Payoff Quotes & Sayings

The willingness to relegate a person in my father's situation to a lower and less vigilant degree of medical attention was an accurate reflection of the values of a social system which, as I had learned in my own work in education, measures human life, more frequently than not, in rather hard-nosed and explicit terms of future payoff to the national well-being. — Jonathan Kozol

But we go out as a band because we enjoy each others company, first of all. And its the payoff for me, to go out and play my art and still play guitar, which is my life. — Peter Frampton

The only thing that makes me put down a book is if the characters are boring, or the situations aren't fraught with the potential for some great change or I don't mind if an author torments his protagonist, but I do expect a decent payoff in the end. — Michael Boatman

The problem is that people have tried to look away from space and from the meaning of the moon landing. I remember seeing a picture of an astronaut standing on the moon. It was up at Yale and someone has scrawled on it, 'So what?' That is the arrogance of the kind of academic narrowness one too often sees; it is trapped in its own predictable prejudices, its own stale categories. It is the mind dulled to the poetry of existence. It's fashionable now to demand some economic payoff from space, some reward to prove it was all worthwhile. Those who say this resemble the apelike creatures in 2001. They are fighting for food among themselves, while one separates himself from them and moves to the slab, motivated by awe. That is the point they are missing. He is the one who evolves into a human being; he is the one who understands the future. — Joseph Campbell

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, & as-yet unsolved problems. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Democrat women lead the way in showing other women how to be stepped on and diminished by men. That's what they do, for a payoff somewhere down the line. — Rush Limbaugh

Leaving what feels secure behind and following the beckoning of our hearts doesn't always end as we expect or hope. We may even fail. But here's the payoff: it can also be amazing and wonderful and immensely satisfying. — Steve Goodier

When I'm on tour, I'm in a new city every single night, and the energy and the crowds and the kids and the screaming and them knowing every single word of my music and being onstage is such an energetic feeling with a big payoff. — Hilary Duff

I outline in some detail, but even after the outline is done I often get a new idea that is an improvement, so the outline is a living, breathing thing as well. I also re-outline when I'm two-thirds done, to be sure that there is an emotional payoff from all the plot lines and to be sure the story is as tight as it can be. — Jeff Abbott

Is it harder having kids and working? It definitely is, but the payoff is you get to go home to your kids, and it all balances out. And I know I'm a better mother when I'm engaged in something outside of the house. — Edie Falco

Like your home's closets, your financial clutter needs an overhaul every now and again, and the payoff will go far beyond the psychic satisfaction of neatening up. — Suze Orman

If somebody else is making the rules for you, no matter how good the payoff is for you, you're being conned. — Jon Rappoport

And what do we get for our faith? For the centuries we've given this church or that one our gifts of blood and treasure? The assurance that heaven is waiting for us at the end of it all, and when we get there, the punchline will be explained and we'll say, 'Oh yeah! Now I get it.' That's the big payoff. It's dinned into our ears from our earliest days: heaven, heaven, heaven! We will see our lost children, our dear mothers will take us in their arms! That's the carrot. — Stephen King

There is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. — William A. Dembski

When you have the urge to run away, you are feeding into fearful thoughts that keep you stuck. What benefit are you gaining by escaping? Is there a payoff to procrastinating? — Scott Allan

Lately I've been falling asleep listening to 'Common One' by Van Morrison, specifically the song 'Summertime in England.' It's 15 minutes long, so to make it through the entire song is a real task unto itself, but Van has that emotional payoff that makes even his most tiresome songs more powerful than most people's entire catalog. — Nate Ruess

This thing wants to spread, Henry. It wants to get bad enough - " " - to attract a Prince," I finished grimly. "Some opportunistic son of a bitch out to nail a Princess for the sake of a payoff. I hate Princes. The goddamn things are worse than rats. — Seanan McGuire

The growth of a nation's productive potential is the central factor in determining its growth in real wages and living standards ... high rates of investment and saving usually have a big payoff in promoting economic growth. — Paul Samuelson

Resolve to pay any price or make any sacrifice to get into the top ten percent of your field. That payoff is incredible! — Brian Tracy

Darwin's great gift to science was simplifying all life to pure mathematics: your one and only goal on earth is multiplication. Everything you do, every instinct you have, is an evolutionary urge to make babies and leave behind as many copies of yourself as possible. From that perspective, heroism makes no sense. Why risk the grave for someone else if there's no guarantee of a biological payoff? Dying for your own kids: smart. Dying for a rival's? Genetic suicide. — Christopher McDougall

I never understood the Prisoner's Dilemma until this day. Do you cooperate when you really do want the highest payoff? When it doesn't even seem fair for both of you to cooperate? When it seems right to defect even if the other player doesn't? That's the payoff matrix of the true Prisoner's Dilemma. But all the rest of the logic - everything about what happens if you both think that way, and both defect - is the same. Do we want to live in a universe of cooperation or defection? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I'm at the tipping point of a transformation that began months ago, an intentional decision put in motion. And it feels so fucking good. I've come to the full realization that my happiness, my life, falls squarely on my shoulders. No one's gonna do it for it me. I'm the one who makes it or breaks it. It's a choice. A choice that demands action in exchange for reward. Idleness and complacency lead to mediocrity. Sometimes action is really fucking hard fought, but that's when the payoff's the highest. That's when great things happen. Not good things ... but epic things. And I've fallen in love with epic. It's the only way to live. — Kim Holden

What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices - more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

If you're the very luckiest kind of astronaut ever, your big payoff is that you get to visit a barren airless wasteland for five minutes, do some more math, and then go home - ice cream not guaranteed. — Lindy West

Who's afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don't know. The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale - and ultimately it is a gamble - demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world. — Ada Louise Huxtable

Up before sunrise. Marjorie hated getting out of bed in the dark, but loved the payoff once she was dressed and rolling down the country roads in the first light, cruising and owning them almost alone. The countryside here used to be a lot more interesting, though. She remembered it in her girlhood - orchards, small ranches, farmhouses, each one of these houses a distinct personality... Money, she thought wryly, scanning the endless miles of grapevines, all identically wired and braced and drip-lined, mile after mile - money was such a powerful organizer.

As the dawn light gained strength, and bathed the endless vines in tarnished silver, it struck her that there was, after all, something scary about money, that it could run loose in the world like a mythic monster, gobbling up houses and trees, serving strictly its own monstrous appetite. ("The Growlimb") — Michael Shea

I put ordinary people in jeopardy and give them the opportunity to be heroic. Then there's a great payoff for the reader at the end, when the heroic character gets what he or she deserves. Readers will come back again and again if they feel satisfied at the end. — Terri Blackstock

Owning the intellectual property is like owning land: You need to keep investing in it again and again to get a payoff; you can't simply sit back and collect rent. — Esther Dyson

Apart from my father, this house if filled with women. Women stop their lives; they're programmed that way. A child comes into the world and suddenly the choices grow fewer. The women seem to understand the payoff. You sacrifice, yes. You don't get to the gym, to the shrink, to the office, but you get this fragment of a moment with a person who is momentary, who will not be like this again. - 74 — Robin Romm

Creativity isn't far away, or outside of you. It's an inner movement, a heart-shift, a joy making its way out of your throat or hands or feet. So go for it. No one's watching. The payoff is magnificent. — Margo Jefferson

Sorry, boyfriends everywhere - you're doomed to sit through an hour and forty-seven minutes of syrupy drivel. The payoff? Between my face, Tadd's abs and Quinton's biceps, your girl will be ready for takeoff as soon as the credits roll. You're welcome. — Tammara Webber

Try not to be concerned with it. It's a spiritual thing. Don't look for the results, don't live in the payoff. Live in the moment which is a spiritual principle. Live in the moment and let the results take care of themselves. It's in the hands of God. The rest is all ego. And I have learned, over the years, it's got nothing to do with me. As my life is none of my business. — Anthony Hopkins

Aside from the movies, examples of positive-Black Swan businesses are: some segments of publishing, scientific research, and venture capital. In these businesses, you lose small to make big. You have little to lose per book and, for completely unexpected reasons, any given book might take off. The downside is small and easily controlled. The problem with publishers, of course, is that they regularly pay up for books, thus making their upside rather limited and their downside monstrous. (If you pay $10 million for a book, your Black Swan is it not being a bestseller.) Likewise, while technology can carry a great payoff, paying for the hyped-up story, as people did with the dot-com bubble, can make any upside limited and any downside huge. It is the venture capitalist who invested in a speculative company and sold his stake to unimaginative investors who is the beneficiary of the Black Swan, not the "me, too" investors. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We don't really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing, so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles. — Denise Mina

If the ad is bad people get turned off. That's 125 million potential viewers, so you just killed reach. But there's also a big potential payoff. I think it does pay off because you get a lot of traffic, a lot of free public relations(in media stories). It helps position themselves for the next round of financing. — Charlene Li

People don't walk around thinking of themselves as bad people. You're part of the environment that you grow up in, and there can be decency in that. I always try to find a little glimmer of that, in anything that I do, because you can find places where there's humor or lightness in something that's deep and profound, and that tends to resonate more and make people more human. As an actor and performer, I think it resonates more with the audience when you do have the payoff. — Jimmy Smits

Mars could very well be a staging location for the resources of the asteroid belt. We have to learn how to get a payback somewhere, but it's beyond Mars that the real payoff will come from minerals. — Buzz Aldrin

The real payoff of a yoga practice, I came to see, is not a perfect handstand or a deeper forward bend - it is the newly born self that each day steps off the yoga mat and back into life. — Rolf Gates

I find that when people laugh it's usually because they're connecting and identifying in a way that they hadn't considered. That's my payoff. I'm not interested in other people thinking differently. I don't care. I'm just like yeast - I eat sugar and I shit alcohol. And there's a huge culture that goes with that. Alcohol creates massive shifts in world history, and it changes people's lives. People get pregnant because of alcohol. But the yeast doesn't give a fuck. The yeast isn't going, "I really want to help people loosen up and bring passion into Irish people's lives". — Louis C.K.

Sign up for the daily work, not the payoff. — Felicia Day

The best pay off in the world is when someone comes up to you and says, 'your music has helped me with some pretty rough times through life. I don't know if I would still be here if it was for your music whether it be country music or heavy metal has done for me.' That's ultimately the biggest payoff for me. I hear it from young kids to military guys and military women to older folks. — Hank Williams III

People aren't honest about the horrors of fame. The downsides are so overwhelming that, for me, there is no payoff. — Sia Furler

The payoff of a customer-centric approach to software and digital product design is substantial and long-lasting for both companies and their customers. — Alan Cooper

In fact, most of the time, things do not turn out as we expect. But the potential value of unexpected developments is rarely tapped. Instead, when things turn out contrary to our expectations, we go immediately into problem-solving mode and react, or just try harder - without taking the time to see whether this unexpected development is telling us something important about our assumptions. "This more prepared mental state is really where a lot of the longer-term payoff is," says Galloway. — Peter M. Senge

Blogging is different from both journal-writing and writing for print. It's more fun than either of those. The freedom to write whatever I want and the unmediated connection with readers are the payoff. — Kate Christensen

We're perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff. — Warren Buffett

As he throws himself into one scheme after another, he draws lessons that improve his focus and judgment. He knits what he learns into mental models of investing, which he then uses to size up more complex opportunities and find his way through the weeds, plucking the telling details from masses of irrelevant information to reach the payoff at the end. These behaviors are what psychologists call "rule learning" and "structure building." People who as a matter of habit extract underlying principles or rules from new experiences are more successful learners than those who take their experiences at face value, failing to infer lessons that can be applied later in similar situations. Likewise, people who single out salient concepts from the less important information they encounter in new material and who link these key ideas into a mental structure are more successful learners than those who cannot separate wheat from chaff and understand how the wheat is made into flour. — Peter C. Brown

Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6, emphasis added). Call that payoff contentment, satisfaction, peace, or excitement - it all adds up to one word: happiness — Randy Alcorn

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises. — Chuck Palahniuk

Often we feel that love results from others caring or providing for us, but our deepest emotional ties usually result from our investment in others. When someone says they've quit loving another, I often sense that the lack of love results from failing to invest in the life of that individual. When we invest patience and kindness and dispel our anger and judgments in relationships, we then find an emotional bond springs forth. Like most business transactions, love has to be invested in before we will discover a payoff.
Steven Thompson — Gary Chapman

The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life. Many people will pray when they are required by cultural or social circumstances. Those with a genuinely lived relationship with God as Father, however, will inwardly want to pray and therefore will pray even though nothing on the outside is pressing them to do so. They pursue it even during times of spiritual dryness, when there is no social or experiential payoff. — Timothy Keller

To be good, is to be like God. Our purpose in life is to try and reach that standard. We will always fall short, but in our lifetime if we try our best to make a world where everyone is treated equally with respect, empathy, and compassion, the big payoff is that we will be rewarded with that exact thing in Heaven. — Lewis N. Roe

Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn't have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance 'lead anywhere'? Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. — Tom Robbins

The underlying reason why this transition was piecemeal is that food production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of many separate decisions about allocating time and effort. Foraging humans, like foraging animals, have only finite time and energy, which they can spend in various ways. We can picture an incipient farmer waking up and asking: Shall I spend today hoeing my garden (predictably yielding a lot of vegetables several months from now), gathering shellfish (predictably yielding a little meat today), or hunting deer (yielding possibly a lot of meat today, but more likely nothing)? Human and animal foragers are constantly prioritizing and making effort-allocation decisions, even if only unconsciously. They concentrate first on favorite foods, or ones that yield the highest payoff. If these are unavailable, they shift to less and less preferred foods. — Jared Diamond

When we can see an immediate payoff, we are more likely to change our behavior in the moment. This aligns our daily actions with our long-term interests. — Tom Rath

What was the payoff? It obviously kept me in my cozy zone of being in control, being a good mother, with a good daughter. Most of all, I realize, is that it allowed me to maintain the lie that she was healed, that Nick hadn't permanently damaged her, that I'd truly saved her. Because if I did, if there was no lasting residue of him, it meant that the denial that kept me in the marriage long enough for him to hurt her didn't help create the situation she's in now.
The person who I worked hardest to keep safe seems to have been me. — Claire Fontaine

Bring it up, make amends, forgive yourself. It sounds simple, but don't think for a second that it is easy. Getting free from the tyranny of past mistakes can be hard work, but definitely worth the effort. And the payoff is health, wholeness and inner peace. In other words, you get your life back. — Steve Goodier

The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven't yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful. The — David Allen

Government employees move up the ladder through educational credentials rather than merit. People are given jobs and promotions based on seniority, race and gender rather than ability or talent. Such a system often overlooks the deserving and rewards the incompetent. There is no payoff for achievement. — James Cook

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution. — Josh Trank

For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn't go back. — Alan Alda

The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point. — Anne Lamott

As the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner proved in the laboratory, the human mind seeks relationships between events and often finds them even when they are not present. Slot-machines are based on Skinnerian principles of intermittent reinforcement. The dumb human, like the dumb rat, only needs an occasional payoff to keep pulling the handle. The mind will do the rest. — Michael Shermer

We raised almost 2 million dollars at the last golf tournament that can be used for minority scholarships and Junior Golf programs. The payoff for the work we do is so much more valuable than the work we actually do for it. — Darius Rucker

My fear is you have to be careful as a writer to not get caught up in social media and blogging, because it can start to feed into your writing time. When you are writing a book, it's such a long journey where the payoff is way at the end, sometimes years away. The payoff of the blog post is today. You get the reinforcement, comments or "likes" immediately. It's appealing. You have to be patient with the book. — Matt De La Pena

Authentic Christianity and the world are by definition at odds. For most Americans, Christianity has been watered down and rendered innocuous, like so much fast food. It has become easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, and otherworldly outlook, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love of God. There is little guilt and no punishment, and the payoff in heaven is virtually certain. — Thomas Reeves

Don't spoil kids by trying to buy them off, to buy their time. Kids aren't stupid. They know a bribe when they see one. They want a parent not a payoff. — Carew Papritz

The young are always coming up with the good ideas; it's because they waste time. They follow their passion and do something, not looking for a payoff, just doing what's interesting. — Kevin Kelly

There is a payoff for examining the divine author's literary style. It will tell you something about Him. Whereas, Jonah's actions are extensively described and laboriously detailed, God's reactions (although miraculous) are only described in sparse, minimalist terms.
God seems much more amused by Jonah than Jonah is with God. Every miracle is directed at Jonah. Yet, very little copy is used to described God's miracles. Although God's miracles are much more astonishing than Jonah's immature fits of rebellion, more copy is dedicated to Jonah. — Michael Ben Zehabe

The crime scene was a small burned out house, blackened support beams sticking up like rotten teeth from the piles of char and ash on the ground. The occasional curl of half-burned insulation lay like thin snakes, poisonous and waiting. — Alex Hughes

Sometimes situations call for us to act strong and brave even when we don't feel that way, but the payoff is better if we don't pretend when we feel weak or scared so that we allow people to show the kindness that's in them — Daniel Gottlieb

As you get older there shouldn't be anything you won't try. The payoff is that you open up whole new avenues that are fun. It's a misinterpretation of life to live it only in preparation for the next one. To subordinate the one you've got to an indefinite next round is foolish. It's a waste of this life not to live this life. What's next is anybody's guess. — Malcolm Forbes

Helping people better manage their upsetting feelings - anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, and loneliness - is a form of disease prevention. Since the data show that the toxicity of these emotions, when chronic, is on a par with smoking cigarettes, helping people handle them better could potentially have a medical payoff as great as getting heavy smokers to quit. — Daniel Goleman

Making a video is one of the most exciting things for artists and fans. It's like a payoff. — Kina Grannis

Feeling the Wind in Your Hair

The peak of the cliff sits tantalizingly close. Your hands rest on your knees as you gasp, willing more oxygen into your lungs. You look back with pride down the way you've come. Just a little farther and you'll be there. Your energy now partially restored, you step on and on. The light wind lifts the closer you get to the peak. A plateau soon falls away abruptly down to the sea, and the sweeping air collects and whips into your face. The view is sublime but the payoff comes as you stand--arms stretched wide in triumph--with your eyes closed as the raging wind buffets your face. This wind, collected and grown above oceans, flitting and crashing its way across the waves, finally reaches the shore and clasps itself around you in a fleeting embrace. The crack of its passing meets your ears and slowly it absorbs you--a streaming current of air caressing your rejoicing face. — Dan Kieran

The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present. — Steven Pressfield

A lot of times when you have very short-term goals with a high payoff, nasty things can happen. In particular, a lot of people will take the low road there. They'll become myopic. They'll crowd out the longer-term interests of the organization or even of themselves. — Daniel H. Pink

Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Make a list of your current wants and desires. Next to each, put down what benefit or payoff there would be when you achieve it. Look at this list often throughout the day and before retiring at night. — Denis Waitley

A little extravagance can be defensible, so long as you buy the right things, appraising them for their payoff potential. Ask yourself 'can the object, in any way, be construed as a life investment?' by 'life investment' we mean something that will not only appreciate monetarily, but that will also a) save you money in the long-term, or b) grant you status, cultural enrichment, and/or intense pleasure. — Shelly Branch

What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his wife in the attic." -Angela Argo "Blue Angel — Francine Prose

It's hard for bands to stick it out because people grow up, and it never really pays off. If you're looking for some sort of payoff, it's not gonna happen. — Thurston Moore

Corporations, in the name of efficiency, suppress variation by "getting all the ducks in line."To optimize productivity, they evolve highly refined and internally consistent operating systems. Payoff - results - as long as the music lasts. But ... all that streamlining and re-engineering limits diversity, suppresses self-organization ... and curtails a bottom up emergent response to disruptive change. — Richard Pascale

If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept
and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But as with punishments, they can never help someone develop a *commitment* to a task or action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff. — Alfie Kohn

People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner. — Warren Buffett

It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses. — Charles De Lint

I've never really been a big fan of comedy songs, frankly. I think I enjoy the emotional payoff that the best music achieves to want to waste too much time turning good music into a joke. — Keith Murray

The chains that keep you bound to the past are not the actions of another person. They are your own anger, stubbornness, lack of compassion, jealousy and blaming others for your choices. It is not other people that keep you trapped; it is the entitled role of victim that you enjoy wearing. There is a familiarness to pain that you enjoy because you get a payoff from it. When you figure out what that payoff is then you will finally be on the road to freedom. — Shannon L. Alder

If a company's stock is undervalued - as many managers believe theirs is - a repurchase may offer the best payoff of all. — Carol Loomis

A lot of the jokes had some build-up to some nasty stuff. But most of it was all character situations leading to what the ultimate payoff would be for that character. — Shawn Wayans

When abandoned women follow their fleeing males with tear-stained faces, screaming you can't do this to me, they reveal that all that they have offered in the name of generosity and altruism has been part of an assumed transaction, in which they were entitled to a certain payoff. — Germaine Greer

It is the love that we give and the service we render that really is the great payoff. — David B. Haight

If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could, over your lifetime, you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other. You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. Or to rephrase, You decide principally based on fragility, not so much on True/False. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff. — Tana French

But in more than a few cases, you can draw a straight line from a cop being laid off or a union worker having his or her pension slashed back to the week of 2008 when a handful of Lehman executives took a payoff to mark down their own inventory. — Matt Taibbi

The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. — Brian Tracy

The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The only real payoff for leadership is eternal. — Patrick Lencioni

The only place where you can really surprise or shock the reader, or make someone laugh, is on the lower righthand corner - the very last panel - so as you turn the page, the payoff is in the upper lefthand panel. To pace every story so that there's a setup and a payoff at the page turn was a huge challenge; it's a part of the medium and you really have to learn what can be done in the medium. — Chuck Palahniuk