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

topic: Inspirational, Fear, War, Worthlessness, Impervious

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

topic: Courage, Fear, Feelings, Worthlessness, Impervious

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

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

topic: Essence, Common Sense, Long, Psychoanalysis, Quadratic Equation

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

- Margaret Fuller

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

topic: Men, Needs, Excuse, Worthlessness

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

topic: Elements, Contact, Understood, Worthlessness, Relative Value

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

topic: Greatness, Men, Quality, Worthlessness

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

topic: Add, Disappointed, Worthlessness, Definite

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

source: Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

topic: Hate, Wrath, World, Worthlessness

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

topic: Education, Children, Fall, Unschooling, Worthlessness

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

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

topic: Weed, Lying, Night, Worthlessness

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

topic: Love Is, Loving Someone, Inspire, Worthlessness, Great Tragedy

People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness

- John D. MacDonald

topic: People, Adoption, Inexplicable, Worthlessness

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

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

topic: Infinite, Christianity, Worthless, Worthlessness

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

topic: Personality, Radiance, Patterns, Worthlessness

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

- Horace

topic: Character, Excellence, Littles, Worthlessness

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

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

topic: Gimmicks, Mimicry, Use, Worthlessness

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

- Dov Davidoff

topic: Feelings, Bad Times, Term, Worthlessness

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

topic: Able, Rewriting, Vitality, Drained, Worthlessness

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

topic: Happiness, Believe, Mean, Worthlessness

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

- John Maynard Keynes

topic: Government, Taxation, Regulation, Worthlessness

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

topic: Fashion, Betrayal, Heart, Worthlessness

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

topic: Enemy, Nihilism, Want, Worthlessness

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

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

topic: Complaining, Television, Levels, Worthlessness

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

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

topic: Christian, Religious, Integrity, Depravity, Baseness

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

topic: Inspiration, Quality, Raw Materials, Worthlessness

I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yeh, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating.

- Sebastian Faulks

topic: Thinking, Way, Would Be, Worthlessness

He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain all the while an exceedingly poor creature; for riches are no proof whatever of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glow-worm's light reveals the grub.

- Samuel Smiles

topic: Men, Light, Attention, Worthlessness, Rich Man

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

- Christian Nestell Bovee

topic: Opinion, Misanthropy, Evidence, Worthlessness

What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music...

- Richard Wagner

topic: Cheer, Lying, Passion, Worthlessness

If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.

- John Maynard Keynes

source: John Maynard Keynes (1929). “The Economic Consequences of the Peace: The classic text on the Treaty of Versailles and post war Europe”, p.141, Harriman House Limited

topic: Money, Government, Deception, Worthlessness

Guilt is the sum total of: All the negative feelings we have ever had about ourselves! Any form of self-hatred, self-rejection, feelings of worthlessness, sinfulness, inferiority, incompetence, failure, or emptiness. The feeling that there are things in us that are lacking or missing or incomplete.

- Kenneth Wapnick

topic: Self, Rejection, Hatred, Self Hatred, Sinfulness

Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.

- Osamu Dazai

topic: Character, Rainbow, Long, Worthlessness

How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.

- Iris Murdoch

topic: Country, Self, Long, Worthlessness

Here is The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, dying in your world. A man made monster with every human emotion, overdosed on worthlessness in a world that could never wrap it’s head around him (so don’t even try). When it’s all over just remember every single word you ever said was always just a bullet to his head. Bury him underground between friends and love - the only things that are gonna make it to the end with him. Look for his body buried beneath where the yellow weeds are growing and know he’s still living in his nightmares.

- Pete Wentz

topic: Weed, Boys, Men, Worthlessness, Human Emotions

He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines.

- Benjamin Franklin

source: "Benjamin Franklin Wit and Wisdom".

topic: Worthlessness

As a body in a world, here is our choice: we can be more loving or less loving. That's it. We can relax as the entire moment's show of love's swirl, feeling open as all--a vicious rainstorm, tweeting birds, our lover's lips, a sense of worthlessness-- or we can close to some aspect of experience, pulling away as if we were separate.

- David Deida

topic: Bird, Choices, Feelings, Swirls, Pulling Away

Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

source: "Counsels and Maxims". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer translated by T. Bailey Saunders (Volume 2, Chapter 24, § 324), 1851.

topic: Hands, Conviction, Genuine, Worthlessness

It's difficult to overcome what you're getting beamed into your brain by the television every day. The worthlessness of journalism today is just making the country confused and bewildered and lost.

- Aaron McGruder

source: Source: www.avclub.com

topic: Country, Confused, Brain, Worthlessness