Pathetic Quotes

• Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Ignorance, Majority Rule

  "Notes On Journalism". Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926.

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  The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

  Helen Keller

  Inspirational, Life, Peace

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• What a pathetic play from a pathetic human being.

  Bill Walton

  Funny, Nba, Play

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• It's natural for a person to deny he's a failure as a human being. That's why he searches for somebody who is more miserable than himself. That's why so much animosity exists on the Internet. Those who aren't able to find a more miserable person turn to the Internet and call other people losers, even though they've never met just to make themselves superior. Isn't that pathetic? There's a sense of security that comes from speaking badly of someone else. But that isn't true salvation.

  Tatsuhiko Takimoto

  People, Miserable Person, Loser

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• I think you can measure how pathetic your life is by how much joy you get from learning about other people's faults and troubles.

  Bradford Winters

  Leadership, Thinking, People

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• Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Attitude, Greatness

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “The Essential Nietzsche”, p.166, Courier Corporation

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• I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake.

  John D. Rockefeller

  Money, Business, Men

  John D. Rockefeller (2015). “John D. Rockefeller on Making Money: Advice and Words of Wisdom on Building and Sharing Wealth”, p.15, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• There is one thing infinitely more pathetic than to have lost the woman one is in love with, and that is to have won her and found out how shallow she is!

  Oscar Wilde

  Shallow, Lost, Found

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.21, Wordsworth Editions

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• It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Needs, Choke

  Chuck Palahniuk (2001). “Choke: A Novel”, Anchor Books

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• To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.

  Pablo Picasso

  Artist, Imitation, Copies

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• God, what pathetic creatures had inherited the earth, to walk a little while with their eyes upon the stars and turn their gaze too soon upon the ground that held their feet!

  Martha Ostenso

  Stars, Eye, Feet

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• Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

  Mark Twain

  Happiness, Humor, Joy

  Following the Equator ch. 10, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

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• Eeyore, the old grey donkey, stood by the side of the stream and looked at himself in the water. "Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic."

  A. A. Milne

  Water, Sides, Donkey

  Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 6

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• I don't know who Peter Lorre is. Pathetic, right? It shows you how completely gross and uncultured my generation is.

  Christina Ricci

  Generations, Peter, Gross

  "Christina Ricci: The Most Original Young Actress in Hollywood". Interview with Stephen Rebello, movieline.com. November 1, 1999.

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• I will always be the hopeless romantic, more often pathetic than heroic.

  Chris Lowell

  Romantic, Heroic, Hopeless

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There are few things more pathetic than those who have lost their curiosity and sense of adventure, and who no longer care to learn.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Adventure, Curiosity, Care

  Gordon B. Hinckley (2009). “Way to Be!: 9 Rules For Living the Good Life”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• Beyond the wounds of the child and the scars of the man, there is something in the heart of love itself that makes love pathetic.

  Philip Rieff

  Love, Children, Heart

  Philip Rieff (1979). “Freud: The Mind of the Moralist”, p.164, University of Chicago Press

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• The hell of it is, I know the answer. The answer is that you never, ever, rely on another person for your peace of mind. If you do, you're screwed but good. Not right away, maybe, but sooner or later. You have to -- I don't know --you have to learn to live with yourself. You have to learn to turn back your own sheets and set a table for one without feeling pathetic. You have to be strong and confident and pleased with yourself and never give the slightest impression that you can't hack it without that certain goddamn someone. You have to fake the hell out of it.

  Armistead Maupin

  Strong, Giving, Fake

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• Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.

  Josh McDowell

  Religious, Belief, Sincere

  "Interview: Josh McDowell, Dave Sterrett on Oprah's Spirituality". Interview with Michelle A. Vu, www.christianpost.com. January 26, 2010.

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• Do you laugh in the right places? Then, you’ll get along, in fair weather or foul. Humor is nothing less than a sense of the fitness of things. Something that’s out of proportion, like an inflated ego, should strike you funny, particularly if it’s your own inflated ego. Otherwise you are pathetic and quite hopeless.

  Carole Lombard

  Weather, Laughing, Ego

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• Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

  Jerry Garcia

  Retirement, Politics

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• Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Birthday, Self, Years

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• Nothing is more pathetic than having a small character in a big assignment. Many of us don't want to give attention to our character, we just want the big assignment from God.

  Henry Blackaby

  Character, Giving, Attention

  Henry T. Blackaby, Richard Blackaby, Claude V. King (2008). “Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God”, p.146, B&H Publishing Group

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• I turn into a crying, hysterical maniac when I see a spider. It's pathetic.

  Kate Dickie

  Spiders, Cry, Hysterical

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• The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

  John D. MacDonald

  Philosophy, Touching, World

  John D MacDonald (2013). “Bright Orange for the Shroud: Introduction by Lee Child: Travis McGee”, p.5, Random House

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