Futility Quotes

• I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, War, Hate

  Speech in Ottawa on January 10, 1946. "Eisenhower Speaks: Dwight D. Eisenhower in His Messages and Speeches". Book edited by Rudolph L. Treuenfels, 1948.

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• Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.

  Erma Bombeck

  Memorable, Futility Of Life, Terrorism

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• The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Emotional, Winning

  Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1989). “The trumpet of conscience”, HarperCollins

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• The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

  Albert Camus

  Fall, Punishment, Rocks

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.119, Vintage

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• It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Death, Play

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 16

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• He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.

  Mark Twain

  Sarcastic, Inspiration, Useless

  Mark Twain (2015). “Pudd'nhead Wilson”, p.129, Xist Publishing

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• Insurrection is the last remedy, especially when the people have acquired the belief that peaceful means to secure the remedies for evils prove futile.

  Marcelo H. del Pilar

  Peace, Mean, Uprising

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• The futility of action does not absolve one from the failure to act. -

  Janette Turner Hospital

  Doe, Action, Failure To Act

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• Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

  George Carlin

  Futility Of Life, Dust, Trying

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  George Santayana

  Past, Infancy Is, History

  "The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress", Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense by George Santayana, 1905-1906.

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• Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Failure, Boredom, Defeat

  Antoine de Saint Exupery (1942). “Flight to Arras”

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• Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

  H. G. Wells

  Writing, Ambition, Literature

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• All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility.

  Zhuangzi

  Men, Useful Things, Knows

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• A mature artist is at the same time aware of the futility of his achievement and the validity of the pursuit.

  Jean Helion

  Artist, Achievement, Mature

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• Things have to be beautifully made, even if they are full of fun, fantasy and futility

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Fun, Fantasy, Made

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• Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Futility Of Life, Decision, Life Is

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• Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.

  Cullen Hightower

  Moving Forward, Thinking, Futility Of Life

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• Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Home, Ignorance, Political

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• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

  Errol Morris

  Past, Infancy Is, History

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• It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar,and we can't beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.

  Annie Dillard

  Hate, Fire, Vases

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.69, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• All penguins are the same below the surface, which I think is as perfect an analogy as we're likely to get for the futility of racism.

  Russell Brand

  Thinking, Racism, Perfect

  Russell Brand (2008). “My Booky Wook”, p.48, Hachette UK

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• Futility Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved -still warm -too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

  Wilfred Owen

  Morning, Stars, Kindness

  1918 'Futility', collected in Poems (published1920).

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• Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization...Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.

  Bill Moyers

  Believe, Teaching, Echoes

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• Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.

  James W. Loewen

  Past, Infancy Is, History

  James W. Loewen (2013). “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”, p.16, The New Press

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• Was it for this the clay grew tall?

  Wilfred Owen

  Fighting, Clay, Sunbeams

  Poems (1963 ed.) "Futility"

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