Futility Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about Futility.

Quotes About Futility

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Instead, the room, which had seen her grow to maturity, would see her dry up and fade. The gilt mirror in the corner would bear its dispassionate testimony. All the ornaments and furnishings would be her companions through the years to come. And she realized that she would come to hate them, if she didn't already hate them, as one hates the witnesses of one's humiliation and futility. ~ Winston Graham
Futility quotes by Winston Graham
Evil men rarely convince others to their side by asking them to perform dark deeds for no good reason. They will always start with the lightest shade of gray. They so often use what seems like a good cause."

"You don't think it's possible that a little gray is what's needed, sometimes?" asked Davian.

Raleth snorted.

"No," he said severely. "Gray is the color of cowardice and ignorance and sheer laziness, Davian--never let anyone tell you otherwise. If something is not clearly right or wrong then it bears actually *figuring out* which one it is, not dismissal into some nebulous third category. If you have a basis for your morality, a foundation for it, then there will always be an answer--and if you do not, then trying to decide whether *anything* is right or wrong is an exercise in futility and irrelevance. ~ James Islington
Futility quotes by James Islington
How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed
to any other qualities than those of brutes. ~ Aleister Crowley
Futility quotes by Aleister Crowley
Perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language. Not just in Area X but against the rightness of the lived-in moment, the instant of touch, of connection for which words were such a sorrowful disappointment, so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite. ~ Jeff VanderMeer
Futility quotes by Jeff VanderMeer
Faith, courage, optimism, looking forward, bring us new life and more life. Futility, frustration, living in the past are not only characteristic of 'old age'; they contribute to it. ~ Maxwell Maltz
Futility quotes by Maxwell Maltz
People who want to study religion usually have an ax to grind. They either want to defend their favorite religion from its critics or want to demonstrate the irrationality and futility of religion, and this tends to infect their methods with bias. ~ Daniel C. Dennett
Futility quotes by Daniel C. Dennett
Evolution cannot avoid bringing intelligent life ultimately to an awareness of one thing above all else and that one thing is futility. ~ Cormac McCarthy
Futility quotes by Cormac McCarthy
I have always felt that putting emotions into words was an exercise in futility, they're often more complex than words can manage and it seems often impossible. And like an injustice to the emotions, like I will never have explained them well enough and it will just feel incomplete and wrong. Also I'm pretty sure you made me do this before heh.

All of that said, I shall do my best to manage this. You are incredibly passionate. Straightforward. Funny. I feel like such a god damn idiot spouting random adjectives but I don't know what else to do. O.O You are those things though and I love them. You see the world in a way I feel I can understand at least somewhat, a way many don't. You embrace things others try to stifle. You aren't ashamed of being yourself and yourself is wonderful. Kind and compassionate. You sure helped me and I think I helped you too, we connected on some issues even if our issues weren't the same. We... ugh, I can't do it, I can't distill something as complex, intricate, beautiful, amazing as YOU into mere words. But you are who you are and you stole my heart and I don't mind. I like it. I love you. Can't go wrong with someone that loves music and wants to have lotr snuggle fests!

I'm here darlingness. I just kept trying and trying to find the right words. It's difficult. NOT because I have anything less than the utmost massive lovelberry tree gem pie for you. It's just... emotions, y'know? They're hard to explain. o.o ~ Devouree
Futility quotes by Devouree
There is no irritant as painful as an ace up your sleeve that you can never use; it's the kind of thing that causes oysters to produce pearls. ~ Sheila Ballantyne
Futility quotes by Sheila Ballantyne
So what's on the agenda for tonight? (Danger)
Migraine, futility, possible death. Same as every night, I guess. (Alexion) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon
Futility quotes by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable that the business of anglers would be very little hindered. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Futility quotes by J.R.R. Tolkien
Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING ... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point ... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion. ~ Vera Nazarian
Futility quotes by Vera Nazarian
He feels a second pang now for the existence of perfection, the stubborn existence of perfection in the most vulnerable of things and in the face of his refusal-logical-admirable refusal-to engage with this existence in his heart, in his mind. For the comfortless logic, the curse of clear sight, no matter which string he pulls on the same wretched knot: (a) the futility of seeing given the fatality in a place such as this where a mother still bloody must bury her newborn, hose off, and go home to pound yam into paste; (b) the persistence of beauty, in fragility of all places!, in a dewdrop at daybreak, a thing that will end, and in moments, and in a garden, and in Ghana, lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die. ~ Taiye Selasi
Futility quotes by Taiye Selasi
It is humor's job to laugh at the futility oft engendered by the improbable; but it is poetry's job to dream of the potentiality of that which is not impossible. ~ D.E. Navarro
Futility quotes by D.E. Navarro
She marveled at the futility of his method: he was acting as if, by naming her opinion in advance, he would make her unable to alter it. ~ Ayn Rand
Futility quotes by Ayn Rand
Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a lyricism written in the graveyard of philosophy. ~ Eugene Thacker
Futility quotes by Eugene Thacker
In 1965, a psychologist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs.
He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov--the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell, instead of providing food, he zapped the dogs with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment. After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. He figured if the dog rang the bell, it would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn't. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking the dog after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box that had never been shocked before or had previously been allowed to escape and tried to zap it--it jumped the fence.
You are just like these dogs.
If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time that there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act--you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism.
Studies of the clinically depressed show that they often give in to defeat and stop trying. . .
Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up op ~ David McRaney
Futility quotes by David McRaney
Don't look for gold where there is none. ~ Marty Rubin
Futility quotes by Marty Rubin
Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Futility quotes by George Bernard Shaw
Fighting me would be an exercise in futility, Countess." As if to assert his point, he reached out to grasp her jaw, tilting her chin up to meet his gaze. "As would trying to escape." Narrowing her eyes, she held her voice firm. "Yet I am certain my attempts could be very vexing." For an eternity, they stared at each other, locked in a silent battle of wills. Rafael's scowl deepened before he released her. ~ Brooklyn Ann
Futility quotes by Brooklyn Ann
Go ahead into life, full-blooded, courageous and leap for the adventure. But you must do it soon - before the summer of your youth has cooled off into caution. You are magnificently charming - and you come like a torrent. But you will be spent on the futility of little things. You are not a watercolor. You are carved out of life - and there can be no petty hesitancies about you. ~ Ruth Reichl
Futility quotes by Ruth Reichl
But all I know – the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself – these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born knowing, these things and the painful futility of trying to know anything else. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Futility quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Women are often belittled for trying to resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to love. They are in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to love again. This labor of love is futile only when the men in question refuse to awaken, refuse growth. At this point it is a gesture of self-love for women to break their commitment and move on. ~ Bell Hooks
Futility quotes by Bell Hooks
He concluded that governments were like wars: the reasons and the forces might change, but it was still the same dying over the same soil. ~ Nick Harkaway
Futility quotes by Nick Harkaway
The flesh had infinity in it. I must know every inch by touch yet every inch renewed its mystery the instant my hand moved on. Delightful endless futility. ~ Glen Duncan
Futility quotes by Glen Duncan
They were all lawyers, all schooled in the authority of words, though as their words turned to dust a pall of impotence and futility settled over the mission. ~ Ben Fountain
Futility quotes by Ben Fountain
George Weston, after all was only a man - poor thing - and his wife made full use of every device which a clumsier and more scrupulous sex has learned, with reason and futility, to fear. ~ Isaac Asimov
Futility quotes by Isaac Asimov
I have no more goals, all I'm gonna do is deal with the days Nature will give me along. I have lost too much strength on futile things until then ! ~ Laure Lacornette
Futility quotes by Laure Lacornette
Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words. And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head. they were his insomnia, his illness. And what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely, but with all his might, was unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy all-encompassing, over-poering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words. Music was the negation of sentences, music was the anti-word! ~ Milan Kundera
Futility quotes by Milan Kundera
First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills - against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. ~ Robert F. Kennedy
Futility quotes by Robert F. Kennedy
My mother was a pathetic patchwork witch who had used magic so much to meddle in her own life that she had no integrity left and was nothing but a coil of hatreds consuming themselves in futility. We had already hedged her power, with the help of the fairies. ~ Jo Walton
Futility quotes by Jo Walton
Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether - to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile - there is a point to it all. ~ John Green
Futility quotes by John Green
I knew it wouldn't last, that the reality would come snaking back in, but for a moment I saw it, the futility of trying to mold love into an expected shape. The foolishness of whining when it didn't fit. ~ Regina Sirois
Futility quotes by Regina Sirois
American consumers benefit from disparity & exploitation. I benefit from disparity & exploitation & so does my family. there is no way to be a consumer in this country without causing pain" --casey gray - author of Discount - & my New HERO ~ Casey Gray
Futility quotes by Casey Gray
I was sorry, though, that our intimacy, like many things that are and will be, had to die with a dying fall. I do not greatly mind endings, for my life is made up of them, but sometimes they come too soon or too late, and sometimes they leave feeling of regret as of an old mistake or an indirect futility. ~ Everett Ruess
Futility quotes by Everett Ruess
The concept of a general equilibrium has no relevance to the real world (in other words, classical economics is an exercise in futility). ~ George Soros
Futility quotes by George Soros
. . .our whispered words, faintly in the darkness, dissolving
within the trees - then, fleeting words of consolation
would not suffice if feigned, and flippant words
confessed reluctance - our words
were meaningless uttered on the wind. . . ~ John Daniel Thieme
Futility quotes by John Daniel Thieme
She had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged. ~ E.M. Forster
Futility quotes by E.M. Forster
As you learn to consciously observe the transformation process, you will watch yourself repeating a lot of old patterns long after you seemingly know better. Spiritually and intellectually, you realize there is another way, but emotionally you are still clinging to the old habits. This is a difficult time. Try to be patient and compassionate with yourself. When you recognize the futility of an old pattern so clearly, it's about to change! A short time later, you will suddenly begin to respond differently, in a more positive way. ~ Shakti Gawain
Futility quotes by Shakti Gawain
He would lose every game. And he still insisted on playing. I wondered at the futility of it. If it is the definition of insanity to repeat the same process and expect a different outcome, most of humanity must be insane. ~ Amie Kaufman
Futility quotes by Amie Kaufman
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
Futility quotes by Shirley Chisholm
My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility. ~ Robert Fripp
Futility quotes by Robert Fripp
But even if I know what governs their trajectory, if I know the rules of the movement of things and how things are organized and how certain mutations, transformations, gestations take place, even if I know all that, I shall only have learnt how to get along after a fashion in the enormous gaol, the oppressive prison in which I am held. What a farce, what a snare, what a booby-trap. We were born cheated. For if we are not to know, if there is nothing to know, why do we have this longing to know? ~ Eugene Ionesco
Futility quotes by Eugene Ionesco
It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing - atoms with curiosity - that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

Some will tell me that I have just described a religious experience. Very well, you may call it what you will. Then, in that language I would say that the young man's religious experience is of such a kind that he finds the religion of his church inadequate to describe, to encompass that kind of experience. The God of the church isn't big enough. ~ Richard P. Feynman
Futility quotes by Richard P. Feynman
Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery
Futility quotes by Antoine De Saint Exupery
Name, no, nothing is nameable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun. ~ Samuel Beckett
Futility quotes by Samuel Beckett
The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the trend of which is necessarily in the direction of serviceability to the life process. When it is attempted to assimilate systematic waste or futility, as an end in life, into this organic complex, there presently supervenes a revulsion. ~ Thorstein Veblen
Futility quotes by Thorstein Veblen
For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In ~ Douglas Adams
Futility quotes by Douglas Adams
Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God? ~ Theodor W. Adorno
Futility quotes by Theodor W. Adorno
I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had known
how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble
surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war
in
all the exalted elements of romance. ~ Joseph Conrad
Futility quotes by Joseph Conrad
Closing the last chapter of our personal history and taking the first step on the Journey will come with the recognition of the futility of spiritual seeking. ~ Frank M. Wanderer
Futility quotes by Frank M. Wanderer
I even get tired performing standup, which is normally a low-impact exercise in futility but looks hard the way I do it. That's why I take a lot of breaks, often stopping in the middle of a joke to catch my breath, or blame the crowd for not laughing before the punchline. ~ Andy Kindler
Futility quotes by Andy Kindler
The end of the world revealed the futility of all commemorative plaques. ~ Tommy Wallach
Futility quotes by Tommy Wallach
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters - there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void ... That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window. ~ Jean Baudrillard
Futility quotes by Jean Baudrillard
The Lotus opens. Movement from earth, through water, from fire to air. Out and in beyond life and death now, beyond inner and outer, sense and non-sense, meaning and futility, male and female, being and non-being, Light and darkness, void and full. Beyond all duality, or non-duality, beyond and beyond. Disincarnation. I breathe again. ~ R.D. Laing
Futility quotes by R.D. Laing
Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. ~ Gustave Flaubert
Futility quotes by Gustave Flaubert
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility ~ Eric Hoffer
Futility quotes by Eric Hoffer
A lot of our fellow liberals ... seem to me rather to doom themselves to futility in public affairs because the won't recognize that there's a zone of natural affection midway between the inner, or family one, and the outer, or all-humanity one. I suppose they are somehow short of a zone themselves and they seem to get vexed ... The common man knows better, just as he'd know better if some philosopher told him he ought not to make invidious distinctions by feeding his own children in preference to others. But of course he can't explain; he just ... goes on feeding the kids. ~ Charles Edward Montague
Futility quotes by Charles Edward Montague
He is a cat, Miss Lancaster. Asking him such questions is an exercise in futility. ~ Jim Butcher
Futility quotes by Jim Butcher
In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage. ~ Lewis Mumford
Futility quotes by Lewis Mumford
was nevertheless still young, since I had been able to write her one, by means of which I hoped, in telling her of my solitary dreams of love and longing, to arouse similar dreams in her. The sadness of men who have grown old lies in their no longer even thinking of writing such letters, the futility of which their experience has shown. ~ Marcel Proust
Futility quotes by Marcel Proust
People often say that women forget what childbirth is like, because if they remembered, no one would ever do it more than once. Personally, I had no trouble at all remembering. The sense of massive inertia, particularly. That endless time toward the end, when it seems that it never will end, that one is mired in some prehistoric tar pit, every small move a struggle doomed to futility. Every square centimeter of skin stretched as thin as one's temper. You don't forget. You simply get to the point where you don't care what birth will feel like; anything is better than being pregnant for an instant longer. ~ Diana Gabaldon
Futility quotes by Diana Gabaldon
It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it. ~ Jean Baudrillard
Futility quotes by Jean Baudrillard
It is perhaps one's own fault, to see oneself drifting, rotting, in dishonour and horrible futility, and all the while knowing that somewhere within one there is the possibility of a decent human being. ~ George Orwell
Futility quotes by George Orwell
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
Futility quotes by Russell Brand
Teaching you to fight at all is an exercise in futility," Ty responded in a matter-of-fact tone. "Luckily for you, I enjoy things like banging my head against a wall."
"I enjoy banging your head against a wall too," Zane replied as tossed the balled-up tape at a nearby trash can. He let a small smile quirk his lips as he sat on the bench to unlace his shoes.
"Shut up," Ty grunted at him. But even though his back was still turned to him, Zane could hear a smile in his voice. "And cut it out with the damn cat jokes, huh? They're starting to catch on."
"Fine, fine. No reason to get catty about it," Zane told his partner with a barely concealed grin. ~ Abigail Roux
Futility quotes by Abigail Roux
I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn't balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn't be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great 'droughts' and 'rains'. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm.
I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass
because it has come and passed before. ~ Mihail Sebastian
Futility quotes by Mihail Sebastian
When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. ~ Jacques Barzun
Futility quotes by Jacques Barzun
The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars. ~ Tom Sweterlitsch
Futility quotes by Tom Sweterlitsch
In all we do, and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil and Vanity.
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Men come and go like ocean tides ~ Anne Bronte
Futility quotes by Anne Bronte
Married life had taught Toran the futility of arguing with a female in dark-brown mood. He shrugged, and left her. ~ Isaac Asimov
Futility quotes by Isaac Asimov
And his soul plunged downward, drowning in that deep pit: he felt that could never again escape from this smothering flood of pain and ugliness, from the eclipsing horror and pity of it all. And as he walked, he twisted his own neck about, and beat the air with his arm like a wing, as if he had received a blow in his kidneys. He felt that he might be clean and free if he could only escape into a single burning passion -- hard, and hot, and glittering -- of love, hatred, terror, or disgust. But he was caught, he was strangling, in the web of futility. ~ Thomas Wolfe
Futility quotes by Thomas Wolfe
I was almost a wife but lost the man. I was almost recognisable as a friend. And then I wasn't. The nights when I flicked off the bedside lamp and found myself in the heedless, lonely dark. The times I thought, with a horrified twist, that none of this was a gift. Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction ... I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me. ~ Emma Cline
Futility quotes by Emma Cline
I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
Futility quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheated, before blood wets the ground and screams fill the air, that the futility descends upon us all. Without our armor, we would all weep. ~ Steven Erikson
Futility quotes by Steven Erikson
The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states. ~ Ivor A. Richards
Futility quotes by Ivor A. Richards
I was hell-bent on being an effective humanitarian in Cambodia and Somalia. But a naïve fog is finally lifting. Revealed is a train wreck of illusions, the depravity of someone else's war, the futility of a competence stillborn there. To understand this you have to become this. ~ Kenneth Cain
Futility quotes by Kenneth Cain
Accustomed as I am to public speaking, I know the futility of it. ~ Franklin P. Adams
Futility quotes by Franklin P. Adams
(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute ~ Bruce Sterling
Futility quotes by Bruce Sterling
The pains they took to make themselves smooth! The rashes the creams left! The futility of it all! The enemy, hair, was invincible. It was life itself. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides
Futility quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides
The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. ~ H.G.Wells
Futility quotes by H.G.Wells
Once commonly called "atomism," the genealogy of atheism can be traced all the way back through the Enlightenment to Roman poets such as Lucretius and his poem De Rerum Natura, and behind that to Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus and their philosophy of atomism. It was precisely such a philosophy that contributed to the classical world a strong sense of fate and the futility of both life and human purpose. And it also provided the dark setting against which the brilliance of the hope of the good news of Jesus shone by contrast - as soon it will once again. ~ Os Guinness
Futility quotes by Os Guinness
He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.'
'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.'
'What's so negative about it?' I said.
'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said.
'"Ignorance,"' I said. ~ Kurt Vonnegut
Futility quotes by Kurt Vonnegut
After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the
corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us.

The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats.

Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We e ~ Douglas Adams
Futility quotes by Douglas Adams
This past year - if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people. || A thousands years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids sand. One hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago - the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. the only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because Earth is now totally ours. ~ Douglas Coupland
Futility quotes by Douglas Coupland
Although I had once pinned all my hopes on putting myself through school, believing I could thereby make something of myself, I now realized the futility of this all too clearly. No amount of struggling for an education is going to help one get ahead in this world. And what does it mean to get ahead anyway? is there any more worthless lot than the so-called great people of this world? What is so admirable about being looked up to by others? I do not live for other. What I had to achieve was my own freedom, my own satisfaction. I had to be myself. ~ Kaneko Fumiko
Futility quotes by Kaneko Fumiko
If I had a pair of pliers on me, I'd rip my ears off so I wouldn't have to listen to this anymore. Unfortunately, Brody doesn't even own a toolbox - I found that out when I first moved in and looked around for tools to fix the leaky kitchen faucet with. Brody had shrugged and said, "Shit leaks, man. Life doesn't always give you tools."

I'd wanted to point out that yes, life does give you tools - that's why we have fucking Home Depot. But arguing with Brody's logic is an exercise in futility ~ Elle Kennedy
Futility quotes by Elle Kennedy
This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving
and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist. ~ Spider Robinson
Futility quotes by Spider Robinson
There is a mortal breed most full of futility. In contempt of what is at hand, they strain into the future, hunting impossibilities on the wings of ineffectual hopes. ~ Pindar
Futility quotes by Pindar
I am all emptiness and futility. I am an empty stranger, a carbon copy of my form. I can no longer find what I'm looking for outside of myself. It doesn't exist out there. Maybe it's only in here, inside my head. But my head is glass and my eyes have stopped being cameras, the tape has run out and nobody's words can touch me. ~ David Wojnarowicz
Futility quotes by David Wojnarowicz
Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood. ~ Isaac Asimov
Futility quotes by Isaac Asimov
You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic. I have reached a nirvana of negativity. I can look futility in the face and still see promise in the stars. ~ Sebastian Horsley
Futility quotes by Sebastian Horsley
While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, Come and get them. ~ Plutarch
Futility quotes by Plutarch
Awareness is the greatest agent for change. ~ Eckhart Tolle
Futility quotes by Eckhart Tolle
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either ... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle. ~ John Green
Futility quotes by John Green
Life, it is true, can be grasped in all its confused futility merely by opening one's eyes and sitting passively, a spectator on the stands of history - but to understand the social processes and conflicts, the interplay between individual and group, even the physicality of human experience, we have need of small-scale models. ~ Will Self
Futility quotes by Will Self
what I feel is that spending my life trying to earn the favor of an unseen, unknown, and unknowable being who watches me from the sky is an exercise in sheer futility. ~ Brandon Sanderson
Futility quotes by Brandon Sanderson
Curiosity is a vice that has been stigmatized in turn by Christianity, by philosophy, and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity is seen as futility. However, I like the word; it suggests something quite different to me. It evokes "care"; it evokes the care one takes of what exists and what might exist; a sharpened sense of reality, but one that is never immobilized before it; a readiness to find what surrounds us strange and odd; a certain determination to throw off familiar ways of thought and to look at the same things in a different way; a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is disappearing; a lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies of what is important and fundamental. I dream of a new age of curiosity. ~ Michel Foucault
Futility quotes by Michel Foucault
I have decided that while 'necessity' may be the mother of invention, she also has three other children: Stupidity, Danger and Futility (those three obviously left home early and didn't go to university). ~ Marie Browne
Futility quotes by Marie Browne
here's a very worthwhile question to meditate on: How are we, in our own way, going to express and live out the meaning contained in the prayer? Simply by rote recitation? It'll be nothing more than an exercise in futility and hypocrisy unless we seek to understand it and make it real in our lives." To ~ Monks Of New Skete
Futility quotes by Monks Of New Skete
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