Backfire Quotes & Sayings

When you're winning games, everyone thinks everything the manager says and does is fantastic. Then it goes the other way, and those earlier criticisms of players can backfire. — Gary Lineker

If your attached friends are bugging you about being single (favourite accusation: "You're too picky!") turn it around on them. "Do you know any gorgeous single men I could meet?" (This could backfire if they're keen to set you up and their idea of "gorgeous" is vastly different from yours. And it will be.) Alternatively, be super-sweet and tell them you're waiting for your ideal partner "just like you did". (It won't work if you snigger at this point.) — Rosie Blythe

If colorblindness seems to backfire, is there something that does help our children - and us - navigate the dangerous shoals of race? Yes: talking openly about racial differences and what they might mean. Psychological research shows that cognitive biases in social judgment "can be controlled only through subsequent, deliberate 'mental correction' that takes group status squarely into account. — Ian F. Haney-Lopez

But I'm terrified of giving up my career only to have the whole thing backfire in my face. What if I move down there and it doesn't work out?"
"What if you don't and you never know what might have been? Can you live with that? — Georgia Cates

Our intentions attract the elements and forces, the events, the situation, the circumstances and the relationships necessary to fulfill the intended outcome. We don't need to become involved in the details-in fact, trying too hard may backfire. Let the non-local intelligence synchronize the actions of the universe to fulfill your intentions for you. — Deepak Chopra

I never give anyone advice: it can backfire horribly. In the 1950s, Eric Morecambe told Ken Dodd to get his teeth fixed. But those teeth turned out to be one of Dodd's big selling points. — Paul Merton

It is very difficult to know exactly what good should come out of a particular situation. To attempt to manipulate circumstances so your idea of good can come about, is to let the ego play God-and that, as you know, can and does backfire. — Neem Karoli Baba

This strategy, which was then used as the template for the rest of the European periphery, turning the majority of European states into what I jokingly refer to as Bailoutistan, was always going to backfire on the European economy. Tim Geithner and Jack Lew, his successor in the US Treasury Department, understood this well. They shared the concern that what started in Greece in 2010, with the combination of an absurd bailout and a hideous level of austerity, has put Europe into a position that undermines America's recovery and threatens the prospects of China, Latin America, even India and Africa. — Yanis Varoufakis

Would I have fared better if I had stood my ground and stared down my pursuers? Could so-called self-preservation sometimes backfire and become the very cause of pain? — David Michie

By treating patients like customers, as nurse Amy Bozeman pointed out in a Scrubs magazine article, hospitals succumb to the ingrained cultural notion that the customer is always right. "Now we are told as nurses that our patients are customers, and that we need to provide excellent service so they will maintain loyalty to our hospitals," Bozeman wrote. "The patient is NOT always right. They just don't have the knowledge and training." Some hospitals have hired "customer service representatives," but empowering these nonmedical employees to pander to patients' whims can backfire. Comfort is not always the same thing as healthcare. As Bozeman suggested, when representatives give warm blankets to feverish patients or complimentary milk shakes to patients who are not supposed to eat, and nurses take them away, patients are not going to give high marks to the nurses. — Alexandra Robbins

If you make a mistake, admit it. Any attempt at cover-up will ultimately backfire. At some level the patient will sense you are acting in bad faith, and therapy will suffer. Furthermore, an open admission of error is good model-setting for patients and another sign that they matter to you. — Irvin D. Yalom

I try to stay away from the more schmaltzy side of things. That can backfire quickly. — James Wolk

I think that there is a problem with rewards and consequences because in the long run, they rarely work in the ways we hope. In fact, they are likely to backfire. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs. — Glenn Greenwald

The Chinese are not programmed to make decisions quickly, and attempts to force them to do so, wittingly or unwittingly, invariably backfire. Instead, they view things from all angles, over and over again, and while doing so make judgments about the sincerity and trustworthiness of the people they are dealing with. The more impatience Westerners demonstrate, the less trustworthy they are judged to be. — Mente, Boye Lafayette De

answered the phone; it was, in fact, the Times - the Los Angeles one. Jackie took the call, and by the time I could get unhooked from my homicidal seat belt and turned around to look, there was nothing to see except the usual mad, gleaming pack of angry, overpowered vehicles. I scanned in all directions a couple of times, but I saw no cycles, and I heard no more popping backfire sounds. So I shrugged it off before we were even halfway to work, and thought no more about motorcycles. — Jeff Lindsay

I don't want to suggest that I was listening to or even overhearing the conversation the two of you were having. I am not the sort of man to eavesdrop. I would say, however, your words did seem almost to float on the air from your table across to my own, which in any case is a short distance, and, having arrived, they were, I would say, impossible not to hear, just as one would have no choice whether to hear a car backfire, or a bird sing. Very difficult not to hear, if one can hear, if one has ears; it's involuntary, you see. We hear things whether we want to or not, and in this way the words you were speaking to one another entered my ears — Daniel Wallace

Favoring specialization over intelligence is exactly wrong, especially in high tech. The world is changing so fast across every industry and endeavor that it's a given the role for which you're hiring is going to change. Yesterday's widget will be obsolete tomorrow, and hiring a specialist in such a dynamic environment can backfire. A specialist brings an inherent bias to solving problems that spawns from the very expertise that is his putative advantage, and may be threatened by a new type of solution that requires new expertise. A smart generalist doesn't have bias, so is free to survey the wide range of solutions and gravitate to the best one. — Eric Schmidt

I think a strict vegetarian diet acts as a good cleansing program for people who come from a diet heavy in animal foods and processed foods. But for some people, when it goes on too long it seems to backfire. — Ann Louise Gittleman

I think the idea of trying to demonize Governor Romney's going to backfire. Their attempts so far have failed pretty outstandingly and I think at the end of the day, people are going to say, 'what was Obama's record?' Governor Romney's got pro-growth Reaganesque proposals on the table. — Steve Forbes

Considerable social science research has found that constant praise of children can backfire, because it so often consists of telling children how smart they are, not of praising children for the things they actually do. As a result, many children become protective of their image of being smart and are reluctant to take chances that might actually damage that image. — Charles Murray

There were times my mom and I butted heads - over my curfew, over something like that. Whenever we would hit these moments of emotional backfire, she would say, 'You just don't understand what it's like to be a mother ... I could never handle losing you.' I was like, 'OK, but just, like, chill out.' — Brie Larson

The backfire, my dear boy, of exiling the cleverest criminals of the nation to one place and requiring them to use their ingenuity is that they will
and you can't control what they do with it. — Sam Starbuck

I got a lot of grief from my teammates about that. It might backfire on my mom. Hopefully, my brother will have another chance somewhere down the road. — Scott Niedermayer

If it's okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn't we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don't think that's a good idea, and not just because it might backfire. We don't think it's a good idea because we believe human beings have human rights, whatever their colour and wherever they live. Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born. — Steven E. Landsburg

Getting close to a woman, no matter if it's real or not, can backfire. — Carolyn Brown

Extrinsic reading rewards may not be necessary and may backfire. — Stephen D. Krashen

Observing and understanding the social media phenomenon is one thing-leveraging this trend for advertising purposes is quite another. While most companies recognize the value of social media advertising opportunities, not many have figured out how to execute these kinds of campaigns and the unique risks they entail because of the potential that a viral marketing effort can backfire and actually harm a brand. — Stephen Jin-Woo Kim

But instead of blaming women for not negotiating more, we need to recognize that women often have good cause to be reluctant to advocate for their own interests because doing so can easily backfire. — Sheryl Sandberg

Canadian researchers found those with low self-esteem actually felt worse after repeating positive statements about themselves. They said phrases such as "I am a lovable person" only helped people with high self-esteem. The study appeared in the journal Psychological Science. ... They found that, paradoxically, those with low self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts. ... Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most. — Augusten Burroughs

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. — Glenn Greenwald

And being "nice" in the form of feigned sympathy is often equally as unsuccessful. We live in an age that celebrates niceness under various names. We are exhorted to be nice and to respect people's feelings at all times and in every situation. But nice alone in the context of negotiation can backfire. Nice, employed as a ruse, is disingenuous and manipulative. — Chris Voss

Sometimes opinions should kept to ones self, but not in appropriate situations. Be the judge of the appropriate situation, and be prepared for backfire. Moral of the story; if everyone doesn't agree, then prepare for them to lash out in disagreement. — Liam McGrath

So if you don't show, I'm going to come up and drag you downstairs." "I can almost assure you that that plan would backfire," he said. "Next time I get you alone in my apartment, I won't let you off so easy," he said levelly, staring ahead. — Jessica Hawkins

Tell them to teach them that when they call you nigger to make a rhyme with trigger it makes the gun backfire — Ralph Ellison

If in the 1930s nuclear weapons had been invented and the Allies had been faced by Nazi SS20s and Backfire Bombers, would it then have been morally right to have handed Hitler control of one of the most terrible weapons man has ever made? Would not that have been the one way to ensure that the thousand year Reich became exactly that? Would not unilateralism have given to Hitler the world domination he sought? — Margaret Thatcher

Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are. — Lionel Shriver

Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil's will is coerced. Instead a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination. — Vigen Guroian

It was massive. A blurting, busting, backfire! A flabbergasting, fire-breathing, flub-explosion! A propelling, paint-stripping, prison-break! — Ferguson Fartworthy

You know that saying 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing'? That's so true of positive psychology. Our latest research tells us that the pursuit of happiness is a delicate art. Certain approaches to seeking happiness are now known to backfire, whereas others are effective. — Barbara Fredrickson

I am going to a conference tomorrow," she said. "In Portland. Dr. Melissa Sanchez will speak. She says you think your way to a sexier you. Hormones are powerful drugs. Unless we tell them what we want, they backfire. They work against us." Dorothea turned, pointing the Ajax can at me for emphasis. "Now I wake in the morning and take red lipstick to my mirror. 'I am sexy,' I write. 'Men want me. Sixty-five is the new twenty-five. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Angry words backfire upon the speaker. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Fine! He is being passive aggressive with me, and it's gonna backfire; I'm gonna be active friendly. — Natalya Vorobyova

If you are playing on a turning wicket, toss plays an important role. The team that wins the toss gets an opportunity to play on the fresh wicket. You should always prepare the wicket as per team's strength. But a rank turner might backfire. — Kapil Dev

One of my professors in college used to say As the wise man said, Do or do not, there is no try, but the advice columns generally say the opposite. If someone promises to try, and you're happy with that, don't push. It can backfire. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble asking for too much. — Jael McHenry

Not that incentives are always so easy to figure out. Different types of incentives - financial, social, moral, legal, and others - push people's buttons in different directions, in different magnitudes. An incentive that works beautifully in one setting may backfire in another. — Anonymous

Reel called out, It was a backfire, Robie. Car passing the house. — David Baldacci