Top 120 Reactive Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Explore popular Reactive quotes.
Last updated on April 19, 2025.
Because President Obama had an overall strategy, military and civilian leaders under his command could make reactive decisions that advanced the president's goals. In the military, we call that commander's intent: When there's a decision to be made and you don't have exact guidance at that moment, you at least know overall what your boss wants.
I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager.
If you're steering a boat down a river, it's not something about which you can know that. You can only know how to do it. It's unfinished, it has no start-stop time, it's fluid. Practicality relies on indeterminate markers. It's just another kind of knowledge that's sexy, in a certain way. It's reactive, and often physical.
Sadly, I have met very few people who have a plan for their life. Most are passive spectators, watching their lives unfold, one day at a time. They are reactive rather than proactive. They may plan their careers, the building of a new home, or even a vacation. But it never occurs to them to plan their life.
With 'Hannibal,' it's like reactive scoring so I don't get ahead. I don't read a script; I don't want to know what's going to happen until its happening in front of me and I'm able to have an instrument in my hands that I'm playing to make some kind of a map, some sort of tonal map, that I can then build on.
I do think so much of what I do is reactive to the way the world sees itself, or the way the world is being portrayed. I wanted to offer an alternative to that. Whether it is accepted or not is beside the point, but it's an alternative.
I am very reactive and malleable. I have to figure out when to be hands on and hands off. If I am hands on all the time, I can't do too much. But my attitude works in a certain way. So the idea is to spread your personality, your attitude.
I am very reactive towards everything. There are some who don't react at all, they absorb everything quietly, while I'd go all out and show my expressions. This is not part of some tamasha I do; I do it because it's part of my personality. To each his own.
You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.
First of all, "redneck" is a state of mind, not a person. So the "racist redneck" thing is a state of mind, not a geographical location. So I don't mean to imply that it's just Southerners. And if you don't recognize the racist underpinnings and the emotional reactive response you're getting from these teabaggers because we have a black president, then you are either being dishonest, or you've never seen the teabaggers.
I'm under no illusion that the future will be a neat and tidy or desirable world. We will gain a lot of things through necessity and a lot of them through all sorts of fragile dysfunction - not because they're bad ideas but because they will inevitably be adopted in a chaotic, reactive way.
I tend to feed the trolls because it gives me material for my work. I'm sometimes taken aback by the racist and antisemitic abuse I get, but most of the time I'll get angry for a second, and then remind myself, 'This is material.' The trick is not to be too reactive.
INTROVERTS are especially vulnerable to challenges like marital tension, a parent’s death, or abuse. They’re more likely than their peers to react to these events with depression, anxiety, and shyness. Indeed, about a quarter of Kagan’s high-reactive kids suffer from some degree of the condition known as “social anxiety disorder,” a chronic and disabling form of shyness.
Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.
There certainly are situations where I feel not empowered or uninspired. Particularly when the person's agenda is to intimidate through abusing their position or their authority. When I am present and in a nonreactive state, then I can become like snake and slide through their "intimidation net" back into the creative plane. When I am in a reactive state, I usually regret responding, because usually all that happens is that the intimidator feels righteously vindicated.
When I graduated from college, I got a 9-to-5 traditional job doing social media for a company, and I'd spend all day long fighting with the system of getting things approved and the fact that social media has such a quick turnaround. Things had to be very reactive and instant.
Foreign policy commands attention when it's crisis management. A street revolt breaks out in Egypt or Libya or Kiev and everyone asks, how should the president respond? Now these are important parts of America's role in the world, but they are essentially reactive and tactical. The broader challenge is to lay down a longer-term strategy that endures after the crisis of the moment.
The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue. ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room.
When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold, glittering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit. A constant ferment, but it might just as well be going on in a test tube. Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. Stupendous. Bizarre, Baffling. A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated.
We're living in a society where you need to be accountable for your actions, for your behavior - for yourself. To sit back and be reactive would be to allow your children to make big mistakes without the benefit of your wisdom being bestowed on them. It's not what my parents taught me.
I don't think you can write from a reactive place. I think you just write the thing you want to write about, and if other people are writing about it, that doesn't really come to bear on what you want to do.
"Chess has definitely helped me understand a lot of the strategy of football. In chess, good offense is often an exercise in putting multiple points of pressure on one square. In football, offensive play design (particularly passes) involves putting multiple points of pressure on one player." "In chess, you often give your opponent a move that looks strong for him, but it turns into a trap. Football is the same way. I've always thought of defense in football as being totally reactive. But now I understand the ways in which football defenses force the offense to make certain choices."
My advice to organizations I work with is always to be proactive rather than simply reactive when it comes to human rights issues. After all, the important process of improving company policies and practices must be carried out without having to be prompted by a labour strike, factory collapse or other crisis.
Well, the medium of film is so different than a book that just by bringing it into visual storytelling is to change it up. I think in a book, in any book, you can have a reactive character. Some of the great novels of all time have had that, but in a film you can't do that.
After Lockerbie, everyone thought, now we've learned the lesson of how to be proactive instead of being reactive. Unfortunately, September 11 came and we know the result. Thousands of people lost their lives. Security totally failed, not at one airport, at three different airports around the country.
I really love idiot, enlightened characters - these characters who fail to engage with the drama of their immediate circumstances; they fail to be reactive and enrolled by drama as it happens around them.
Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?
Be a creator of circumstances rather than just a creature of circumstances. Be proactive rather than reactive. — © Brian Tracy
Be a creator of circumstances rather than just a creature of circumstances. Be proactive rather than reactive.
If you are an incredibly reactive person and you are working on your lowest level, and if you continuously give into your dark side and are angry, and screaming, and breaking things, and you do that for hours and hours on end, you are going to be incredibly exhausted. That's just the way life is.
In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador's perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.
Let us consider an alternative style of thinking, which we can call 'creative thinking.' It is playfully instructive to note that the word 'reactive' and the word 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters. The only difference between the two is that you 'C' [see] differently.
Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later, too often on the back foot.
I probably spend more time writing than reading science fiction. I find that science-fiction literature is so reactive to all the literature that's gone before that it's sort of like a fractal. It's gone to a level of detail that the average person could not possibly follow unless you're a fan. It iterates upon many prior generations of iterations.
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values - carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.
In the unawakened state you don't use thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say, possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don't see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.
Leaders are active instead of reactive, shaping ideas instead of responding to them. Leaders adopt a personal and active attitude toward goals. The influence a leader exerts in altering moods, evoking images and expectations, and in establishing specific desires and objectives determines the direction an organization takes. The net result of this influence is to change the way people think about what is desirable, possible, and necessary. In other words, leaders are visionaries and managers operate within those established visions.
We have two choices when things pile up at work or we're surrounded by energy vampires who leave us feeling depleted. We can get frantic, hyperventilate, shut down, and become reactive. Needless to say, these responses to stress just make us more stressed. Surrendered people have the ability to pause, take a deep breath, and observe.
Laboratory tests are the next set of important numbers to know. Here are the key lab test numbers you need to know: 1. Complete blood count 2. General metabolic panel with fasting blood sugar and lipid panel 3. HgA1C 4. Vitamin D 5. Thyroid panel 6. C-reactive protein
Improvisation, the main thing is it teaches you to be in the moment and present in the moment and be reactive and proactive for what's going on. Someone gives you something - a lot of actors are a little shut off, so they're just doing, "This is my character, these are my lines, I'm going to just send it to you then you send whatever you're sending." Improvisation teaches you to really be listening.
This fear factor, this war driver is a very strong one and it's been with the species ever since the beginning and it motivated the Great Wall of China. War can be aggressive or defensive, right? So it motivated the Great Wall of China. Our space program was reactive to Russia.
I've done and said a lot of things when I was younger that I don't know if I even understood what I was doing or why I was doing it. There's a lot of compassion in understanding what people go through and even in trying to understand why a person would act the way they do. I was a very reactive person, and I did things that were just really bizarre; I don't think people understood it at all.
If I learned one thing, it is that self-doubt is one of the most destructive forces. It makes you defensive instead of open, reactive instead of active. Self-doubt is consuming and cruel. And my hope today is that we can all collectively agree to ban it. .?.?. Think to the moments of your life when you forgot to doubt yourself. When you were so inspired that you were just living and creating and working. Pay attention to those moments because they're trying to reach you through those lenses of doubt and trying to show you your potential.
To talk about something like prostitution, the other person then becomes the wild card that will have a response, and it may not be the response you want. Sometimes I think saying it would be selfish to tell them is still being under the illusion that you have all the power. You say it would be selfish to tell them, when in fact you're scared that in telling them, it gives them the power to do what they might want to do because once they know, they become somebody who could be reactive.
When the brain is silent, the executive function, which is this part of the brain that makes decisions, can work much better. So when you get quiet, you make better decisions. You're also more rested - you're not as reactive.
He is a very positive captain; he is proactive as well as reactive. He is keen to read the game, to get in there, and he never stops thinking about the game, the situation, and trying to turn it to his advantage. He has been very good for the game.
I told [ David Lange] he was crazy, because you can't have an alliance relationship if you refuse access to their ships. And the Americans wanted to punish him very severely and I intervened there and softened them somewhat. They wanted to really take some tough, reactive measures to New Zealand.
Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is recognizing that we are responsible for our own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or condition. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others.
I work on stretched linen canvas, sized so that the surface already has a sense of tension when I begin. It is a very rich and reactive surface. I begin by drawing on the canvas with a kind of loose line, very simply and freely. I paint very thinly, which allows me to change the drawing if I want to.
Being a President I will carry out a foreign-policy platform that will transform America's role in the world to that of a proactive, not reactive, superpower that will use diplomacy and incentives to head off trouble in unstable regions before they unravel out of control. I will also be wearing platform shoes when I meet with foreign dignitaries to accentuate my well-toned calves.
We don't have a business model for health care in this country, We just have a business model for care. The way doctors and hospitals get paid is something bad has got to happen. It's a pure reactive model.
We have two choices when things pile up at work or we're surrounded by energy vampires who leave us feeling depleted. We can get frantic, hyperventilate, shut down, and become reactive. Needless to say, these responses to stress just make us more stressed. Surrendered people have the ability to pause, take a deep breath, and observe. Sustaining silence and circumspection are two behaviors that lead to better, healthier outcomes.
To derive the fullest comfort and encouragement from Romans 8:28 we must realize that God is at work in a proactive, not reactive, fashion. That is, God does not just respond to an adversity in our lives to make the best of a bad situation. He knows before He initiates or permits the adversity exactly how He will use it for our good.
Older fatherhood isn't all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something who's just getting started.
If you're just an actor you're reactive. You're saying, "Well, I hope Hollywood gives me a role, or gives me a chance at a role," whereas if you can generate your own content, then you can go where you want to go.
I like actors who just become that person and then react, and Adam [Driver] is completely reactive in that way. So every day working with him was really a pleasure. And he's in almost every scene in the film, so the poor guy had to work the - almost the entire 30 days of our film shoot. But, yeah, he was really a pleasure, and I really love what he - how he embodied this character.
In the middle order the game is a little more laid out for you, whether you are batting first or chasing down a score, so you are a bit more reactive to the situation in front of you. Opening up, it is pretty much a blank canvas and dependent on how you play.
I overcame my fears and troubles simply by praying and learning to calm down when scary things were happening - I formed certain mantras which helped me become pro-active vs. reactive, such as : What's the problem? What's the solution? Time Energy Money What do I get? What do I give? Shrink It. Fix it. Grow it.
Schwartz's research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.
Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.
Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach - see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience - is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.
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