Top 105 Dysfunctional Quotes

I’m always drawn toward family drama, and dysfunctional family stories. It speaks to me, in a really profound way, and I think there’s so much to explore within it.

Most families are dysfunctional.

I tell the truth, and I expose myself as a weak, misguided, misdirected, dysfunctional human being I used to be.

As a child marooned in a post-war South London backwater with no ready cash and a bafflingly dysfunctional family, I had to glean my amusement wherever I could.

You could say that Fleetwood Mac is a bit of a dysfunctional family, but we are a family.

I love making people laugh. It’s an addiction and it’s probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there’s no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

The motivations I had for being successful were somewhat dysfunctional.

The dynamic of how women and men are meant to interact, for those of us who are looking for a heterosexual relationship, is very broken, and it leads to a lot of really dysfunctional relationships, abusive and otherwise.

The black community has fallen into this horribly dysfunctional equilibrium.

In a very dysfunctional business, CNN happens to be the most functional network I’ve worked at.

The dichotomy between art and industry is totally dysfunctional in terms of film.

We fight a lot, you know, but that’s family. We may be dysfunctional but we’re still family.

‘The Glass Castle’ by Jeannette Walls is the quintessential dysfunctional family.

The immigration flows have to be controlled. We have to know who comes into Italy. The problem shouldn’t be left to oversized, dysfunctional, nongovernmental groups.

I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.

My childhood had much clarity. I didn’t see abuse. I didn’t see my parents bickering. I didn’t live in a dysfunctional family.

Clearly, America’s dysfunctional food culture must bear some of the blame for our excess pounds, but it’s likely our walking-averse lifestyles contribute as well.

Any time an elected official in the world we’re in today that appears so dysfunctional challenges a core constituency not of their opponent but of their own political base, I think we should pause and give them credit.

My parents were like June and Ward Cleaver; there was nothing dysfunctional about them.

It’s possible to fall in love with somebody who doesn’t treat us well, who makes us feel worse about ourselves, who doesn’t hold the same respect for us as we do for them, or who has such a dysfunctional life themselves that they threaten to bring us down with them.

People who come from dysfunctional families are not destined for a dysfunctional life.

There’s an awful lot about our criminal justice system that is dysfunctional. Everyone who sets foot in a criminal courtroom will see myriad ways the system is dysfunctional.

I have a very non-existent, dysfunctional relationship with my biological mother.

Dysfunctional co-dependent relationships always appeal to me. I don’t know exactly how it started. I start writing sketches of characters and little scene-lets, and then it builds.

Congress is dysfunctional.

I don’t think people who are already burdened with social, economic, psychological situations, dysfunctional families, need to be burdened with other people with the same problems.

Government is dysfunctional.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family.

In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn’t.

The people of the Balkans are like a dysfunctional family. We may fight and argue, but in the end we are family.

I was raised in a house where my mom was the primary breadwinner. It was a dysfunctional house, but she showed tremendous resilience.

America is one big dysfunctional family and we are still trying to figure out how to live together.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I’m good at that!

In my family, as in all dysfunctional families, instead of parents who act as strong and nurturing role models for their children, you get these needy people who use their children. I was the kid who tried to take on the marriage.

Trouble is, I’m definitely on the spectrum somewhere – there’s a dysfunctional side.

One of the things that unfortunately happens in organizations that become dysfunctional is that the very first thing to go is the amount of care and attention that you place on the workplace and the environment within which people work.

Mitch McConnell is not well liked. Many Kentuckians feel that he has left them behind, that he is a part of the D.C. sort of swamp, the system that has left so many Kentuckians behind, that is really dysfunctional.

The truth is that searching for our commonality instead of our differences could transform our dysfunctional politics.

I love my ‘Survivor’s Remorse’ cast. They are so funny and crazy, like a big dysfunctional family. It’s so much fun, and I love the issues that we talk about on that show. We deal with nuanced and controversial issues, and we do it in a way that’s funny. It’s comedy.

Cubans have no bar to being legalized once they are in America. All other Hispanics – with the exception of Puerto Ricans – have to go through a broken, dysfunctional process. One group is American from day one. And all the rest are trying to be.

Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.

If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in; external situations cause internal friction; you grow apart and then bounce back together.

Despite the best intentions, companies often become culturally dysfunctional. This occurs when leadership has a perception about the culture that conflicts with reality, or leadership behaves differently than what might be written down.

I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.

Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.

Many of us live in dysfunctional families, and so even if it’s in a fairy tale, or perhaps because it’s in a fairy tale, we have a chance to look at that side of our reflected lives differently.

All too often, government’s response to social breakdown has been a classic case of ‘patching’ – a case of handing money out, containing problems and limiting the damage but, in doing so, supporting – even reinforcing – dysfunctional behaviour.

I grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life. I don’t carry around much baggage.

I know I was a generic dysfunctional child, but I think a lot of people are.

Nobody’s favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody’s favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

With the world as it now presents itself, there is something perverse, and probably dysfunctional, about a person who stays in the same house for 40 years. What about the expanding family syndrome, the school-lottery migration, the property portfolio neurosis? Have you no imagination?

Children in dysfunctional homes at risk of abuse are kept in danger for too long because politically correct rules mean we won’t challenge unfit parents.

I can hardly find the words to describe the peace I felt when I was acting. My dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self, not my own, and it felt so good.

Listen, I come from the most screwed-up dysfunctional situation. You’ve got violence. Police at your house. Your dad’s gone. Nowhere to live. I want people to know, if I can make it, anybody can make it.

Mary Trump’s ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’ tells a remarkable story, the broad strokes of which many already knew. Mary Trump offers a tale of what she calls ‘malignant’ family dysfunction, and how it produced a malignantly dysfunctional president.

If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.’

It’s as simple as you can explain all of ‘Dallas.’ We’re a dysfunctional family forced to stay together.

A dysfunctional team means a dysfunctional – and likely doomed – company.

I didn’t have a dysfunctional childhood or young adulthood, but I was somebody who was very much raised to do what other people told me to do as a person.

I was elected to come to an incredibly dysfunctional capital and make the government work better, and that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve learned that a family can have little glitches without being labeled dysfunctional.

I never dreamed I’d be a spokesman for anything. But Pac Bell just asked me. The money was OK; the scripts were fun because I had to do in 30 seconds what it takes a whole feature to do and because the dysfunctional family of agents, managers and lawyers who represent me said it was cool.

I love books about dysfunctional families.

At the end of the day, wrestling is one big, happy, dysfunctional family.

One of the most dysfunctional beliefs of successful people is our contempt for simplicity and structure. We believe that we are above needing structure to help us on seemingly simple tasks.

The whole world is one big dysfunctional family. But no matter how dysfunctional we are, we can still have a positive impact on each other’s lives. We can still try to get along together.

Playing dysfunctional characters or crazy characters is only fun if they’re well written. So I have been lucky enough to be asked to play crazy people who are very well written.

It’s very easy for Australians living in big cities to either romanticise or demonise the situation in Aboriginal places – to kind of look at things through the ‘noble innocents’ prism or through the ‘chronically dysfunctional’ prism, and I suspect that is so often the case.

I don’t look at her like she’s a bad girl. She just misunderstood sometime, she’s a little troubled, she’s a little dysfunctional. She’s a survivor.

I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain – that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep.

If a decision-making process is flawed and dysfunctional, decisions will go awry.

I come from a very dysfunctional family, so I was comfortable in misery. So I would create more misery for myself because I didn’t know anything else.

One of the things my success as an author has forced me to face is how dysfunctional… Maybe that’s a strong word, but how obsessive I am.

When I got to the NBA, that first Knicks group was pretty dysfunctional. But it was on me, too. I didn’t understand the game as much as I should have. I should have watched more film. Instead of thinking of the team, I was thinking about me. That Knicks team went 23-59.

I come from a dysfunctional family, so my views of parents and parenting used to be highly mixed.

Washington isn’t utterly dysfunctional.

True Dare Kiss’ is a gothic drama about a highly dysfunctional Mancunian family who, after 20 years, reconvene for the funeral of their father. I wanted to play Phil because I really liked the character, and there is an element of mystery about her – which I can’t reveal.

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

You can see how dysfunctional this Congress is.

I think dysfunctional people are being funneled into very corporate behaviour. Look at the Brits… no one’s fighting, and it’s boring.

With the right support, a child growing up in a dysfunctional household, who was destined for a lifetime on benefits could be put on an entirely different track – one which sees them move into fulfilling and sustainable work. In doing so, they will pull themselves out of poverty.

My viewpoint is the Senate is dysfunctional.

Congress is corrupt, gridlocked, broken, dysfunctional. It’s not working and we need it working again. It’s not going to get fixed by people who are deeply, in one way or another, inside this really broken system.

I started really thinking a lot about where does a country go when we stop being able to speak to each other, when a nation stops being able to solve problems because its ideological differences become so deep that it just becomes dysfunctional.

I am so organized that it’s dysfunctional. Everything has a place. I am a very visual person, so my environment is important to me. If my environment is messy, I can’t think clearly. I don’t like clutter. A clean desk is a clean mind for me.

My opportunity to design school choice systems began in 2003 with a phone call from Jeremy Lack at the New York City Department of Education. He knew of my work on the medical match and wondered if similar efforts might help reorganize the dysfunctional, congested system then used to match students to high schools.

I want kids to have a chance to dream of becoming something like I did in my life, and when you’re living in a home that’s dysfunctional and unhealthy that way, you don’t dream like that.

I come from a completely dysfunctional alcoholic family, so we kind of parented ourselves a little bit.

In Western capitalism circa 2013, fear that the market economy has become dysfunctional is not limited to a few entrepreneurs in Boulder. It is being publicly expressed, with increasing frequency, by some of the people who occupy the commanding heights of the global economy.

If I grew up with a dysfunctional family, I would eventually start a book club.

I play a guy who believes he’s a king. He’s the most common man in the world; in fact his family, like his suits, are just make-up. It’s about dysfunctional people and dysfunctional relationships.

Continuing to expose the children to my and Adrienne’s dysfunctional and volatile relationship is causing harm to the children.

I’ve always been motivated to stop people from doing dysfunctional things.

I came from a dysfunctional family – very dysfunctional. And my father used to find great humor in throwing me down the stairs.

Memory is not particularly linear – it is associative, repetitive, subjective and porous. But the writer needs to convey disorder and dysfunction without making the novel itself disorderly or dysfunctional.

I’m going to miss the wind tunnel between Buildings 3 and 4. The ways in which the parking situation forced me to get ‘creative.’ Bob Ley and his snide comments. Trey Wingo and his snarky comments. Meeting so many people who I respect the hell out of. And the bizarre if not dysfunctional ‘SportsNation’ family.

We had all these smiley family pictures all over the walls of my house, but I always found those pictures to be odd because we weren’t smiling all the time. I don’t want to paint the picture of a total dysfunctional house, but there were a lot of arguments in that house. A lot of pain.

In one sense, the stories I read betrayed me. Too few gave me back my mirror image. Fewer still spoke to, or acknowledged, the existence of the problems I faced as a black foster child from a dysfunctional and badly broken home.

I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it isn’t happening.

I believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of western life. It is in the family that children are groomed to practise, promote and pass on the norms of their parents’ culture.

Every family is dysfunctional.

I feel really happy like with ‘Derry Girls,’ I feel happy to be part of something that young people are like, that is dysfunctional and you feel awkward in relationships and you try to find someone that makes you feel comfortable.

Reflecting back on my childhood, I know it wasn’t functional. It was pretty, pretty dysfunctional, and whose isn’t?

Seeing our VH-1 Behind the Music shows just how dysfunctional some of the moments of the band were but this new line-up has put the fun back in dysfunction.