Unnecessary Effort Quotes

It is not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

You turn down work you feel you've already done.

The less unnecessary effort you put into learning, the more successful you'll be . . . Doing the wrong thing with more intensity rarely improves the situation.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

A second-class mind dealing with third-class material is hardly a necessity of life.

Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose.

For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?

There are some phone calls where it's not even worth wasting the electrons on.

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

I feel like I've always been a hard worker - working too much on things that I don't need to work on. Nothing's ever going to be perfect, but I still feel like there's this attainable perfection, which doesn't exist.

We fear doing too little when we should do more. Then atone by doing too much, when perhaps we should do less.

You can put too much pressure on yourself. You can start forcing balls, maybe trying too hard. You make things too complicated.

The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work!

Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.

Even going out to get milk becomes a little bit challenging, just because there is a whole entourage that then travels with me for this simple thing. So I tend to try and find ways not to inconvenience a whole raft of other people, so it changes my mindset a little bit.

Basically, if I have no intention of using a service then I won't bother reverse-engineering it.

I hate getting flowers. I can't stand when I get a bouquet of flowers, because I have to stop what I do, cut the flowers, put them in a vase - if you're going to bring flowers, bring them in a vase already!

I don't go out of my way to be friendly, because it's completely unnecessary. People tell you what they are going to tell you no matter what.

Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

Why look in the dark for light?

A man's face is not a rich person's lawn; you are wasting resources if you devote that much energy to trimming your beard, sideburns, or mustache just so. Nor is a man's face the woods; there need not be the tangled weeds, shrubbery, and wildlife/eggs benedict that get ensnared in them.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren't worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

It's good to be a martyr for your art, but it's just such a waste of time.

A foolish dog barks at a flying bird

There's no point breaking a lot of crockery unnecessarily.