence. It was, in fact, godly.
And this, she now realized, was the reason why the gods did nothing. Proof of their omniscience. After all, to act was to announce awful limitations, for it revealed that chance acted first, the accidents were just that
events beyond the will of the gods
and all they could do in answer was to attempt to remedy the consequences, to alter natural ends. To act, then, was an admission of fallibility.”

— Steven Erikson

“I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe - and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Holiday? Is like, what? I'm a hyperactive girl, so it may be boring for me to be on the beach doing nothing. I just need to find a place for three weeks and work but sleep in the morning, maybe write a little bit, have a glass of red wine. That's my perfect holiday.”

— Melanie Laurent

“You have to learn to convince yourself that the possibility is greater than the inevitability of doing nothing. Listen,”

— Steve Harvey

“There is a giant gulf between doing something and doing nothing. And someone who makes a lolcat and uploads it - even if only to crack their friends up - has already crossed that chasm to doing something. That's the sea change, and you can see it even with the cute cats.”

— Clay Shirky

“I love working. I feel guilty about doing nothing; I get bored.”

— Nick Frost

“The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“When you're feeling very comfortable with an actor, you are doing nothing.”

— Antonio Banderas

“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

“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented society, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.”

— Rebecca Solnit

“Doing nothing and shrinking spending may save us public money in the short term but could cost us a great deal more over time as the recession takes hold for much longer.”

— Lucy Powell

“Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.”

— Gertrude Stein

“I like doing nothing, actually. Doing nothing is better thing when I am not working.”

— Ziggy Marley

“The cost of doing something would be terrific; the cost of doing nothing even greater.”

— Diane Chamberlain

“You get respect in society if you are aggressive. If you fight then people respect you. If you fight back, people like you for that as well. When Ive been beaten up, if Ive been in a pub doing nothing wrong, the fact I chose not to fight back, that I would never throw a punch back, people say Im weak. I dont think thats a weak thing at all. I think why should I descend to their level? If Ive done nothing wrong, throwing a punch back makes me as bad and corrupt as them. As evil as them, as stupid as them.”

— Richey Edwards

“Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.”

— Floyd Dell

“Jason Alexander is a committed actor, he went from working on a show about nothing to actually doing nothing.”

— Artie Lange

“Doing something costs something. Doing nothing costs something. And, quite often, doing nothing costs a lot more!”

— Ben Feldman

“I love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.”

— Beth Henley

“Most baby books also tend to romanticize the mother who stays at home, as if she really spends her entire day doing nothing but beaming at the baby and whipping up educational toys from pieces of string, rather than balancing cooing time with laundry, cleaning, shopping and cooking.”

— Susan Chira

“Pat Buchanan ... was fired by MSNBC for doing nothing more than voicing his rock-solid conservative thoughts on the otherwise failing network ... The real message of the left is intolerance, zealotry, bigotry and hate. The left has no use for the First Amendment or the rest of the Constitution unless it fits their multicultural, euro-socialist agenda, which is failing all across Europe and everywhere it is practiced.”

— Ted Nugent

“Much of the stress you experience may be created by recognizing a problem and doing nothing about it.”

— Wess Roberts

“Failure is doing nothing.”

— Paul Hauck

“Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.”

— Alain De Botton

“The Assault Weapons Ban deals with a fictional distinction. You have guns that are exactly the same guns as are banned, in function, that were banned because of the way they look. And you know, that's the whole truth of this policy: it's to make politicians look as if they are doing something, when in point of fact, they are doing nothing.”

— Alan Keyes

“There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.”

— Alexander Pope

“People are getting attention for doing nothing, for behaving poorly, for abusing themselves in public and being abused, exploiting themselves. I find it vulgar and I find it awful.”

— Sarah Jessica Parker

“Al Gore has a hit movie called 'An Inconvenient Truth.' I have an inconvenient truth for him: you're still not the president ... This past weekend, Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' earned more per screen than any film in the country ... I dare say Gore's movie is the highest grossing PowerPoint presentation in history ... Global warming: Can we live with it? ... It is time we did something, namely resign ourselves to doing nothing [on screen: Follow Congress' Lead] ... For instance, when sea levels rise, we'll just build levees [on screen: Worked for New Orleans]”

— Stephen Colbert

“The American people want jobs and economic growth. Congress is doing nothing to provide that. The American people want their constitutional liberties protected. Congress is doing nothing to provide that.”

— Ted Cruz

“Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.”

— Paul Valery

“The individual who is mistake-free is also probably sitting around doing nothing. And that is a very big mistake.”

— John Wooden

“Doing nothing makes us crazy. But freedom comes when you don't have to work.”

— Tony Robbins

“O, this life Is nobler than attending for a check, Richer than doing nothing for a robe, Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk: Such pain the cap of him that makes him fine Yet keeps his book uncrossed.”

— William Shakespeare

“The ultimate happiness is doing nothing.”

— Zhuangzi

“Obviously, there is little you can learn from doing nothing.”

— Zig Ziglar