Demoralizing Quotes

For those of us with introverted tendencies, many think that hard work and good results is what matters most. It would be great if that were the case, but it's wrong to believe that to be true. Superb performance on the job is important, but if you don't have a supportive network, you're in for some big disappointments. We speak to people continuously who suffer from the missing component of good networking in their career path. Those people find that their missed opportunities or promotions are demoralizing and certainly frustrating. ~ Dorothy Tannahill-Moran

And how does a place get spoiled? Well, it is spoiled by people very like us, which reminds us of a further paradox of travel. On the one hand travel is self-enhancing, on the other hand it is rather sneakily demoralizing. We use travel (in vane) to enhance our image: "Yes, sure, I've been to Fiji, but not for years. I hear it's gotten kind of touristy." But though we wear our travels, when they are over, like badges, while we are actually traveling we suffer constant little erosions of self-regard everywhere we go. Because, fond as we may be of the notion of ourselves as "travelers," shrewd as we may be in our choice of destination and lodging and wines, we are aware of ourselves as part of that declassed, identity-blurred worldwide mob. ~ Richard Todd

To give up power to change for the better is inherently distasteful to everyone, and to force people to affirm that they are addicts or alcoholics so they can speak in a meeting is shameful and demoralizing. ~ Chris Prentiss

When spontaneous demoralizing thoughts seep into your conscience, don't trip ... allowing them to fester. These are random tests of your conviction and determination. Large or small, your reaction to such intrusions is a defining moment for which no one else, but you, can mitigate. ~ T.F. Hodge

I'll be honest, watching the music industry collapse has been demoralizing and disheartening at times. ~ Trent Reznor

And really, was there anything so demoralizing as meeting a former lover? Never did a woman have more cause to doubt her judgment than when confronted with the pathetic evidence of what she had once somehow found appealing. ~ Meredith Duran

The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Doing great work is a struggle. It's draining, it's demoralizing, it's frightening - not always, but it can feel that way when we're deep in the middle of it. ~ Ryan Holiday

I am fearful that the paper system will ruin the state. Its demoralizing effects are already seen and spoken of everywhere. I therefore protest against receiving any of that trash. ~ Andrew Jackson

The love song I wrote that day... I got embarrassed and never sang it for her.

Oh yeah... I'll sing it to her when I go home.

I'll go home.

I'll hurry home. ~ Inio Asano

He wished to god he had a horse, in fact any animal. Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one. And yet from a social standpoint it had to be done, given the absence of the real article. ~ Philip K. Dick

I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come. ~ Mark Twain

Most professionals specialize in only part of the complex community revitalization process. Incomplete efforts usually create messy, expensive, demoralizing failures. Few specialists understand how to bring a place back to life with a holistic approach. If anyone understands the complete revitalization process, it's Storm Cunningham. He's spent over a decade rigorously studying successes and failures worldwide. He can look at a community, regional, or organizational regeneration or redevelopment process, and quickly spot what's wrong ... what's missing. ~ Lindsey Davis

He'd experienced it as a private trauma. Failure in American schools was demoralizing and to be avoided at all costs. American kids could not handle routine failure, or so adults thought. ~ Amanda Ripley

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future. ~ Adolf Hitler

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds. ~ Kenny Smith

I never went too long without a job. The problem was a lot of the early jobs are almost more demoralizing than unemployment. ~ Nick Offerman

Outrage, combining as it does shock, anger, reproach, and helplessness, is perhaps the most unmanageable, the most demoralizing of all the emotions. ~ Margery Allingham

There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing. ~ James M. Kouzes

The two of them didn't even stop jitterbugging during the intervals. I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground.
There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. ~ Sylvia Plath

It's better to grow your employees, steer them into a place that they can learn and succeed, and want to work hard and be loyal, than to have a revolving door of employees. That's demoralizing. ~ Glen Mazzara

the purpose of 'systematically shaking the foundations, systematically undermining society and all principles; for the purpose of demoralizing everyone and throwing everything into chaos, and then, once society had begun to totter as a result - and was sick and weakened, cynical and devoid of beliefs, yet still yearning for some guiding idea and self-preservation - they would suddenly take it into their hands, raising the banner of rebellion and relying on a complete network of groups of five, which would all be active at the same time, recruiting and making practical efforts to search out all the means and all the weak spots that could be exploited'. He concluded that here, in our town, Pyotr Stepanovich had organized only the first experiment in such systematic disorder, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I love watching reality TV, but being part of making it was just demoralizing. ~ Sia Furler

It is because of the Biblical curse on man's search for knowledge, which has so paralyzed his mind during the past ages, and its detrimental effect upon progress, that makes the Bible the most wicked, the most detestable, the most pernicious, and the most obnoxious book ever published. It has been a curse to the human race.
It is the duty of every brave and honest man and woman to do everything in his and her power to destroy the influence of this utterly stupid and vicious book, with its infantile concept of life and its nonsense concerning the universe. It is their duty to do everything within their power to stop its demoralizing and paralyzing influence upon the life of man.
We will never achieve intellectual liberty until the wickedness of this book has been discarded with the belief in the flatness of the earth. ~ Joseph Lewis

Without standards, you end up accepting any morsel of paying work that comes your way, like a hungry mouse devours a crumb. You remain stuck in that gut-tightening, demoralizing position of doing work you despise, for clients you don't like, just because you need the money. ~ Pete Savage

Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. ~ Oscar Wilde

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive. ~ Oscar Wilde

It takes courage to have a conscience when you seem to see others getting something tangible out of not bothering to struggle with the morality of a situation. It gets frustrating and demoralizing. This is precisely where character comes in. All throughout history special people have felt compelled to do what they objectively saw as right and good - even in the face of humiliation or rejection or expulsion or torture or death. That is because they believed that certain ideas were more important than individual well-being. ~ Laura Schlessinger

If Americans can transform Memorial Day, technically a remembrance of all our war dead ever, into the official kickoff of summer, we can handle adapting one demoralizing battle into a wholesome, chipper get-together. ~ Sarah Vowell

To this aversion of the intellectual elite for official historiography, to its conviction that history, which was a forgery anyway, might as well be the playground of crackpots, must be added the terrible, demoralizing fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts, that man may be free to change his own past at will, and the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition. ~ Hannah Arendt

Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health. ~ David Edelstein

To be loved is very demoralizing. ~ Katharine Hepburn

There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money. ~ Sophocles

A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of woman except - very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings - a prostitute.
It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man's self-respect. ~ George Orwell

While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied - and to some extent overshadowed - by elevated and inspiring ideas about the American future. ~ John Podhoretz

Man, anytime the ball goes through the basket. It doesn't matter if it's a jumper or a drive. Any time the ball goes through the basket, and it's going through consistently, it's demoralizing for any opponent. ~ Dwyane Wade

I don't read newspapers in the morning. I take a look at the dailies in the afternoon, but only when I've finished my work for the day. Reading about what is happening in Turkey once again would only be demoralizing for me. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Jesus' disciples are not people lacking resources, but they are poor because they belong to this people under the oppressive and demoralizing dominion of a foreign power (e.g., Lk 6:20). They are indeed thus poor in spirit (Mt 5:3). Jesus does not focus on a concern for the poor in the sense of people who lacked resources. In ~ John E. Goldingay

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism. ~ Oscar Wilde

Too much success is the enemy, too much failure is demoralizing. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Most people have a very difficult time handling anger, even their own. When anger is directed at you, it creates an atmosphere of tremendous tension. With the misogynist, the shouting usually includes insults and attacks on you, which make the experience doubly painful. These verbal assaults can be as frightening and demoralizing as implied threats of physical violence. ~ Susan Forward

You don't know how demoralizing it is to be a man with nothing to offer a woman. ~ Tayari Jones

I thought of how many women told me dispiritedly about how their husbands waited for them to ask - or to make a list - and how demoralizing that was for them. I could not help thinking that there was some element of passive aggression in this recurrent theme of nice men, good, playful dads, full of initiative and motivation at work, who "waited to be asked" to do the more tedious baby-related work at home, until the asking was finally scaled back or stopped. ~ Naomi Wolf

Is not 'casual' labour the very secret and safety-valve of a safe and sound labour system generally?...In a complicated and commercial state constant employment at regular wages is impossible; while dole-supported unemployment, at anything like the wages of employment, is demoralizing to begin with and ruinous at its more or less quickly arriving end. ~ George Saintsbury

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.
I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. ~ Oscar Wilde

... as Herman (1992b) cogently noted two decades ago, these personality disorders can be iatrogenic, causing harm to individuals as an inadvertent result of the social stigma they carry and the widespread (but not entirely accurate) belief among professionals and insurers that those with Cluster B personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder[BPD]) cannot be treated successfully, cannot recover, and are a headache to practitioners. For example, the BPD diagnosis continues to be applied predominantly to women often, but not always, in a negative way, usually signifying that they are irrational and beyond help. Describing posttraumatic symptoms as a personality disorder not only can be demoralizing for the client due to its connotation that something is defective with his or her core self (i.e., personality) but also may misdirect the therapist by implying that the patient's core personality should be the focus of treatment rather than trauma-related adaptations that affect but are distinct from the core self. In this way, both therapists and their clients may overlook personality strengths and capacities that are healthy and sources of resilience that can be a basis for building on and enhancing (rather than "fixing" or remaking) the patient's core self and personality. ~ Christine A. Courtois

A new educational system in which all children born shall have the same advantage of physical, industrial, mental and moral culture, and thus be equally prepared at maturity to enter upon active, responsible and useful lives ... In so doing, it strikes a fatal blow at ... the most demoralizing of all monopolies ... educational superiority. ~ Victoria Woodhull

The experience of this demoralizing crisis [of the Babylonian exile], which appeared to negate all the central elements that Yahweh had ordained for Israel's well-being, could easily have meant the end of Israel's religion. Remarkably, it provoked instead an almost explosive flowering of theological literature during the exilic period. (p. 139) ~ Rainer Albertz

In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious - unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer's life can be distressing - negative reviews, rejections by magazines, difficulties with editors, publishers, book designers - disappointment with one's own work, on a daily/hourly basis! - it seemed to me a very good idea to shield Ray from this side of my life as much as I could. For what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too? ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Save some of that for the game," he orders. "Besides, you're killing Ace's confidence. Go do the ladder. You can work on your footwork and get rid of some of that goddamned energy without demoralizing half your team. ~ Jen Frederick

When companies create ridiculous and demoralizing rules to halt the outlandish behavior of a few individuals, it's a management problem. There's no sense in alienating your entire workforce because you don't know how to manage performance. It makes a bad situation that much worse. ~ Travis Bradberry

The loss of Abu Talib's protection was certainly demoralizing, if not detrimental to Muhammad's physical security. But returning home after one of his painfully violent revelatory experiences, or after suffering another indignity from the Quraysh - his head covered in dirt, his tunic defiled with blood - and not having Khadija there to wrap him in her cloak and hold him in her arms until the terror subsided must have been an unimaginable sorrow for the Prophet. ~ Reza Aslan

I had been a veteran of pretty challenging job searches, so I knew firsthand how frustrating, confusing, and demoralizing the job search process can be. Even after you get a job, many people join companies and discover in the first couple weeks that they aren't a good match with the personality and values of the company. ~ Kathryn Minshew

We hear very often declarations on the demoralizing tendency of war, but as much as I hate war, I cannot be of the opinion that frequent wars are so corrupting to human nature as long peaces. ~ John Adams

True, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between authentic anger and bullshit and that's why the following exercise is designed to help you express your resentments with integrity, and not with demoralizing bullshit ~ Will Jelbert

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Few realizations are as demoralizing as knowing that the only thing standing between you and what you want is yourself, ~ Kate Bolick

Apparently "London" gave out my address! that's what they're saying ... not just London, though! Brazzaville, too! ... and said that I'm a dirty pornographer ... a letch besides being the most despicable traitor of the century! ... I'd make a urinal blush! that what we need is to cleanse France and the French language of this smut-writing, demoralizing, grammaclast who's sullying our sacred homeland and its literary heritage! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. ~ Harriet B. Braiker

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I may as well cut my losses and make a hasty exit while I still had enough self-esteem to walk upright. Crawling was so demoralizing ~ Darynda Jones

We attach to most of our chapels a cultural hall so that our youth may have a place to dance, to perform their talents in musicals and other uplifting entertainment, and we hope our youth leaders as trustees of the building will see to it that only wholesome, uplifting activities are performed in this building. Should you have any reservations whether or not an activity, a style of dancing or tempo of music is in accord with Church standards, may I suggest this guide: Does it uplift and inspire one to higher ideals? Does it develop wholesome relationships between young men and women, or appeal to and arouse their baser instincts? Will it cause one to be a better Latter-day Saint and lead one closer to the Savior? Avoid all activities and dances which bring the world's demoralizing standards into this sacred meeting place. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

It is not defeat that destroys you,it is being demoralized by defeat that destroy you. ~ Imran Khan

You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either. ~ Paul Auster

Here by far the most frustrating gumption trap is inadequate tools. Nothing's quite so demoralizing as a tool hang-up. Buy good tools as you can afford them and you'll never regret ~ Robert M. Pirsig

He had never fainted in his life, and while he knew it was this whole life-mate, mind-blowing-sex business, it was still damned demoralizing to be fainting like a breathless virgin at the end of every encounter. ~ Lynsay Sands

I find everything demoralizing,' Dennis said. ~ Paul Zindel

But the true evil of drink lies in the disillusion: that the initial pleasure very soon evaporates, leaving a demoralizing craving for more, which is not even temporarily pleasurable. Which then leads to deterioration of the faculties of both body and mind; plus a bewildering lack of co-operation between the two. ~ Caitlin Thomas

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction
every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour. ~ Sylvia Plath

Startups are painful, stressful and at times demoralizing. You need to be a true believer in the vision of what you are doing. You need to passionate about it and love what you're doing. If you don't, there is no way you can sustain the hours, stress and disappointment. There's no way you're going to be able to convince investors, customers and most importantly recruit a world-class team if you not building something you think is going to change the world. ~ Steve Blank

There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income. ~ Edmund Wilson

American voices, country voices, high-pitched and without mercy. He lies freezing, wondering if the bedsprings will give him away. For possibly the first time he is hearing America as it must sound to a non-American. Later he will recall that what surprised him most was the fanaticism, the reliance not just on flat force but on the rightness of what they planned to do ... he'd been told long ago to expect this sort of thing from Nazis, and especially from Japs - we were the ones who always played fair - but this pair outside the door now are as demoralizing as a close-up of John Wayne (the angle emphasizing how slanted his eyes are, funny you never noticed before) screaming BANZAI! ~ Thomas Pynchon

In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'. ~ Criss Jami

The tango, by 1914, had been officially declared immoral, and dancers went through its showy steps under threat of being dragged off the floor to jail unless light was visible between the partners and they refrained from doing any demoralizing dance steps, like "snake-wiggling" at the shoulders. ~ Christine Wiltz