Top 323 Waste Quotes

I think of all my time as existing in 15-minute blocks. Most people think in terms of 30-minute chunks, but I’ve found that when I free up more time, I waste it.

I had an insanely long commute – New York to D.C. – when I worked at ‘National Geographic.’ I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I was writing a book.

Fifteen years ago I walked out of a production of one of my plays at the RSC because I decided it was a waste of time.

No, no, no. Dick Cheney forbade me to waste time on his image. I would have liked to have done more.

Sometimes comparing can be a good thing: it can inspire us to work harder and reach farther. But for the most part, excessive measuring yourself up against others – especially when it becomes a way to put yourself down – is a colossal waste of time. It’s a dead end. It won’t make you do anything except feel horrible.

The vast amount of waste and sheer stupidity in government – from the Pentagon to the Food and Drug Administration – could fill committee agendas for years.

The only time I waste is time I spend doing something that, in my gut, I know I shouldn’t. If I choose to spend time playing video games or sleeping in, then it’s time well spent, because I chose to do it. I did it for a reason – to relax, to decompress or to feel good, and that was what I wanted to do.

The thing about the movie ‘Navy SEALs’ is that it was just such a waste. The script could’ve been shaped to be much better, and you just hate to see all that talent and passion go to waste.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

One of the most horrible wastes of capital you see is the duplication of the effort by the car manufacturers to do things that appear to be different from the other guy.

We are ‘nuclear waste’ from the fuel that makes stars shine; indeed, each of us contains atoms whose provenance can be traced back to thousands of different stars spread through our Milky Way.

I don’t like going where I’ve already been. Life is a myriad of territories to discover. I don’t want to waste time with what I already know.

I don’t believe in being vengeful or trying to send a message to someone. You waste your energy that way.

Looking in the mirror to check if my tie is straight is a waste of my time. I only look in the mirror once a day, and that’s in the morning when I shave.

So many people get involved with carrying grudges and having these moral battles with people, where they cast themselves as the righteous and the other guy is the dirtbag. They waste tons of energy on it, create all kinds of darkness around themselves and the other person. It gets you nothing.

People say that forgiving is my flaw, but I really believe that holding grudges and anger is a waste of energy.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Only 10 per cent of food grown in India is processed. So the best way to reduce food waste and maximise calorie delivery is to increase that ratio of processed food to total food.

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

I love to score runs rather than defending or leaving the ball. That is an important aspect of my batting: I don’t want to waste balls in any form of the game.

Directing is more what I would like to get into eventually. Frankly, I feel like it would be a waste if I didn’t because I’ve spent so much time on film sets, and I know how they work, and I love them, and I love leading them. I would like to do that as a director definitely.

Lord knows, I never want to waste any more of my time in mirrors.

Alongside energy efficiency, renewables and abatement, I believe safe nuclear power, with manageable waste, can play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as long as it is cost competitive with other low carbon generation.

How many times will this Congress waste time on an issue that a majority of Americans do not want?

The deployment of geolocating tags attached to ordinary garbage could paint a surprising picture of the waste management system, as trash is shipped throughout the country in a maze-like disposal process – as we saw in Seattle with our own Trash Track project.

Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn’t fit this description.

If businesses don’t know from state to state what the requirements are for taxes, they have to waste a lot of money on accountants and lawyers before deciding to expand their business into the state next door.

Buckwheat may be planted later than any similar crop, and often does well on old meadows or waste land that can be broken after the more exacting crops are planted.

I think there is a misconception that being open and honest and saying what it is you want is something we should be embarrassed about. But that’s just not me. I am a very honest person. I always tell somebody what I am looking for, and I don’t want people to waste my time, basically.

My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.

One of the things I’m proudest of is, on my record ‘That Was the Year that Was’ in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I’m even more against it now, that whole waste of money.

My interest is in the Wests Tigers. Nobody can support a team that is all the time on the bottom; that’s a waste of time.

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature… is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

I read so many things because a colleague or a friend will post something, and I’ll be able to learn a tremendous amount only because they drew attention to it. So I try to do that for others, and that’s the great thing about social media. It’s not always a narcissistic cesspool or waste of time.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

The waste products in Earth’s crust are also the human in this expanded, spectral sense. One’s garbage doesn’t go ‘away’ – it just goes somewhere else.

There is a lot of waste in government-run programs generally, and a lot of waste and fraud and misuse of money in Medicare and Medicaid that can be saved.

I was in London. It’s a long way to go for a very long party, sitting there for six hours not having a cigarette or a drink. It’s a waste of time.

Investing in women and girls may once have been considered a radical notion or even a waste of resources, but in most places in the world today, women and girls are increasingly recognized as a critical link to greater prosperity, political stability, better health and public policy.

We don’t have time to waste. Our communities are crumbling; our children are under siege. Failing schools and a for-profit prison-industrial complex are sucking the life out of black homes and communities. We are not going down like this!

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.

Basically everything I’ve done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I’ll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.

Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time.

‘Troll 2’ is one of the rare sequels where you don’t have to waste time watching the first one, since the films have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

Ms. Oprah Winfrey gave me some advice to just always stay in the moment, and don’t waste energy on negative things, and put your energy into positive things in your life. I just try to remember that every day and keep on going.

Time alone is irreplaceable. Waste it not.

You don’t waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.

It takes me about two hours to run into Target. People always want a picture. They hem and haw, and they can’t spit the words out, so they waste about five minutes of my time just standing there getting ready for a picture. Just do it!