Bad Response Quotes & Sayings

Advocates of 'free speech' often repeat the mantra that the best response to bad speech is more and better speech, not the suppression of the bad stuff. — Jackson Katz

Gil sat baking in the sun for at least 45 minutes before one of the tour guides noticed him looking listless and leaning to his left side. As she approached him, she noticed that he had a stupid grin on his face.
"Are you all right, Mr. Cohen?" she asked as she tried to slowly help him to his feet.
His shirt was drenched with sweat and his skin was mostly clammy, signally that he was suffering from the middle stages of heat stroke.
"It's not so bad?" he muttered as he struggled to stand straight up. "What not so bad, Mr. Cohen?" one of the tour guides asked.
"Death," Gil stated in a glazed response.
The guide looked at the heat-stricken man who appeared to have amoment of clarity amidst all of the sweat and dehydration. "Why is death not so bad?" she pressed on. Gil took a big swig of Gatorade and replied, "Because life wasn't so great. — Phil Wohl

If you know someone who's depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.
Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they're going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do. — Stephen Fry

Glaring at the Gasman, ter Borcht said, "Your time is coming to an end, you
pathetic failure of an experiment. Vhat you say now is how you vill be
remembered."
Gazzy's blue eyes flashed. "Then you can remember me telling you to kiss
my-"
"Enough!" ter Borcht said. — James Patterson

I have certain things that I stand for, certain things that I believe in, and if you don't like it and you tell me to go to hell, I think that's your God-given right as a fan. It's one of those deals where I'm that one guy who is outside of that realm of good guy, bad guy. I'm just me, and it elicits a response both positive and negative. — John Cena

Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people? ... The response would be ... to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all ... no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened. — Harold S. Kushner

In order to pronounce a book bad it is not enough to discover that it elicits no good response from ourselves, for that might be our fault. — C.S. Lewis

Stress is a choice. Do you buy that? Some people have a hard time with the idea. Yes, bad things happen: The economy sours, our business struggles, the stock market tumbles, jobs are lost, people around us don't follow through, deadlines are missed, projects fail, good people leave. Life is full of these. But still, stress is a choice because whatever the 'trigger event,' we always choose our own response. We choose to react angrily. We choose to stuff our emotions and keep quiet. We choose to worry. Stress is a choice. — John G. Miller

Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don't have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they're already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You'd think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, "Duh, of course I need to change this." Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it's in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp? — Hugh Halter

That's about when people realized that this wasn't some kind of show, an optical illusion or something to stand around and point at. They might not have understood what they were seeing, but whatever instinct humans possessed that triggered that flight response kicked in.
It became all about survival- about getting away from the big, bad unknown- while trying to snap pictures of the spectacle at the same time.
Got to love the near-innate human response to capture everything on film. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Problems are providence in disguise. All things good and bad, problematic and praise worthy are providential-God conceived, sustaining and guiding. With the right perspective, patience, hard work and hindsight, we can push through, beyond our pain, to a place of realization... that our troubles are simply part of the hands of the Potter who molds the very essence of our human spirit. As long as we breathe, we will be shaped by our problems but it's our response that truly defines us. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

34. Not equal are the good and the bad response. You shall resort to the one which is better. Thus, the one who used to be your enemy, may become your best friend. — The Monotheist Group

A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Organisms are starting to move in response to climate change all over the place. Bees are disappearing and we don't have many of the native pollinators left to replace them. We're in deep trouble; there's no question about it. But ecologists tend to think of something that's going to be bad in ten years as very fast, and of course, politicians only think of things in a two-, four-, six-year cycle. — Paul R. Ehrlich

My nature is happy. And all I can control is my response to input. If you come around me and tell me bad news all the time, I can say, "You know what? I don't want to hear it." If its just gossip, you know, I can choose not to hear it. And that, in effect, can control my mood. — John Travolta

When our embassy is attacked in Benghazi by terrorists and there is no response, you get more bad behavior. When Russia invades Ukraine and there is no response, you get more bad behavior. When Syria crosses the red line and there is no response, you get more bad behavior. When Iran launches tests of ballistic missiles and there is no response, you get more bad behavior. When North Korea attacks Sony Pictures and there is no response, you get more bad behavior. In other words, Mrs. Clinton, you cannot lead from behind. We must respond when we are attacked or provoked. — Carly Fiorina

It makes sense that your response to a bad break-up line would be to set someone on fire," I responded. "Fire is magical to us because it embodies the passage of time. We can never grasp time because it is invisible, unreachable and continually slipping from our grasp. Do we live in the present? How can we? The present is infinitesimally small. It can't contain human action. We teeter on the brink between our assumed future...where we will be in moments to come...and our memory of the past...where we think we just were. The present doesn't exist in a comprehensible way. Similarly, fire is something we can neither grasp nor touch, yet it has a clear effect...the decay and collapse of life, the acceleration of entropy. Thus when we stand mesmerized by fire, we are actually mesmerized by our own mortality. — David David Katzman

Why does she even bother sleeping?" I heard Elizabeth ask quietly. "You'd think by now she'd stop trying. We don't need it."
I paused, waiting to hear Miaka's response. "She must have a really wonderful dream often enough to make the bad ones worth it. — Kiera Cass

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. [in response to Rousseau's "The Social Contract"] — Voltaire

You [President Kennedy] have made some pretty strong statements about their being defensive and that we would take action against offensive weapons. I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this [the Cuban missile crisis]. And I'm sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too. In other words, you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time. — Curtis LeMay

Churches, laypersons, and ministers regularly have bad experiences in imbalanced churches and in response flee to the opposite extreme - an equally unbalanced form of ministry. — Timothy Keller

Did the men steal the papers?" Reynie asked, fearing her response.
No, because they are fools," Sophie said bitterly. "They demanded to see the papers, and when I did not answer fast enough
they were very frightening, you see
they hurt me so that I was not awake ... When I opened my eyes they were still trying to find the papers. They did not understand how we organize the library, you see. They were angry and creating a bad mess ... The police were coming and the men decided they must leave. I shouted at them as they left: 'It is a free and public library! All you had to do was ask! — Trenton Lee Stewart

Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police.
A character's response to a discussion about eating from the tree of knowledge. — Alasdair Gray

The greatest barrier to evangelization today is bad example ... Our strategy of evangelization must be based upon sanctity, upon our enthusiastic response to Christ's universal call to holiness. — John Foley

Depression is not madness, it's just depression, the loser version, the low-energy response to bad stuff that happens in your life. When you're depressed, you think you're the only one to have ever tasted this kind of hurt. And that lonely self-regard brings with it its own painful pleasure. — Ana Menendez

I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime. — Kurt Vonnegut

You people get so closed up inside those little brains. Their structure changes in response to thought, you know, like your muscles respond to use. The used parts bulk up. Bad training develops uneven strength; it takes time and painful work to balance unbalanced muscles. — Max Gladstone

I think it's a response to terrorism. From the time we're little girls, we're taught to fear the bad man who might get us. We're terrified of being raped, abused, even killed by the bad man, but the problem is, you can't tell the good ones from the bad ones, so you have to wary of them all. We're told not to go out by ourselves late at night, not to dress a certain way, not to talk to male strangers, not to lead men on. We take self-defense classes, keep our doors locked, carry pepper spray and rape whistles. The fear of men is ingrained in us from girlhood. Isn't that a form of terrorism? — Sarai Walker

For invalid user name and password combinations, the service should return a 400 HTTP status code, which means that the server received a "bad request." The service could also use the 401 ("unauthorized") response code, but that code specifies that authentication credentials need to be in the request header, which is not quite what is required. — Paul Dix

Bad things happen to everyone. No one by their behavior can store up any immunity from disaster or tragedy. All any of us can control is how we respond when tough times come. This does not diminish God or his sovereignty in my mind. — Janice Cantore

George walked into the room and looked at each of us in turn, ending with Thierry.
"Hey, boss," he said as he lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke out slowly, "did Sarah really call you an asshole before"?
"George!" I moaned. "Now? You habe to bring that up now?"
"Is this a bad time?" He didn't wait for an answer, or for the matter, a response to his first question. " I just figured that since I haven't heard any shooting in here, this might be a good time for me to take off. — Michelle Rowen

The fundamental difference between an instinctive response and an emotion is this: An instinctive response is the body's direct response to some external situation. An emotion, on the other hand, is the body's response to thought. Indirectly, an emotion can also be a response to an actual situation or event, but it will be a response to the event seen through the filter of a mental interpretation, the future of thought, that is to say, through the mental concepts of good and bad, like and dislike, me and mine. — Eckhart Tolle

The problem a lot of writers have is that they really, really enjoy people saying, "You're brilliant." They let their self-perception be dictated by reader response. But if you're going to let other people make you feel good, you're going to end up feeling bad when they say the opposite. You've got to be a cultural stoic. Then you won't be devastated by people who respond negatively. Of course, the downside is that it sort of stops you from being able to enjoy people liking your work. — Chuck Klosterman

It was beyond imagining that bad font influences judgments of truth and improves cognitive performance, or that an emotional response to the cognitive ease of a triad of words mediates impressions of coherence. Psychology has come a long way. — Daniel Kahneman

Her free hand was clenched in a fist. I held still, waiting for her to say something, to tell me she should have never left me here, where her friends might look to me for help.
Finally she looked at me. Her eyes were hard, but she'd let no tears fall. "This is where we blame those who are responsible, Cooper, she told me, her voice very soft. "The colemongers, and the bought Dogs at Tradesmen's kennel. We'll leave an offering for him with the Black God when all this is done, and we'll occupy ourselves with tearing these colemongers apart. all right? We put grief aside for now. — Tamora Pierce

Are you scared?" she purrs. "Been too long? Out of practice?" Her head cocks to the side, a bad-girl grin on her face.
And then her words register.
Too scared to shag her? I can't even dignify that with a response. I can't even sputter. And then she gives me a purple-nurple, twisting my nipple.
"Oy!" I grab her wrist, the mad little cat. I should spank her arse for that.
Suddenly my towel is gone and my body is announcing just how much I've enjoyed her naughty act, complete with the ripping-off-of-the-towel finale. — Wendy Higgins

The deep happiness that marriage can bring, then, lies on the far side of sacrificial service in the power of the Spirit. That is, you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own, in a sustained way, in response to what Jesus has done for you. Some will ask, "If I put the happiness of my spouse ahead of my own needs - then what do I get out of it?" The answer is - happiness. That is what you get, but a happiness through serving others instead of using them, a happiness that won't be bad for you. It is the joy that comes from giving joy, from loving another person in a costly way. — Timothy Keller

Hurt people hurt people. We are not being judgmental by separating ourselves from such people. But we should do so with compassion. Compassion is defined as a "keen awareness of the suffering of another coupled with a desire to see it relieved." People hurt others as a result of their own inner strife and pain. Avoid the reactive response of believeing they are bad; they already think so and are acting that way. They aren't bad; they are damaged and they deserve compassion. Note that compassion is an internal process, an understanding of the painful and troubled road trod by another. It is not trying to change or fix that person. — Will Bowen

What I'm primarily saying,' he says, 'is that this is a time for knowledge assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and being careful never to make the same mistake twice. — George Saunders

If God consistently sent lightning bolts in response to bad doctrine, our planet would sparkle nightly like a Christmas tree. — Philip Yancey

If we hear a joke so awful that we laugh at how bad it is, we are taking part in the irony; in other words, the joke did not contain irony; irony was provided by our response. Why is it ironic? Because the intent of the joke was to get laughter, and it did - but for the wrong reason. — Dan O'Shannon

That's the nice thing about doing stand-up. There's no development, you just go out there and get an immediate response as to whether something is good or bad. Getting a laugh is the best measure of how well you're doing. — Paul Reiser

If same-sex relationships are really sinful, then why do they so often produce good fruit-loving families, open homes, self-sacrifice, commitment, faithfulness, joy? And if conservative Christians are really right in their response to same-sex relationships, then why does that response often produce bad fruit-secrets, shame, depression, loneliness, broken families, and fear? — Rachel Held Evans

At the ponds that evening I said to Antonio: "It's always been like that, since we were little: everyone thinks she's bad and I'm good."
He kissed me, murmuring ironically, "Why, isn't that true?"
That response touched me and kept me from telling him that we had to part. It was a decision that seemed to me urgent, the affection wasn't love, I loved Nino, I knew I would love him forever. I had a gentle speech prepared for Antonio, I wanted to say to him: It's been wonderful, you helped me a lot at a time when I was sad, but now school is starting and this year is going to be difficult, I have new subjects, I'll have to study a lot; I'm sorry but we have to stop. I felt it was necessary and every afternoon I went to our meeting at the ponds with my little speech ready. But he was so affectionate, so passionate, that my courage failed and I put it off. — Elena Ferrante

She said to me, "How is it going, Mitch?" I said, "Okay." But this is not really true, because she did not specify what "it" was and I did not immediately assume "it" referred to any preexisting situation in my life. I'm sure she didn't have any idea what "it" was either. She just said, "How is it going, Mitch," because she wanted to say something aloud in public. Basically, she asked a question she didn't understand, and I gave an affirmative response to that question, even though I did not know what I was responding to. Neither of us cared about what the other person was talking about or how the other person felt. We expressed two ideas that seemed to be interconnected, but neither of them was true. They were just words. They were neither good nor bad. They could have been any words, really.] — Chuck Klosterman

No subject was more important in the 2014 elections than healthcare, and Republicans in Congress should waste no time in taking decisive action in response to the voters'€ demands. Obamacare has escalated costs, disrupted coverage, and introduced bad incentives throughout our healthcare system. Congress must repeal Obamacare and send the president a replacement package of reforms that protects freedom and focuses on the real problem with American healthcare -€" affordability. — Bobby Jindal

His(Luc) eyes widened appreciatively as he took in my dress, heels, hair. "You look beautiful."
Ethan beat me to a response. "Thank you. But you should compliment Merit as well. She cleans up nicely."
Luc snorted, glanced at me. "And you don't look half-bad yourself, Sentinel."
"Thank you, Luc. He's just jealous. He prefers to be the arm candy. — Chloe Neill

It is imposible to understand sex as we see it nowadays - a mere response to a few physical stimuli. In reality, it is far more than that, and carries with it man's and humanity's entire cultural burden. Each time we face a new experience, we bring with us all past experiences - both good and bad - as well as those concepts which civilization has made into rules. — Paulo Coelho

I called my mother immediately to inform her that she was a bad parent. "I can't believe you let us watch this. We ate dinner in front of this."
"Everyone watched Twin Peaks," was her response.
"So, if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?"
"Don't be silly," she laughed, "of course I would, honey. There'd be no one left on the planet. It would be a very lonely place. — Sloane Crosley

I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go. — Flann O'Brien

It was Yuki. What was I up to? My response: Chewing on a stalk of celery and having a beer. Hers: Yuck. Mine: It's not so bad. She wasn't old enough to know things could be a lot worse. — Haruki Murakami

If you write something that gets a bad response, or someone commits candor or is off message, there are often consequences almost immediately when it appears in the paper or a magazine, that somebody gets called into the boss's office. And sometimes it can result in a loss of access for the reporter. — Ron Suskind

I'm impressed at your tenacity. You set a goal and you achieved it."

"My goal is Finn," I remind him.

"Everly, we've already established that you haven't been holding out exclusively for Professor Camden," he says, his lip twitching. "Which tells me that while you envision him as the perfect man, you've kept your options open. It tells me that while you might have a vivid fantasy of the perfect happily ever after, you're open" - he checks my response - " reluctantly, to being swept off your feet by someone other than Finn."

Well. I don't know how to respond to that, so what comes out of my mouth is, "Maybe I'm just a nymphomaniac."
This car ride just went from bad to worse.

"If you were a nymphomaniac you'd have given me a blowjob fifty miles ago."

"True," I agree. Damn it! I just said that out loud. I bite my lip and side-eye him. He's wearing a very satisfied smile. — Jana Aston

I think our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it's a very mysterious thing, isn't it? I think it's a response in our minds to perfection. It's too bad, people not realizing that their minds expand beyond this world. — Agnes Martin

Master Nolan - Being angry at a sub because a scene goes bad or you don't get the response you want isn't the mark of a good Dom. And insulting a woman for any reason is the mark of an asshole. — Cherise Sinclair

The best response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism. — Jim Wallis

Before she could ponder what on earth he meant or come up with a proper response, he took their charade a step further.

He kissed her. — J.M. Stewart

[Comics is] one of the last havens for honesty when it comes to a reader's genuine response to art. Most of us, if we don't find any sympathy or pleasure, for example, in a modern painting, are likely to blame our own ignorance of the history and theory of painting. But nobody pretends to like a bad comic strip. Such harshness is necessary for any real truth to surface, I think, and for art to really contribute anything to life. Though I don't know. I could be wrong. — Chris Ware

The response to my books from my East Coast friends has been wildly various, running the gamut from 'bad' to 'very bad.' (Is there another gamut?) — Edward Abbey

Memorization has gotten a bad rap recently. Lots of students, and even some educators, say that being able to reason is more important than knowing facts; and besides, why bother committing things to memory when you've got Google? My response to this - after I've finished inwardly groaning - is that of course reasoning is important, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know facts as well. It's not like you have to choose between one or the other. Besides, facts give you a foundation on which to reason about things. — Stefanie Weisman

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him - the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse. — John Corey Whaley