Bad Tom Quotes & Sayings

Right now, your company gets the results - good or bad - that it was designed to get. If your vision of the future differs from your current situation, if you want to get better results, then you must change the way you do things. If you don't, how can you expect results that are any different from what you've already achieved? — Tom Northup

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

I've been booed off the field, and I've been carried off the field by people cheering me. So I've seen both ends of it, and I can tell you the bad side of it gets a lot more attention than the good side does, but the good side is pretty darned good when it's on your side. — Tom Glavine

They weren't bad guys, just products of a society run by men and infused with rules to leave everyone sexually frustrated. Even in marriage sex in India is often just a brief, clumsy fumble in the dark, trying not to wake up grandma who's sleeping in the same bed. — Tom Thumb

If there's a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn't exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn't have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that's it. That's all an artist does. — Tom Robbins

The most influential choices you make for your health occur in the grocery store. Once you put something in your cart, good or bad, it is likely to end up in your stomach. Even if you feel some remorse about your poor choice in the store, when you get home, your willpower stands little chance. After all, you paid for it, and it is only a few steps away at that point. — Tom Rath

If there are nine guys auditioning and they're all gorgeous, I have an advantage, because gorgeous guys are a dime a dozen. But if they need someone else - like a goofy guy with bad hair who is just okay - then that's me. And finally, the other 2 percent who audition are geniuses that I could never touch. — Tom Hanks

He [George Harrison] told me he really, really admired John [Lennon]. He probably wanted John's acceptance pretty bad, you know? — Tom Petty

If you are at all successful in your business, be prepared to never have another good day or bad day at work. There will be so many things - good and bad - happening on any given day that you will be on a roller coaster of highs and lows. If that excites you, then go for it. — Tom Szaky

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad? — Tom Clancy

Suddenly energized, she jumped to her feet and bounced up and down on the couch. Clean clothes went flying off the pile. Maybe she should feel bad because she'd just seen what a huge flaw she'd uncovered in herself. But she didn't.

She felt free and alive. Up to now, she hadn't really been living. Not fully and completely. That had to change. Immediately.

"What are you doing? I'm hearing weird sounds."

"I'm pulling a Tom Cruise. And I;m also waving a bra around. HUnter, this is amazing? YOu've changed everything. We should have talked like this long ago."

"You're freaking me out, sis. Do I need to call someone? — Jennifer Bernard

And that almost killed you?"
"It wasn't deep but it got infected. Infection means that the bad germs got into it. Infection's the most dangerous thing there is, Tom. Infection was what made the superflu germ kill all the people. And infection is what made people want to make the germ in the first place. An infection of the mind. — Stephen King

The thing is I'm very interested in bad taste, as anyone who's ever seen me perform or had dinner with me would know. — Tom Baker

We seem to face an enemy who, no matter how many times we win, will best us in the end. He has so many allies: time, disease, boredom, stupidity, religious quackery, and bad habits. — Tom Robbins

It is the world's first Ebola epidemic, and it's spiraling out of control. It's bad now, and it's going to get worse in the very near future. There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now. — Tom Frieden

Colonel Mickelson looks like he could defend Fort Hamilton by himself if Staten Island ever declared war and invaded ...
If Jack Nicholson looked like this when he yelled that Tom Cruise couldn't handle the truth, Cruise would have said, Yes, you're right, I'm sorry. My bad. — David Rosenfelt

I think the writer makes a good story good or a good story bad. The writer has a great deal of responsibility. — Tom Robinson

I love to run. When the weather's bad, I should get on the treadmill in the basement gym of my apartment building, but I lack the motivation. — Tom Riley

I don't believe there is something called 'film' and something called 'theater,' and that words belong in the theater. Some rather bad films have few words in them; some good films have a lot of words in them. — Tom Stoppard

I'm sorry to bang on about it because I know everyone is, but Bryan Cranston in 'Breaking Bad' is remarkable. To see him switch from 'Malcolm in the Middle' to suddenly become Walter White is incredible. It's a) nice to see an actor given that chance, and b) great to see him really take full advantage of it. — Tom Mison

I'm very realistic in my outlook on everything in life. When I look ahead in my mind to see what's going to happen next, I see the good and I see the bad. — Tom Scholz

There's no need to fear the oblivion after we're gone if we never cared about the oblivion that came before we were born. Cheer up. Death obsessing is for boozy existentialists and bad poets. — Tom Jokinen

For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass. — Tom Robbins

We use so much bad language that it forms a barrier between ourselves and the truth. — Tom Robbins

The newspaper is, in fact, very bad for one's prose style. That's why I gravitated towards feature stories where you get a little more leeway in the writing style. — Tom Wolfe

Bad weather always looks worse through a window. — Tom Lehrer

I keep thinking the bad guys will win in the end and take it all away, but somehow it all seems to keep working. — Tom Scharpling

Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good. I have become, you might call it mature - I would call it senile - and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided. — Tom Lehrer

You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad. — Tom Stoppard

I felt bad because Little Big Tom came in while we were making the tape and was like over the moon because he thought we were interested in his music. We had to humor him and listen to him deliver around six hundred speeches about fusion and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Chicano and Latino influences on pretentious jazzy pseudorock. I think it was probably the happiest I'd ever seen him. And I also felt bad about the fact that after he left we kind of made fun of the funny way he said Latino, like he was the Frito Bandito or something. I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way. — Frank Portman

My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously, on what is and what is not important. — Tom Hanks

and friendly fire would hurt just as bad as enemy fire. — Tom Clancy

I really tried out for the part of Harry Potter, but they ended up picking me for the part of the enemy of Harry. Actually it is really fun playing the bad kid because it just has so many interesting qualities to it. And Daniel Radcliffe and I get along really well off set so it's really fun filming. — Tom Felton

If you don't want it bad enough to risk losing it- you don't want it bad enough. — Tom Krause

You still remember the bad rounds here, but they don't stay with you as long. The Champions Tour is great, it's competitive and it's a wonderful show, but it's not the real big league. The real big league is the PGA Tour, and we all know that. — Tom Kite

If it were bad songs, yeah, I'd speak up, but they're not bad songs. — Tom Araya

Free Falling
She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too
It's a long day livin' in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
All the vampires walkin' through the valley
Move west down Ventura Blvd
All the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while
And I'm free, I'm free fallin — Tom Petty

Most people in America, if not the world, would agree that every advance involves some sacrifice. In fact, a common sports adage proclaims: "No pain, no gain." In other words, progress is always accompanied by a certain amount of loss. This concept is illustrated throughout history, literature and personal experience. One compelling illustration that some bad always accompanies some good is demonstrated in the Civil Rights movement. In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. Although she was arrested and jailed, her brave efforts inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott which — Tom Clements

Sure I am a religious man who is also passionate about conserving the environment. But I am also a CEO, with all the bad habits and attitudes that are natural to the species ... I am still naturally self-interested, overconfident, full of pride, and eager to control a meeting as any CEO in America. Every day, I struggle with my ego. — Tom Chappell

When we accept bad art because it's good politics, we're killing the swan to feed the chickens. — Tom Robbins

Each of a hundred ships, built by the same men at the same yard to the same plans, will have her own special characteristics--most of them bad, really, but after her crew becomes accustomed to them they are spoken of affectionately, particularly in retrospect. — Tom Clancy

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. — Tom Waits

You must have brought the bad weather with you
The sky's the color of lead
All you've left me is a feather
On an unmade bed — Tom Waits

Collins, echoing Ed Catmull, "What separates people is the return on luck, what you do with it when you get it. What matters is how you play the hand you're dealt." He continues, "You don't leave the game, until it's not your choice. Steve Jobs had great luck at arriving at the birth of an industry. Then he had bad luck in getting booted out. But Steve played whatever hand he was dealt to the best of his ability. Sometimes you create the hand, by giving yourself challenges that will make you stronger, where you don't even know what's next. That's the beauty of the story. Steve's almost like the Tom Hanks character in Castaway - just keep breathing because you don't know what the tide will bring in tomorrow. — Brent Schlender

Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked. — Tom Hodgkinson

I remember at The Quilted Giraffe, when I was when working there to try out for the sous-chef position. I really wanted it, and the woman working the line next to me kept messing up and making me look bad. The last day of my kitchen trail, I just said to her very quietly, 'Do me a favor and get out of my way, because I want this job.' — Tom Colicchio

The same way that I know that I'll never do a movie as good or as celebrated as 'Forrest Gump,' I know that I'll never do a movie as bad as 'Bonfire of the Vanities.' — Tom Hanks

So many artists today will talk about green this or organic that, but you know what? What we are eating, I think, is really doing a lot of bad to us. I'm not sure if I'm the guy to do it right now, because I have to clean up my house too, so to speak, but we've got to start addressing this. Too many people are getting sick today. — Tom DeLonge

Once someone tries a real extra virgin
an adult or a child, anybody with taste buds
they'll never go back to the fake kind. It's distinctive, complex, the freshest thing you've ever eaten. It makes you realize how rotten the other stuff is, literally rotten. But there has to be a first time. Somehow we have to get those first drops of real extra virgin oil into their mouths, to break them free from the habituation to bad oil, and from the brainwashing of advertising. There has to be some good oil left in the world for people to taste. — Tom Mueller

On the right side-panel of the verbose and somewhat tautological box of Cheerios, it is written,
If you are not satisfied with the quality and/or performance of the Cheerios in this box, send name, address, and reason for dissatisfaction - along with entire boxtop and price paid - to: General Mills, Inc., Box 200-A, Minneapolis, Minn., 55460. Your purchase price will be returned.
It isn't enough that there is a defensive tone to those words, a slant of doubt, an unappetizing broach of the subject of money, but they leave the reader puzzling over exactly what might be meant by the "performance" of the Cheerios.
Could the Cheerios be in bad voice? Might not they handle well on curves? Do they ejaculate too quickly? Has age affected their timing or are they merely in a mid-season slump? Afflicted with nervous exhaustion or broken hearts, are the Cheerios smiling bravely, insisting that the show must go on? — Tom Robbins

People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad? — Tom Clancy

Just for today, i'll allow many things to be out of my control ... This can be very difficult for many of us. When someone tells us about something bad going on, we tend to want to solve the problem, to exercise some level of control over it. If someone is misbehaving, we often feel obligated to make that person change his or her behavior. But many, many things in this life are not under our control, nor should they be - and we shouldn't try to exert our influence trying to control them. Sometimes we need to accept that this is someone else's problem, and that person is able to deal with it, or that this is an issue that's going to take some time to resolve, or that this really, truly is none of my business. There are plenty of things in life that go on quite well without our involvement, and when we try to push ourselves in, we can add stress to our own lives and complicate the situations. So today, I'm going to let some things go, for they aren't my affair. — Tom Walsh

I think people somehow get a skewed view of Tom Brady. That he's just a clean-cut guy that does everything right and never says a bad word to anyone. We know him to be otherwise. — Richard Sherman

After the alarm clock, it is the turn of Mr Kellogg to shame us into action. 'Rise and Shine!' he exhorts us from the Corn Flakes packet. The physical act of crunching cornflakes or other cereals is portraied in TV advertising as working an amazing alchemy on slothful human beings: the incoherent, unshaven sluggard (bad) is magically transformed into a smart and jolly worker full of vigour and purpose (good) by the positive power of cereal. Kellogg himself, tellingly, was a puritanical health-nut who never had sex (he preferred enemas). Such are the architects of our daily life. — Tom Hodgkinson

[On playing a bad guy in Harry Potter's film]: I think it's more fun, there are a lot of goodies in the film and not a lot of baddies, so I like to be in the baddie group. — Tom Felton

I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to. — J.K. Rowling

I'll be in hell before you start breakfast - let her rip! — Tom Ketchum

Most mustaches lie waiting for some Clark Gable or Tom Selleck to fix them in the mind. The greatest are identified with a single man, a bad man, usually, who so wrapped his identity with a particular configuration of facial hair that the two became inseparable. — Rich Cohen

You have to remember, Frank Sinatra is 82 years old, which is 240 in your years. He's lived three lifetimes! He has good and bad days. He can't run ... around as fast as he used to. — Tom Dreesen

Well I got a bad liver and broken heart,
yeah,I drunk me a river since you
tore me apart — Tom Waits

It's interesting - years ago, I had such bad stage fright during musical theater auditions that I just gave up. And now I'm on Broadway. — Tom Lenk

Whenever I have tried to make a character bad, they end up being good in some way. — Tom Drury

Working is bad enough in the winter, but in the summer it can become completely intolerable. Stuck in airless offices, every fibre of our being seems to cry out for freedom. We're reminded of being stuck in double maths while the birds sing outside. — Tom Hodgkinson

Tom Stoppard has said that the trouble with bad art is that the artist knows exactly what he's doing.) — Clive James

I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them. — Tom Wolfe

No one ever let me be a bad guy once I started working more frequently after I got out of college and started pursuing acting. I just got all of the good-guy roles because if I walk in the room, not a lot of people believe me as a bad guy. — Tom Everett Scott

What made me this way was watching my father go through bad employment experiences. When I was 17, and he was 65, I saw him go through the experiences working for a boss that was rude and obnoxious. I swore if I was ever had the capacity to run a company that I would do it in a different way. — Tom Golisano

I really do believe most people understand raising tax rates is bad for the economy, it costs jobs. It actually in the long term undermines revenue. — Tom Cole

This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. "Oh, it's just a couple little innocent bad days." Well, we had a big rain. I don't know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothin'. They're your days. Choke 'em! — Tom Waits

Yes the Jews do many foul things and they distort our foreign policy but not everything that goes bad can be blamed on the Jews. — Tom Metzger

I hope that the Palestinians don't make the mistake of unleashing a new intifada. They've tried it twice before, and the consequences were bad for both sides. But I don't think the forces are there (that could carry out) an uprising against the leadership. The people that could initiate it are in Israeli prisons. And what could they hope to achieve? In the end, they're too weak to end the Israeli occupation. — Tom Segev

In my experience, nice guys are boring, and bad guys are fun to play. — Tom Everett Scott

People who build their own home tend to be very courageous. These people are curious about life. They're thinking about what it means to live in a house, rather than just buying a commodity and making it work. — Tom Kundig

When I play too many video games I begin to feel chubby-minded, caffeinated, bad. — Tom Bissell

I'm a bad lover. Once I caught a peeping tom booing me. — Rodney Dangerfield

You may thank God you didn't want to be an actor, Tom, because you would have been a very bad one. You worked it out at Thanksgiving, I guess, when you were all together. And it's working smooth as butter. I see Will's hand in this. Don't tell me if you don't want to."
"I wasn't in favor of it," said Tom.
"It doesn't sound like you," his father said. "You'd be for scattering the truth out in the sun for me to see. Don't tell the others I know." He turned away and then came back and put his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Thank you for wanting to honor me with the truth, my son. It's not clever but it's more permanent. — John Steinbeck

Optimism is a deadly vice of gigantic proportions lodged into the human psyche by Satan. It is the enemy of reality. We see a bad situation and optimism prevents us from extrapolating that. Instead we think, "Oh, it's bound to get better." So we plunge into the thicket, sure that it will thin, denied the aerial view that would show us the true, unacceptable horror of our lot. Perhaps optimism is good for prison escapees, who have no choice but to plod on. The rest of us are not well served. It poisons our judgment. — Tom Levine

A lot of dramas get a bad name commercially because they are unremittingly bleak. — Tom Hooper

A movie playing on the TV screen in front of us. Some sort of bad Tom Cruise drama. I've never liked Tom Cruise. He always reminded me of someone's creepy cousin, who smiles too big before he touches your butt and whispers something gross in your ear with hot whiskey breath. — Erin McCarthy

Tom finally understood why his father saw humanity as worthless. It was hard to see much fundamental value in anything when the bad guys always won.
Maybe this was simply what it was like to grow up. — S.J. Kincaid

And so, my beloved Kermit, my dear little Hussein, at the moment America changed forever, your father was wandering an ICBM-denuded watseland, nervously monitoring his radiation level, armed only with a baseball bat, a 10mm pistol, and six rounds of ammunition, in search of a vicious gang of mohawked marauders who were 100 percent bad news and totally had to be dealth with. Trust Daddy on this one. — Tom Bissell

They say that I have no hits and that I'm difficult to work with. And they say that like it's a bad thing. — Tom Waits

We don't have to relive the sad and bad memories of Christmas Past. We can create new Christmas memories in the present for the future. — Tom North

There's something about being cerebral, intellectual, and yet emotionally repressed [in being villain]. If you think someone's doing this [bad] stuff and they're in complete control, that's more scary than if they're out of control. — Tom Hooper

I heard that women are attracted to bad boys, so every once in a while, I throw a recyclable into the regular garbage. — Tom Sims

I don't know why songwriters struggle. They have to, I guess. If you're a young songwriter, quit struggling. It makes you look bad. — Tom T. Hall

Some of us do not accept the Establishment myth that bad laws must be obeyed. — Tom Driberg

Being near Tom and Doug at night kept me from having to say to myself I am not afraid whenever I heard a branch snap in the dark or the wind shook so fiercely it seemed something bad was about to happen. But I wasn't out here to keep myself from having to say I am not afraid. I'd come, I'd realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really
all that I'd done to myself and all that had been done to me. I couldn't do that while tagging along with someone else. — Cheryl Strayed

We hate those in power in Washington D.C. and anything bad that happens to them is good for us. — Tom Metzger

Wasn't crying. I've had a bad day. Another one. One in a series of bad days. I'm not complaining. Bad days are my bag. They're time-consuming, however, and I'm a busy girl. — Tom Robbins

Like most Israelis, I know very little about the Arabs. We just look down on them and see them as a threat. We have absolutely no experience with a democratic country in our vicinity. Is it good or bad for us? I am convinced that democracy isn't just good for the people in those countries, but for Israel as well. — Tom Segev

In Alien, Sigourney Weaver's role was written for a man. In Salt, Angelina Jolie's role was written for Tom Cruise. These things, when reversed, do prove to be just as exciting and entertaining with women in leading roles. — Olivia Wilde

How 'bout a cheer for all those bad girls?
And all those boys that play that rock and roll?
They love it like you love Jesus,
It does the same thing to their souls. — Tom Petty

There's nothing bad about reincarnation per se, it's basically a very good system, cost-effective and ecologically friendly. — Tom Holt

It's never as good as it looks and it's never as bad as it seems. — Tom Pollack

And I'm a bad boy 'cause I don't even miss her. I'm a bad boy for breakin her heart — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don't want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there's a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly. — Tom Hanks

As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket. Think of Spiro Agnew's foot-in-mouth disease; Tom Eagleton's medical history; the real estate holdings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband; the unbearable lightness of Dan Quayle; Sarah Palin's reading list. — Jeff Greenfield

Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing. — Tom Waits

It's a bad dream: my English teacher is standing naked at the foot of this slightly lumpy bed, clutching a pair of not-quite-white underpants in his hand, studying me with this creepy look on his face, the one he gets when he's reading aloud in class and wants us to think he's moved by the passage. — Tom Perrotta