Quotes & Sayings About Dysfunction

I've never had siblings, I didn't grow up in a big family; it was just me and my single mom. And hectic family dysfunction was actually something that I craved. — Emmy Rossum

AUTHOR'S GOODREADS PAGE: I like dysfunction. Broken people who can't fix each other, but fit together because they're missing the same pieces. — Lime Craven

Ordinary psyches often react to bad news with a momentary thrill, seeing the world, for once, in jagged clarity, as if lightning has just struck. But then darkness and dysfunction rush in. A mind such as Beethoven's remains illumined, or sees in the darkness shapes it never saw before, which inspire rather than terrify. This altered shape (raptus, he would say) makes art of the shapes, while holding in counterpoise such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, complexity and simplicity. — Edmund Morris

The nation's chronic weakness is its political system, which is nearing dysfunction. If the U.S. can elect better political leadership, it should be able to manage problems better than most competitors. — David Ignatius

The dark book has been terribly popular. Dark characters, dysfunction, and all sorts of things from reality that are true in our world. — Jan Karon

He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.

"'How about my present?' she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.

"Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!

"No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I'm afraid.

"All right, Dora, don't you worry. You'll get your two quid all right. We aren't paying by results.

"He made a clumsy gesture. 'Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.'

"Dora brought it. Ah, that's better. That at least doesn't fail. — George Orwell

Over the years, I've interviewed thousands of people, most of them women, and I would say that the root of every dysfunction I've ever encountered, every problem, has been some sense of a lacking of self-value or of self-worth. — Oprah Winfrey

The common ingredient in every single dysfunction is an issue of power. — Caroline Myss

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). H. pylori is frequently accused of contributing to the development and progression of autoimmune disease (and is also one of the best-understood persistent infections). As mentioned in the previous section, H. pylori is a bacterium found in the upper gastrointestinal tract of approximately 50 percent of the population and is known to cause stomach ulcers in susceptible individuals. It also modulates the adaptive immune system through a very complex interaction. In fact, the interaction is so complex that acquiring H. pylori early in life prevents immune and autoimmune diseases. By contrast, acquiring H. pylori as an adult (which is more common in Western countries) increases the risk of immune dysfunction. — Sarah Ballantyne

Could we chose to amend the rules of the game to create a society that values people over profits, life over pollution, mutual care over guns and prisons, vision over dysfunction? — Vicki Robin

I think that in any family - black, white, Chinese, Spanish, whatever - family is family. You know that there's dysfunction, and that there's this cousin who doesn't like this auntie. But, at the end of the day, like I say, love brings everybody together. — Lauren London

Fifteen years ago tomorrow I had open heart surgery, a quintuple bypass surgery. Thanks to all of my doctors. Because of them, in 15 years of life I've been able to experience, well, acid reflux, short-term memory loss, and erectile dysfunction. Thanks for all your work. It's great to be alive. — David Letterman

While the world has found the right names for all chronic mental diseases, I believe poetry is also a brain dysfunction, yet the only one that owns itself the mastery for the cure. Isn't it lovely to say, "He/She suffers of Poetry?". — Ioana-Cristina Casapu

Marriage is designed to pull dysfunction to the surface of our lives, set it on fire and help us grow. — Tyler Ward

After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years, people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them. — Marshall Goldsmith

(Dr. Carson, being a neurosurgeon, probably favors a physiological and biochemical model of brain dysfunction over a Freudian model. This means he was a shoo-in for the presidential nomination if Republicans stayed on their meds. Which they didn't.) — P. J. O'Rourke

We put the fun in dysfunction. — William Lashner

I had several teachers who inspired me, in both the public school system and the Upward Bound program. I needed several, because I lived in such abject poverty and dysfunction. And they're still in my life today, because I consider them to be friends, actually. — Viola Davis

I swear, they need to make an app for Facebook that has little electrodes hooked up to our private parts, so when we see some idiot spouting off about something he really doesn't know jack shit about, as soon as we reach for the keyboard, it sends 110 volts coursing through our dis-functioning erectiles, or better yet, through HIS, before he posts it to begin with. — Steve Bivans

The "active couch potato syndrome" is an actual observed scientific phenomenon whereby devoted fitness enthusiasts - who conduct daily workouts but live otherwise inactivity-dominant lifestyles - are not immune to the cellular dysfunction and metabolic disease patterns driven by inactivity. Statistics referenced by James Levine, MD, PhD, a Mayo Clinic researcher, international expert on obesity, and author of Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, — Mark Sisson

We may wonder how the ability to profit from land fosters social dysfunction, but once we realize the extent to which community wealth is privatized for personal gain, we also come to realize just how corrupt most societies actually are. Many social problems exist as a result of how our system misallocates wealth, not as a result of an unalterable human condition. — Martin Adams

The one general theme I took away from that first week with my new friends, was that everyone had their issues. Life in its simplest form is an attempt to deal with and avoid potential impediments. Some families take dysfunction to lofty heights while other break apart like Oreos mixed in a blender. — Phil Wohl

It can be difficult to leave a long-term relationship, even when our inner-wisdom tells us it's time to let go. At this point, we can choose let go and endure the intense pain of leaving behind the familiar to make way for a new chapter in our life. Or we can stay and suffer a low-grade pain that slowly eats away at our heart and soul, like an emotional cancer. Until we wake up, one day and realize, we are buried so deep in the dysfunction of the relationship that we scarcely remember who we were and what we wanted and needed to be. — Jaeda DeWalt

It's hard not to get down on the government when you see dysfunction play out on our TVs every day. Frankly, sometimes at every level of government. — Chuck Todd

Aptitude can show calling, but it isn't the only indicator. Ineptitude or dysfunction may reveal calling more than talent, curiously enough. — James Hillman

You talked to your mother about Duncan's erectile dysfunction?" He glared down at her. "Has he considered taking your TV away? — Dana Marie Bell

The word dysfunction has, I think, served its purpose and now has lost its meaning. Every family, like every person, is imperfect, after all. The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions, is an odd concept. In my youth I was running from my family to try to find out who I was-their influence distracted me. Now I see what a powerful hold they have, no matter what. — Susan Minot

He was frigging Dionysus! The man who invented the three-way! He'd had sex every possible way known to man. He'd made improvements to the Kama Sutra. And he was suffering from a major case of wet noodle. — Rosanna Leo

I am actually in poor health due to chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, and my ability to work is greatly diminished right now, so I have to get better before I can start another big project. — Laura Hillenbrand

Anxiety and stress-related mental dysfunction is the plague of modern-day society. Millions of people are tormented by anxious thinking and the consequent distress this brings, irrespective of whether they live in a mansion or a bed-sit or whether they earn millions or are living on the breadline. This would indicate that external circumstances cannot prevent or cause pathological anxiety or free people from negative emotions. — Christopher Dines

, I have a friend living as a woman. But she's almost too "normal," to be quite frank. I'm not relying on her, because "The Jerry Springer Show" has such huge characters. I'm trying to come up with a little more dysfunction than that. — Max Von Essen

The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species' sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment. — Cacilda Jetha

When men do not run they are likely to die prematurely from dysfunction of the heart and vascular systems or from disabling chronic disease. — Paul Shepard

Doing scrum" is as meaningless (and impossible) as creating an instance of an abstract class. Scrum is a framework for surfacing organizational dysfunction. It is not a process and it is not prescriptive. — Tobias Mayer

Today's "progressive" is committed to expanding lifestyle freedom, which the rich tend to manage, like economic freedom, to their advantage. But while the benefits of economic freedom do in fact extend even to the poor, what trickles down from lifestyle freedom is dysfunction, disorder, and disarray. The — R. R. Reno

Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living. — David W. Earle

Don't worry about being nervous. A lot of vampires have trouble with this from time to time. It happens to everyone."
"If I was a forty-year-old man suffering from erectile dysfunction, that would be a great comfort to me, thanks. — Molly Harper

What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is that in our increasingly dysfunctional U.S. society, marvelous poetry is being written - out of and amid the dysfunction. — Adrienne Rich

Pick a dysfunction and it's a family problem. — Robert Downey Jr.

Isms' are described as transference of addictive patterns of dysfunctional behaviour, passed down from generation to generation. For instance, if a mother was an alcoholic who never made it into recovery, her behaviour would leave a mark on her children, husband, etc. Unless her adult children join some sort of recovery programme and adopt the mindfulness practice, they will have very similar behaviour traits to their mother but minus the alcohol abuse. There is a strong possibility that they will become codependent and form relationships with other codependents or alcoholics. — Christopher Dines

The pervasive brutality in current fiction - the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord - is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world. — Tom Robbins

There is so much chaos and dysfunction going on with the federal government that Dallas can't wait any longer for federal help. — Laura Miller

Dysfunction comes when we intertwine the church and God and view them as one. — Randy Elrod

Daddy is jive talking
and showering the stripper
Mommy is sleepwalking
while changing baby's diaper — Casey Renee Kiser

You didn't wind up on a pole without a lot of help from your family. — Lisa Unger

A number of holistic and complementary medical doctors in the US, from general practitioners to psychiatrists, are using maca with a variety of patients. Both men and women report a significant boost in libido. And a number of men who have suffered from erectile dysfunction have improved, as a result of taking maca. — Chris Kilham

She had gills while other people were breathing with lungs. There was, however, no point in dwelling on it, as it was too later to grow up differently. — Sonja Yoerg

Dysfunction is a true reaction to untruth. — Lemn Sissay

My family may be dysfunctional, but I think it's pretty functional in its dysfunction. — Amanda Torrey

The more severe the dysfunction you experienced growing up, the more difficult boundaries are for you. — David W. Earle

An analysis of nutritional and metabolic data by Jon Pangborn, Ph.D., a well-known nutritional biochemist affiliated with the Great Smokies Diagnostic Laboratories in Asheville, North Carolina, found that the metabolism of methionine is the "most frequently impaired or disordered amino acid" among 1,500 individuals with food and chemical intolerances, degenerative diseases, neuromuscular dysfunction, and mental diseases. — Stanley W. Jacob

My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, step-children, dysfunction, and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate fact from fiction. — Melissa Gilbert

I have breakups that I can credit to every song. In my twenties, I picked people who would create that dysfunction and drama, so I could draw upon it. — Kara DioGuardi

You think I can't get it up anymore, maybe? Lemme tell you, you eat enough garlic and it stands up every time. — Alberto Vitale

People say child stars have a hard time 'because of the entertainment business,' but I think there's a dysfunction before all that. I use the analogy, 'If you're a fool without money, you'll be a fool with money.' — Tia Mowry

Heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure. — Joe Haldeman

As I travel around the world, it's fascinating; European leaders, Asian leaders, they all say to me, America is actually poised to be the world leader for another century - if we can fix some of this political dysfunction ... We've got a lot of national security challenges, but if we get our economy together, and if we can get our political system to work well, I am really confident about our future. — Barack Obama

Dysfunction isn't a choice, it's a disease. — Lisa Unger

But as a child of God, there is something especially encouraging you need to remember today: God can do more in one moment than you can do in a lifetime. There is no situation that intimidates Him. There is no mess, no dysfunction, no abuse, no pain that He can't heal. One word from God, one moment in His presence, can change the entire course of your life. — Joyce Meyer

I'm surprised that I've survived my own dysfunction, really. — George Michael

I totally bristle against words like "dysfunction" or "abuse." — Justin Torres

Change is threatening to the status quo. — David W. Earle

What creates a writer is huge, psychological dysfunction. — Kathy Lette

Mindset will change your reality and destination. Are you ready? If yes, start THINKING victory. Trust me - you will win. — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

Our nation declared a war on people trapped in racially segregated ghettos - just at the moment their economies had collapsed - rather than providing community investment, quality education, and job training when work disappeared. Of course those communities are suffering from serious crime and dysfunction today. Did we expect otherwise? Did we think that, miraculously, they would thrive? — Michelle Alexander

An abundance of peer-reviewed science is showing that a whole foods, plant-based diet prevents most heart attacks, strokes, and even many kinds of cancer. It gets you to your ideal weight easily and sustainably, reverses Type 2 diabetes, and even fixes erectile dysfunction (because it greatly improves circulation!). — Kathy Freston

Lena scowled at the empty space in her living room. "Oh sure, thanks, I had fun too." She'd stayed awake, spilled a cup of perfectly good tea, and for what? A spirit with the noncorporeal equivalent of erectile dysfunction. Mostly she was fine being permanently on-call in the Veil. On nights like this, however, it sucked. — Laura Oliva

"What is normal?" really becomes the question. What is normal, and how are we fooled into thinking it's something other than what we're doing at any given time. Every family has either a drug addict or an alcoholic or some sort of dysfunction that the family is dealing with. And I think the grace of this family is that they actually could be that far out there but also be forgiving, and be really human, and be human in front of each other without much shame. — Mark Ruffalo

Maybe I have this fascination with the dark side because I live in the light. I don't have any dysfunction, and I've never experienced trauma. — Lisa Unger

Sexual overindulgence may not only destroy reason and willpower, but it may also lead to either temporary or permanent mental dysfunction. — Napoleon Hill

A woman who wants to be the head of her home invites the Devil to take over her family. And the Devil has taken over many homes because the wife has refused to submit to the legitimate, biblical authority of her husband. The result is spiritual sickness and dysfunction. — Tony Evans

Everyone stumbles through it all the same; the main difference lies not in the lack of dysfunction but in the desire to be dishonest about it. Every family has problems, but only some let you see them. The rest just keep their chaos behind closed doors and out of conversation. — Kevin Breel

It's my opinion, with some people, just knowing they are alone, living inside of their own miserable, self hating, dysfunctional mind, with their own immature, insecure, self pitying self is its own revenge. Their existence is their karma. — Colleen Truscott Fry

There are times where the dysfunction in the Senate just goes too far. — Bob Corker

Healing occurs in the present, not the past. We're not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we'e not giving in the present. There's a lot of talk today about people growing up in dysfunctional homes, but who didn't grow up in a dysfunctional home? This world is a dysfunction. However, there's nothing we've been through or seen or done that cannot be used to make our lives more valuable now. We can grow from any experience, and we can transcend any experience. — Marianne Williamson

I hate that word dysfunction. — Jonathan Franzen

Last year, I was conversing by e-mail with an acquaintance who was investigating the black market in cadaver parts. She came into possession of a sales list for a company that provides organs and tissues for research. On the list was "vagina with clitoris." She did not believe that there could be a legitimate research purpose for cadaver genitalia. She assumed the researcher had procured the part to have sex with it. I replied that physiologists and people who study sexual dysfunction still have plenty to learn about female arousal and orgasm, and that I could, with little trouble, imagine someone needing such a thing. Besides, I said to this woman, if the guy wanted to nail the thing, do you honestly think he'd have bothered with the clitoris? — Mary Roach

You are responsible for your life. You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on. — Oprah Winfrey

Most intelligent men and women like to go forth into the world and stalk their own prey, choose their own mirrors of dysfunction ... — Laurie Viera Rigler

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots. I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and most childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Is that why Alzheimer's is expected to quadruple?219 — James Perloff

I've been the queen of dysfunction and made every mistake one can make. — Janice Dickinson

Chaos limits the free-flow of love and becomes a roadblock to what family members want most and sadly, it becomes the normal for the family. — David W. Earle

It is the sincere horror of it that gets others motivated, so say Watson and Andrews; the dysfunction caused by the onset of depression may serve a useful function in that it is a device for the elicitation of altruism. — Andrew Solomon

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can't let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of "negative growth". — Eckhart Tolle

If you ever tell anyone about Jonah's sexual dysfunction, I'll never play music again. — Bob Dylan

For an entire wing of the G.O.P., a dysfunctional government, whose only visible activity is mismanaging crises, is not an embarrassment but the vindication of a worldview. — Amy Davidson

The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment. — Henry Louis Gates

if you'd like, i can show you the trophy case on the way out so you can bask in the achievements of the alumni who are now old enough to be suffering from erectile dysfunction, memory loss, and death. — John Green

I spent a lot of time reading blogs by mothers who had children with varying degrees of neural dysfunction, from schizophrenia to all sorts of different issues. And honestly, I don't think it's different for anybody. There's no right way to make sure your child will be emotionally and mentally healthier. It's just frustrating. — Vera Farmiga

Getting sucked into other people's ego dysfunction & darkness robs you of your own light. — Oprah Winfrey

Religion was no cure for dysfunction. — Marjorie M. Liu

Everybody has some dysfunction in their families. — Hillary Clinton

A designated patient 'carries' the group's dysfunction. A designated issue performs the same service for an individual, dominating our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed. — Martha Beck

I felt it [Shakespeare's Coriolanus] is sort of an examination of our dysfunction as a nationalistic, tribal entities. I think the world is rocking and cracking open in weird and worrying places. And I think Coriolanus, the play, reflected that. — Ralph Fiennes

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines. — Nancy Gibbs

I was born an emotional tampon in a cauldron of dysfunction. — Dana Gould

If you're playing someone who's impeded by fear, or shyness, or has whatever dysfunction your character might have, you have to achieve the dysfunction first, imaginatively, in order to play someone who is trying to negotiate their way out of it. — Colin Firth

Science and technology have amplified the effects of the dysfunction of the human mind in its unawakened state to such a degree that humanity, and probably the planet, would not survive for another hundred years if human consciousness remains unchanged. — Eckhart Tolle

The next dysfunction of a team is the lack of commitment and the failure to buy in to decisions." She wrote the dysfunction above the previous one. "And the evidence of this one is ambiguity, " which she wrote next to it. Nick was reengaging now. — Jossey-Bass

No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction. — Stefan Molyneux