Worthlessness Quotes

• Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.

  William Congreve

  Inspirational, Fear, War

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• Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage.

  Eric Hoffer

  Courage, Fear, Feelings

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• In its famous paradox, the equation of money and excrement, psychoanalysis becomes the first science to state what common sense and the poets have long known - that the essence of money is in its absolute worthlessness.

  Norman O. Brown

  Science, Essence, Long

  Norman O. Brown (1972). “Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History”

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• We need to hear the excuses men make to themselves for their worthlessness.

  Margaret Fuller

  Men, Needs, Excuse

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke”, p.149

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• It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood.

  Hu Shih

  Relative Value, Elements, Contact

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• She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Greatness, Men, Quality

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• I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.

  Carl Jung

  Add, Disappointed, Memories Dreams Reflections

  Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Memories, dreams, reflections”, Random House Inc

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• It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than others, but as lower than the lowest of mankind. We hate then the whole world, and we would pour our wrath upon the whole of creation.

  Eric Hoffer

  Hate, Wrath, World

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• The function of high school, then, is not so much to communicate knowledge as to oblige children finally to accept the grading system as a measure of their inner excellence. And a function of the self-destructive process in American children is to make them willing to accept not their own, but a variety of other standards, like a grading system, for measuring themselves. It is thus apparent that the way American culture is now integrated it would fall apart if it did not engender feelings of inferiority and worthlessness.

  Jules Henry

  Education, Children, Fall

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• I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed?

  Virginia Woolf

  Weed, Lying, Night

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1931”

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• Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the true worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul... You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

  Adrian Tan

  Love Is, Loving Someone, Inspire

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• People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness

  John D. MacDonald

  People, Adoption, Inexplicable

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• Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Infinite, Christianity, Worthless

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2008). “Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928-1931”

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• I am inviting you to discover that deeper than any pattern, deeper than personality, deeper than success or failure, deeper than worth or worthlessness, there is a radiance that is undeniable, always present - the truth of who you are.

  Gangaji

  Personality, Radiance, Patterns

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• Excellence when concealed, differs but little from buried worthlessness.
  [Lat., Paullum sepultae distat inertiae
  Celata virtus.]

  Horace

  Character, Excellence, Littles

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• Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick.

  Erving Polster

  Gimmicks, Mimicry, Use

  Erving Polster, Miriam Polster (1973). “Gestalt therapy integrated: contours of theory and practice”

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• Coming to terms with my feelings of worthlessness isn't always a bad time, but it's rarely a good one.

  Dov Davidoff

  Feelings, Bad Times, Term

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• Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even as its vitality and spontaneity are drained from it.

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Able, Rewriting, Vitality

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• To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.

  Eric Hoffer

  Happiness, Believe, Mean

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Government, Taxation, Regulation

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• Evil working in subtler fashion; marriages that proved to be no more then legalized slavery, and the careful manipulation of a bright and sensitive mind until its owner truly believed with all her heart in her own worthlessness. Betrayal, not once, but many times over.

  Mercedes Lackey

  Fashion, Betrayal, Heart

  Mercedes Lackey (1991). “By the Sword”, p.146, Penguin

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• Those are my enemies: they want to overthrow and to construct nothing themselves. They say: "All that is worthless"--and want to create no value themselves.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Enemy, Nihilism, Want

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• If everything on television is, without exception, part of a low-calorie (or even no-calorie) diet, then what good is it complaining about the adverts? By their worthlessness, they at least help to make the programmes around them seem of a higher level.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Complaining, Television, Levels

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.102, Verso

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• I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Christian, Religious, Integrity

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• There’s an inherent message in my work relating to recycling and the nature of value, but my artistic inspiration is fired by the qualities within the raw materials… I come across many things which have been abandoned and find something more in them than their intrinsic worthlessness.

  Ptolemy

  Inspiration, Quality, Raw Materials

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