Betty Friedan Quotes

I'm starting to judge success by the time I have for myself, the time I spend with family and friends. My priorities aren't amending; they're shifting.

As we got more interested in time management and productivity, we lost the individual, and with that individual loss, we lost happiness as well. So I think the world has actually been malnourished as we've focused so much on productivity and ignored happiness and meaning to our own detriment.

My daughter recently reminded me not to get so busy making a living, I forget to make a life and I'm going to take that advice.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

I really feel sorry for people who are, who divide their whole life up into 'things that I like' and 'things that I must do.' You're only here for a short time, mate. Learn to like it.

I don't live for my work. My life is my life. That's more important, and I think that helps my work.

With any career you're in, there's always a life outside of your career, and that's one thing when you're on the road 300 days of the year, you start missing your family, you miss your friends, you miss all the things you enjoy in life like going to the movies, museums.

What use was money if you didn't have the time to enjoy it?

Life is a matter of passing the time enjoyably. There may be other things in life, but I've been too busy passing my time enjoyably to think very deeply about them.

If workers are overworked, or companies hire temps at low wages, this fundamentally comes down to the quality of life for a person. It's bigger than wages. They should be able to spend time with their families. And if they're single, they should be able to have fun and not spend every day of their life working 12 to 15 hours a day and never get a chance to take care of their well-being. To me, that's part of living a good life.

With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life. Having four days off would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied.

I wondered what it does to each of us to spend the majority of our waking hours doings things we'd rather not do, wishing we were outside or simply elsewhere, wishing we were reading, thinking, making love, fishing, sleeping, or simply having time to figure out who the hell we are and what the hell we're doing.

If any of those times you rushed around madly - trying to get somewhere faster - had ever made any real difference in the quality of your life... don't you think you'd be able to slow down by now?

I think it's really important to have a life and have interests outside of this [movie] business, and not rely on this business to validate you as a human being. If you do that, you're really in a dangerous spot.

I have a very good life, a high quality of life. I have both money and time. No one has that.

I think it's a false trade-off to say quality time versus quantity - you have to have both.

Don't be so busy trying to make a living that you're too busy to make a life.

I think there is clearly a connection between free time and procrastination. The more you have of the former, all things being equal, the more likely you are to procrastinate.

I personally think it would be a very liberating thing for women to allow themselves to understand that having it all incorporates sacrifice. It does mean that you can't be everywhere all the time. It does mean that your friends are not going to get all of you.

One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.

I don't think we can say that all working women will get divorced - it's so dangerous to make these things emblematic of anything - but having said that, every person who has a big, important job and tries to have a family, has to make decisions every single minute.

They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.

I have a really, really strong work ethic and I learned that from my dad because my dad was a workaholic but he always had even more time for us. As hard as he would work, he always made the time. So it's just about balancing family, I think, and work - and giving everything 100%. And that's what he taught me.

Our time on Earth is already short enough. For me, it's like every single day I try to be as happy as I can. It's crazy to think about. We never have enough time. That's always the thing. We always want to do more. So it's about being able to spend time on the things that are most important to you. Life is a lot easier that way, and obviously life is pretty difficult a lot of the time.

I've always been very focused on my career. But, it's good to have people [say], "Okay, you need a vacation." "I do? Oh yeah, you're right. I think I do."