Quotes & Sayings About Doing Things The Wrong Way

I like eating the right way, doing things the right way. I never had to have my dad come and say, 'Hey, you have to get back to the gym' or, 'Hey, you're eating wrong.' — Bryce Harper

From the time they hit middle school, they start moving away from home. They are not doing anything wrong; it's just the way they are made. They are becoming independent, and they begin redefining themselves through the eyes other people who are not in their immediate family. The older they get, the more important it is to have other voices in their lies saying the same things but in a different way. — Reggie Joiner

One theme that runs through many [job hunting books] is just plain harmful: the advice to "just be yourself." Wrong. Remember that first day on your first job, when you went to get your first cup of coffee? You found the coffee machine, and there, stuck on the wall behind it, was a handwritten sign reading:
YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T WORK HERE
PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF
You thought, "Pick up after myself? Gee, I guess I've got to develop a new way of doing things." And so you started to observe and emulate the more successful professionals around you. You weren't born this way. You developed new skills and ways of conducting yourself, in effect creating a professional persona that enabled you to survive in the professional world. — Martin Yate

And now I feel like crying, because I really do not understand, and I don't think I will when I'm older either. It was only when I loved Franz I understood the world, and felt happy. When you love, you're praying. Everything was quite clear. I wanted to be good. I think you begin things the right way when you want to be good. And I think I'm doing everything wrong now because all I want is for people to be good to me. I want to be loved, everybody wants to be loved; for a thousand people who want to be loved there may perhaps be just one who wants to love. Our Father which art in heaven ... my heart is all a lump of grief. — Irmgard Keun

It's so tempting. Being told: this is who you are. This is how your life will go. This is what will make you happy. You will go to the right school, find the right job, marry the right man. You'll do those things, and even if they feel wrong, you'll keep doing them. Even if it breaks your heart, this is the way it's done. — Anna Pitoniak

We're taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven't, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that's very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It's exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You're on it, and you can't get off. — James Dyson

Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of
Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.
— Roland Merullo

It is. It's all over. The system is fucked. You can't win by doing things the right way in this world. No. There is no right and wrong. There's only what you get away with and what you don't. — C.D. Reiss

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. — Mitch Albom

Spent half of my life doing the wrong things, the wrong way. Plan to spent the rest half doing again the same wrong things, but the right way. — John C. Yiannoudis

Sometimes just being an immigrant, I read things the wrong way, and that can be funny. Or I'll put the emphasis on the wrong word, and that can be funny. I have an affinity for comedy because I like to watch them. It's an honor to make comedies because I love being able to pop something into the DVD player and laugh. I love doing it. — John Cho

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be, by definition, the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being. — John Perry

If you owe money, you can't pay them out. You just pay for everything, you do smart things, you eventually get very rich. If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball. And everybody thinks they're going to leave at two minutes to 12. — Howard Warren Buffett

So many peoplpe walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep,even when they're busy doing things they think are important. THis is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way to get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives your purpose and meaning — Morrie Schwartz.

Some days I hit that wall really hard, and I have to tell myself that I don't believe that stuff anymore. That all the things in my brain, all the little voices whispering that I'm Doing It Wrong, this is just how hegemonies work: by continuous reinforcement; by convincing people that there is only one true way (or a handful of such); by promoting and valuing, over and over, the same narratives without thought to how harmful they can be. — Nalo Hopkinson

I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go. — Terry Pratchett

If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters. — Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Smart people ask for help, because it's a much more efficient way of doing things than wasting time doing it the wrong way. — Grace Helbig

We can never make ourselves better by trying ... praying more or longer, studying more of the Word, performing good works, etc. Don't get me wrong ... it's not bad to do any of these things. In fact, it's good. It's just that doing them in God's power is the only way those things will have any real and lasting effect in our lives. — Joyce Meyer

There's a right way and a wrong way to do things. If you make a chair, you want to make a nice chair. You want people to admire it. I think doing something well is a form of respect for humanity in general. I have found that all incompetence comes from not paying attention, which comes from people doing something that they don't want to do. And doing what you don't want to do means either you have no choice, or you don't think that the moments of your life are worth fighting for. — Hal Hartley

Everybody goes the wrong way, everything is confused, chaotic, disorderly. But nobody is ever lost or hurt, nothing is stolen, no blows are exchanged. It is a kind of ferment which is created by reason of the fact that for a Greek every event, no matter how stale, is always unique. He is always doing the same thing for the first time: he is curious, avidly curious, and experimental. He experiments for the sake of experimenting, not to establish a better or more efficient way of doing things. — Henry Miller

If you are doing things the same way as two years ago, you are almost certainly doing them wrong. — John Harvey-Jones

As for me, I would rather be wrong for doing right than to be right while doing wrong. In other words, obey God rather than the cultural mores, denominational standards, religious traditions, and theological interpretations and practices. Sometimes society norms will try to make you think you are wrong when you are right. Other times, you may even be persecuted for doing the right things in the eyes of God. Whichever way the tides turn, you just have to be prepared to stand on holy ground for God. — Alvin E. Miller Sr.

- Now my father had a way, a little like that of Job's (in case there ever was such a man - if not, there's an end of the matter.
Though, by the bye, because your learned men find some difficulty in fixing the precise aera in which so great a man lived; - whether, for instance, before or after the patriarchs, &c. - to vote, therefore, that he never lived at all, is a little cruel, - 'tis not doing as they would be done by - happen that as it - My father, I say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience - of wondering why he was begot, - wishing himself dead; - sometimes worse: - — Laurence Sterne

I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning. — Margaret Atwood

It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. — Thomas Carlyle

Anyone who can't learn from other people's mistakes simply can't learn, and that;s all there is to it. There is value in the wrong way of doing things. The knowledge gained from errors contributes to our knowledge base. — Ben Carson

I think the reason why twentysomethings are so fixated on age is because we feel a pressure to be a certain way at 23, at 25, at 29. There are all of these invisible deadlines with our careers and with love and drinking and drugs. I can't do coke at 25. I need to be in a LTR at 27. I can't vomit from drinking at 26. I just can't! We feel so much guilt for essentially acting our age and making mistakes. We're obsessed with this idea of being domesticated and having our shit together. It's kind of sad actually because I don't think we ever fully get a chance to enjoy our youth. We're so concerned about doing things "the right way" that we lose any sense of pleasure in doing things the wrong way. Youth may be truly wasted on the young. — Ryan O'Connell

You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you're doing a film, once you start asking, "What would I do?," you're getting the distance greater between yourself and the character, or you're bringing the character to you, which I think is self-serving, in the wrong way. The idea is to bring yourself to the character. — Colin Farrell

Brancusi made me realise that what I had learned previously - the quick ways of doing things - was all wrong. It is a search you have to enter - into yourself. — Isamu Noguchi

I've thought about it properly, this whole praying thing, I mean really thought about it, and what I think is that maybe people are doing it wrong; that instead of asking God nicely, people should be demanding and questioning and threatening to stop worshipping. Maybe that way, he would think differently and try to make things right, like he is supposed to; even that verse in the Bible says ask for anything and you shall receive and, I mean, whose words are those? — NoViolet Bulawayo

The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very important. Sure, the MGB was a lousy car in almost every way that counted: balky, unreliable, underpowered. But it was fun to drive. It was responsive. Every pebble on the road was felt in the bones, every nuance in the pavement transmitted instantly to the driver's hands. He could listen to the engine and tell what was wrong with it. The steering responded immediately to commands from his hands. To us passengers it was a pointless exercise in going nowhere--about as interesting as peering over someone's shoulder while he punches numbers into a spreadsheet. But to the driver it was an experience. For a short time he was extending his body and his senses into a larger realm, and doing things that he couldn't do unassisted. — Neal Stephenson

A company is a moral imbecile. It has no sense of right or wrong. Any restraints have to come from the outside, from laws and customs which forbid it from doing certain things of which we disapprove. But it is a restraint that reduces profits. Which is why all companies will strain forever to break the bounds of the law, to act unfettered in their pursuit of advantage. That is the only way they can survive because the more powerful will devour the weak. And because it is the nature of capital, which is wild, longs to be free and chafes at each and every restriction imposed upon it. — Iain Pears

He cannot understand what a liar means, or he would know that he is one himself." "A man seldom has such knowledge as that." "Is it not so when he stigmatizes me in this way merely as an excuse to himself? He wants to be rid of me, - probably because I did not sit and hear him read the sermons. Let that pass. I may have been wrong in that, and he may be justified; but because of that he cannot believe really that I have been a liar, - a liar in such a determined way as to make me unfit to be his heir." "He is a fool, Harry! That is the worst of him." "I don't think it is the worst." "You cannot have worse. It is dreadful to have to depend on a fool, - to have to trust to a man who cannot tell wrong from right. Your uncle intends to be a good man. If it were brought home to him that he were doing a wrong he would not do it. He would not rob; he would not steal; he must not commit murder, and the rest of it. But he is a fool, and he does not know when he is doing these things. — Anthony Trollope

Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it. "Yes ... and" rather than "No ... but." "The idiot is bound by his pride," he says. "It always has to be his way. This is also true of the person who is deceptive or doing things wrong: he always tries to justify himself. A person who is bright in regard to his spiritual life is humble. He accepts what others tell him - criticism, ideas - and he works with them. — Michael Lewis

Stories don't teach us to be good; it isn't as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and getting a chocolate bar; we're not mechanical, we don't respond every time in the same way ...
The moral teaching comes gently, and quietly, and little by little, and weighs nothing at all. We hardly know it's happening. But in this silent and discreet way, with every book we read and love, with every story that makes its way into our heart, we gradually acquire models of behaviour and friends we admire and patterns of decency and kindness to follow.
Philip Pullman from his Award Lecture, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Recipient 2005 — Philip Pullman