Quotes & Sayings About Switching Off

It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation. — Judith Martin

I don't really care about interruptions. I accept technology, and I don't turn things off. I've found a peace with fragmentation and a harmony with switching gears quickly to other things. — Doug Aitken

Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!" she cried suddenly, switching Lan's hand three times in rapid succession. "Never lick your knife!" "Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!" The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. "Ladies," she sputtered at last. "Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!" "But beshitted's all right?" Lan asked cautiously. "No, it is not!" "You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it's rude to yell at the table. — R. Lee Smith

When a woman gives birth to a child, the child needs to be able to digest the mother's milk; but when this child is old enough to begin to eat other foods, there is some switching off of this ability to consume milk. — Marvin Harris

Like evolution itself, there have been rapid advances and crippling setbacks along the way. If the Library of Alexandria had never been burned to the ground it is possible to imagine that we would have built upon the achievements of the ancient Greeks to greater and earlier effect, and therefore it could have been in the time of a Cardano or a Newton or a Pascal that we first put a man on the moon. And we can only wonder where we would be. And at the planets we would have terraformed and colonised by the twenty-first century. Which medical advances we would have made. Maybe if there had been no dark ages, no switching off of the light, we would have found a way never to grow old, to never die. — Matt Haig

The elimination of the will altogether and the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, is tantamount to the elimination of reason: intellectual castration. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You have a Happiness Switch in you that you can switch on at any time. All you have to do is stop switching it off in order to blackmail yourself or others. — Robert Young

The amount of energy saved by switching off the phone charger is exactly the same as the energy used by driving an average car for one second. — David J. C. MacKay

And life isn't like the movies: There's no ominous swell to the sound track, no fatalistic overhead shot, nothing to tell you that this moment is the one your life will turn on; instead it's like a train silently switching tracks, sheering off midjourney into a whole other part of the night. — Paul Murray

And then it hit me. One of those evil thoughts siblings get because, well, that's what we do. Looking over my shoulder I said, "You know, since you have some free time, maybe you could ... never mind."
"What?"
"Well it's just that, all those calories you've been drink - I mean - not burning off have kind of settled on your gut. I didn't want to mention anything," I said as Dave's hand stole to his midsection. "But the general pointed out that you'd lost a few steps training-wise." I laughed and waved my hand. "I'm sure it's nothing switching to a light beer won't cure. — Jennifer Rardin

Forests ... are in fact the world's air-conditioning system-the very lungs of the planet-and help to store the largest body of freshwater on the planet ... essential to produce food for our planet's growing population. The rainforests of the world also provide the livelihoods of more than a billion of the poorest people on this Earth ... In simple terms, the rainforests, which encircle the world, are our very life-support system-and we are on the verge of switching it off. — Prince Charles

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we're really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don't have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in. — Brian Eno

Switching off perfection switched on the human quality — Questlove

Giddy-up, giddy-up!" she cried, switching her horse's flanks with one of her mother's long knitting needles as a riding crop.
"Take it easy!" Bear protested. "I'm going as fast as I can!"
Caroline had to laugh at the sight.
"Now if you don't ride nicely, I'll buck you off and run for the woods!"
"No, you won't," retorted Bianca smugly. "It's too cold out there. Giddy-up! — Sarah Brazytis

Switching to light-coloured roofs and roadways would have the equivalent effect on greenhouse gas emissions to taking one billion cars off the road for eleven years. — Steven Chu

Each of us is born with an internal navigational system. The thinking of the world has a way of switching the system off, but we can always turn it on again through prayer, meditation and forgiveness. Doing this puts us back on track in our lives, making us wise, convicted and powerful. — Marianne Williamson

But I really can't and I actually don't like switching off because I worry that I might lose my thread, or something. I fall asleep and I hope to God that I'm going to dream about it, because then I don't have to put it down. — Kate Winslet

Just tell us," Harding said, bent over the wound. "Darwin had no idea ... " "That life is so unbelievably complex," Malcolm said. "Nobody realizes it. I mean, a single fertilized egg has a hundred thousand genes, which act in a coordinated way, switching on and off at specific times, to transform that single cell into a complete living creature. That one cell starts to divide, but the subsequent cells are different. They specialize. Some are nerve. Some are gut. Some are limb. Each set of cells begins to follow its own program, developing, interacting. Eventually there are two hundred and fifty different kinds of cells, all developing together, at exactly the right time. Just when the organism needs a circulatory system, the heart starts pumping. Just when hormones are needed, the adrenals start to make them. Week after week, this unimaginably complex development proceeds perfectly - perfectly. It's incredible. No human activity comes close. — Michael Crichton

Now they were all moving to no effect-just moving, just switching things off and switching things on, just picking things up and putting things down and picking things up and stroking the cat and counting the mugs and fighting for air. It seemed that everything they did had already been done and done, and that everything they thought had already been thought and thought, and that this would never end. Excuse me said panic to each of them in turn. They had no mouth and they had to scream. — Martin Amis

When I'm working, I have a hard time switching off, and when I'm not working, I have a hard time thinking of ever wanting to work again. — Natalie Massenet

Parenting can be established as a time-share job, but mothers are less good "switching off" their parent identity and turning to something else. Many women envy the father's ability to set clear boundaries between home and work, between being an on-duty and an off-duty parent ... Women work very hard to maintain a closeness to their child. Father's value intimacy with a child, but often do not know how to work to maintain it. — Terri E Apter

Sissie could see it all. In her uncertain eyes, on her restless hands and on her lips, which she kept biting all the time.
But oh, her skin. It seemed as if according to the motion of her emotions Marija's skin kept switching on and switching off like a two-colour neon sign. So that watching her against the light of the dying summer sun, Sissie could not help thinking that it must be a pretty dangerous matter, being white. It made you feel awfully exposed, rendered you terribly vulnerable. Like being born without your skin or something. As though the Maker had fashioned the body of a human, stuffed it into a polythene bag instead of the regular protective covering, and turned it loose into the world.
Lord, she wondered, is that why, on the whole, they have had to be extra ferocious? Is it so they could feel safe here on the earth, under the sun, the moon and the stars? — Ama Ata Aidoo

Many a cat can only be lured in by switching off all the lights and keeping very still. Until the indignant cry of a cat-locked-out comes at the door. — Pam Brown

The three of you are enough to drive a mara mad.'She can wear my shirt," she growled in an imitation of Nash."No,she can wear my shirt,"she said switching to Tod's smoother tone.Then Sabine took off down the hall without a glance at any of us."I have a spare. Come on, Kaylee,before I choke on testosterone and melodrama. — Rachel Vincent

We got off at the next exit, quietly, and, switching drivers, we walked in front of the car. We met and I held him, my hands balled into tight fists around his shoulders, and he wrapped his short arms around me and squeezed tight, so that I felt the heaves of his chest as we realized over and over again that we were still alive. I realized it in waves and we held on to each other crying and I thought, 'God we must look so lame,' but it doesn't matter when you have just now realized, all the time later, that you are still alive. — John Green

I think life always provides reasons to not die, if we listen hard enough. Those reasons can stem from the past - the people who raised us, maybe, or friends or lovers - or from the future - the possibilities we would be switching off. — Matt Haig

Cannabinoids like cannabidiol (CBD) can prevent the cancer cells from spreading by switching off a gene called Id-1. Studies showed that the rapid increase in these cancer cells was decreased to a certain extent after treating with cannabidiol. — Thomas Longe

I thought I was clever by greeting casting agents in my Australian accent and then switching to an American one during the performance. But the Australian accent seemed to put them off. Now it's the opposite; they love Australians. And with my thick Californian accent I now have a problem convincing them I'm Australian. — Jonathan LaPaglia

You can drive an SUV, but there's a balance. If you do that, maybe use energy-efficient light bulbs at home or just be conscious of switching off lights. If you can afford to drive an SUV, maybe you can afford to make a donation to a wind farm or plant some trees. It's all about balance. — Orlando Bloom

People get themselves all steamed up about weather they're in love or not. They ought to realize that the love part is perfectly easy; the hard part is working out, not about love, but about what they're going to do. The difference is that they can get their brains going on that, instead of taking the sound of the word "love" as a signal a signal for switching them off. They can get somewhere instead of indulging in a sort of orgy of emotional self-catechising about how you know you're in love, and what love is anyway, and all the rest of it. — Kingsley Amis

To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap — Alain De Botton

Recreating the experience of, say, bereavement in my own head is pretty rough. I was used to switching off from emotions every day of my working life as a journalist, but in fiction, you have to feel it 100%, or else it's a flat experience for the reader. — Karen Traviss

The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child. — John Guillebaud

Over analyse, paralyse, you mustn't over analyse ... Do you wake up at four in the morning and wonder who should be playing left-back? Four? I would love to sleep that long. If you want a really long career you have to find a way of switching off. I do it when I'm out walking my dog, Alex Ferguson got into horses, others get into wine. Some players like going shopping, which is not my scene. A lot of them turn to golf. I tried it, didn't like it. I have to walk. If I couldn't I'd be in a padded cell by now. — Roy Keane

Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice - all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, they didn't evolve for the "good of the species" and aren't reliably employed to that end. Quite the contrary: it is now clearer than ever how (and precisely why) the moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with self-interest; and how naturally oblivious we often are to this switching. In the new view, human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse. The title of this book is not wholly without irony. — Robert Wright

Pardon me, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats. You see, that's my girlfriend there, and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes, I thought she might need someone to hold her hair when ... well ...
St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? — Stephanie Perkins