Efficiency Quotes

“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
― Robert Heinlein

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

[From the Preface]”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“The most inefficient and self-harming thing a person can do is go out looking for love. Let it find you when the time is right and you're out doing what you love to do. Only then will you find it in its truest form.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“Never waste any time you can spend sleeping.”
― Frank H. Knight

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

“Our entire system, in an economic sense, is based on restriction. Scarcity and inefficiency are the movers of money; the more there is of any resource the less you can charge for it. The more problems there are, the more opportunities there are to make money.

This reality is a social disease, for people can actually gain off the misery of others and the destruction of the environment. Efficiency, abundance and sustainability are enemies of our economic structure, for they are inverse to the mechanics required to perpetuate consumption.

This is profoundly critical to understand, for once you put this together you begin to see that the one billion people currently starving on this planet, the endless slums of the poor and all the horrors of a culture due to poverty and pravity are not natural phenomenon due to some natural human order or lack of earthly resources. They are products of the creation, perpetuation and preservation of artificial scarcity and inefficiency.”
― Peter Joseph

“A critic looking at these tightly focused, targeted interventions might dismiss them as Band-Aid solutions. But that phrase should not be considered a term of disparagement. The Band-Aid is an inexpensive, convenient, and remarkably versatile solution to an astonishing array of problems. In their history, Band-Aids have probably allowed millions of people to keep working or playing tennis or cooking or walking when they would otherwise have had to stop. The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Healey’s First Law Of Holes: When in one, stop digging.”
― Denis Healey

“We don't value craftsmanship anymore! All we value is ruthless efficiency, and I say we deny our own humanity that way! Without appreciation for grace and beauty, there's no pleasure in creating things and no pleasure in having them! Our lives are made drearier, rather than richer! How can a person take pride in his work when skill and care are considered luxuries! We're not machines! We have a human need for craftsmanship!”
― Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere

“The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular.”
― H.E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

“Put on a sweater.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.”
― Jacques Ellul

“Be a worthy worker and work will come.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The only way to efficiently battle evil is to copy enough to know how to counter each argument, yet not enough to believe all the bullshit.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“In The Land of Poetry and Fighting, Efficiency rules the throne. I try to live here, so I shave my head because hair is dead and dead is inefficient.”
― Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet

“I want you to take a sleeve of Thin Mints and line them up on the edge of the kitchen counter and when I'm hungry I can just bend over and sweep a cookie into my mouth like I'm scoring a goal in hockey.”
― Jack Gantos, Dead End in Norvelt

“Waste is antithetical to efficiency. You cannot have one while also having the other. In maximizing one, the other will definitely be minimized. In minimizing one, the other will definitely be maximized.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“One reason nature is efficient is because there is no waste. Everything produced creates value for others and is consumed by others on the basis of value. What one life may discard as not valuable is consumed by another life because of its valuable. And all things produced and consumed are continually upcycled, becoming more valuable each cycle. Perhaps it’s because nature has a capital-centric view of things; everything in nature is capital and produces capital which to varying degrees provides value to all other things in nature. Imagine if economies worked like this. Imagine if investment portfolios worked like this. Imagine if businesses worked like this. What a beautiful world it would be.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“One dead body required two men either to bury it or to transport it to the rear. A wounded soldier, on the other hand, immobilized five men for an indeterminate amount of time; and who knew whether it was even worth the effort.”
― STEPHANE AUDEGUY, The Theory of Clouds

“It’s important to have an efficient business. But it’s also just as important to have an effective business. Efficiency and effectiveness should be an inseparable pair.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Effectiveness is about asking the questions, what do we want our business to be great at? And what is the best way to achieve the results we desire?”
― Hendrith Smith

“In terms of biological systems, efficiency is a matter of life or death. And the same is true in terms of business systems.”
― Hendrith Smith

“One way to improve efficiency is to streamline processes according to schedules, required inputs and expected outputs.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“Profits are determined by productivity; by value added and by efficiencies and effectiveness.”
― Hendrith Smith

“Nature ensures efficiency through self-sustaining systems. Businesses should do the same.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“In the shadow of busyness, multitasking costs us our creativity, productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, and relationships.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Quantraz

“We need a cultural shift towards looking at multitasking as an act of foolishness.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Quantraz

“Clutter is a state of mind when we miss simplicity and entangle ourselves in complexities.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Quantraz

“Life is as simple as finding a lost TV remote.”
― Sukant Ratnakar, Quantraz