Inadequate Quotes

Most remarks made by children consist of correct ideas very badly expressed. A good teacher will be very wary of saying 'No, that's wrong.' Rather, he will try to discover the correct idea behind the inadequate expression. This is one of the most important principles in the whole of the art of teaching. ~ W.W. Sawyer

Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people ... Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be resisted only by passions, interest, and power. ~ John Adams

I suppose all this sounds very crazy - all these terrible emotions always do sound foolish when we put them into our inadequate words. They are not meant to be spoken - only felt and endured. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Is it a fact that those who believe in a Heavenly Father do so because or partly because their earthly fathers were inadequate? I doubt it. If it is a fact, however, it is of psychological rather than theological interest. It may help us understand theists, but it tells us nothing at all about the truth of their belief; to that it is simply irrelevant. ~ Alvin Plantinga

Feeling inadequate is an occupational hazard of motherhood. ~ Harriet Lerner

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

Investors, of course, can, by their own behavior make stock ownership highly risky. And many do. Active trading, attempts to "time" market movements, inadequate diversification, the payment of high and unnecessary fees to managers and advisors, and the use of borrowed money can destroy the decent returns that a life-long owner of equities would otherwise enjoy. Indeed, borrowed money has no place in the investor's tool kit. ~ Warren Buffett

I need you to stand by me, not chip away at my confidence. Do you know the only person who's never made me feel inadequate? Judd. ~ Nalini Singh

It has ever been my lot, though formally myself a teacher, to be taught surely by none. There are times when I have thought to read lessons in the sky, or in books, or from the behavior of my fellows, but in the end my perceptions have frequently been inadequate or betrayed. Nevertheless, I venture to say that of what man may be I have caught a fugitive glimpse, not among multitudes of men, but along an endless wave-beaten coast at dawn. As always, there is this apparent break, this rift in nature, before the insight comes. The terrible question has to translate itself into an even more terrifying freedom. ~ Loren Eiseley

So long as our untried senses and our naïve heart recognize themselves and delight in the universe of qualifications, they flourish with the aid and at the risk of the adjective, which, once dissected, proves inadequate, deficient. We say of space, of time, and of suffering that they are infinite; but infinite has no more bearing than beautiful, sublime, harmonious, ugly.... Suppose we force ourselves to see to the bottom of words? We see nothing - each of them, detached from the expansive and fertile soul, being null and void. The power of the intelligence functions by projecting a certain luster upon them, by polishing them and making them glitter; this power, erected into a system, is called culture - pryrotechnics against a night sky of nothingness. ~ Emil M. Cioran

So sensitive was he to odour and sound, that he found human speech quite inadequate to express the richness of these two universes. He once said of a certain odour in the house, 'It's rather like the trail of a hare where a spaniel has followed it, and some time ago a donkey crossed it too.' Both scent and sound had for him rich emotional meaning, innate and acquired. It was obvious that many odours that he encountered for the first time roused a strong impulse of pursuit, while others he sought to avoid. It was obvious, too, that many odours acquired an added emotional meaning through their associations. One day when he was out on the moor by himself one of his paws was badly cut on a broken bottle. It happened that while he limped home there was a terrifying thunderstorm. When at last he staggered in at the front door, Elizabeth mothered him and cleaned up his foot with a certain well-known disinfectant. The smell of it was repugnant to him, but it now acquired a flavour of security and kindliness which was to last him all his life. ~ Olaf Stapledon

In this century, as in any other, men wore the comfortable, practical stuff, and the women wandered round expiring underneath over-decorated tea-cosies and with inadequate footwear. ~ Jodi Taylor

There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhs
of human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even register
their names, why was that. When the government finally built camps it only allowed for six thousand families to remain in the state, dispersing the
others around the country where they would be invisible and impotent, why was that. The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi, Mishriwallah, Nagrota were built
on the banks and beds of nullahas, dry seasonal waterways, and when the water came the camps were flooded, why was that. The ministers of the
government made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internal
migrants whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that. The tents provided for the refugees to live in were often uninspected and
leaking and the monsoon rains came through, why was that. When the one-room tenements called ORTs were built to replace the tents they too
leaked profusely, why was that. There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensaries
lacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe five
thousand deaths because of int ~ Salman Rushdie

It's an universal law
intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Everyone else new you ever meet, and this continues through life, is stronger than you are, knows the system better and sees right through to the back of your brain and finds what they see to be wholly inadequate. Everyone you encounter carries, as it were, a huge club behind their back, while all you hold behind yours is a weedy cotton-bud. ~ Stephen Fry

In other words each of those calm and melancholy days on which I did not see her, coming one after the other without interruption, continuing too without prescription (unless some busy-body were to meddle in my affairs), was a day not lost but gained. Gained to no purpose, it might be, for presently they would be able to pronounce that I was healed. Resignation, modulating our habits, allows certain elements of our strength to be indefinitely increased. Those - so wretchedly inadequate - that I had had to support my grief, on the first evening of my rupture with Gilberte, had since multiplied to an incalculable power. ~ Marcel Proust

I leave this as a declaration of intent, so no one will be confused. One: "Si vis pacem, para bellum." Latin. Boot Camp Sergeant made us recite it like a prayer. "Si vis pacem, para bellum - If you want peace, prepare for war." Two: Frank Castle is dead. He died with his family. Three: in certain extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law. To pursue... natural justice. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive, it's an emotional response. No, not vengeance. Punishment. ~ Jonathan Hensleigh

We're all inadequate," David answered. "Just think: the light from the outside world is mapped onto the retina, then further mapped onto the visual cortex, then broken apart and analyzed in other areas of the brain. At every step there's a loss of information. In the end, what we are aware of is not the outside world per se, but the image of the world projected onto our brains. Plato was anatomically right; we do see shadows on a wall. ~ Carolyn Ives Gilman

I became interested in photography during my first visit to the United States. I was a student at a university in Holland. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the American West. That was when I learned about the tradition of nature in American photography. ~ Frans Lanting

He seemed to be drinking in her face, looking at her instead of into her.
"Stop. Stop that. This isn't goodbye."
Blake pulled her left hand to his mouth and kissed her ring finger. "I'm still glad it's empty. He never deserved you. Of that, I'm very sure."
Livia saw moisture in his eyes. "You're saying goodbye. No. Here's what I'm sure of. I'll walk away from this house right now, wearing only what I have on my back and be happy. With you I can taste forever - it's right here." Livia pointed at her lips and then kissed his.
Blake allowed the kiss, but mumbled a question as well, "How many shotguns does he have?"
"Not enough to get me away from you." Livia traced his jaw.
Blake took her hand and kissed her palm, then her forehead, "Livia, go in there and let him talk to you. He's a father. I'd want to talk to my daughter at a moment like this. Let's give him that respect."
"I will not go in there. Where will you go?"
Livia felt a gentle tug on her heart. She was torn. She wanted to comfort her dad and get him to understand who Blake was, but in as little time as possible so she could get back to Blake.
"My inamorata, you know where I'll be: where I'll always be. Waiting. For you." Blake began putting the mask on.
Livia looked around wildly, feeling close to irrational. "I don't want you to go." These words were inadequate to express her need.
Blake smoothed her hair away from her face. "I've often wished I had a father. L ~ Debra Anastasia

Using volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. ~ Charlie Munger

Will I someday pass into history having passed by God and therefore forfeited the opportunity to change my world and reap the blessing of being able to do so because I saw myself as inadequate to achieve either? And how long will it take me to realize that if I doggedly refuse to pass by God, my inadequacy is instantly irrelevant and I have in actuality begun to achieve these very things. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Our words are often only vague, inadequate descriptions of our thoughts. Something gets lost in translation every time we try to express our thoughts in words. And when the other person hears our words, something gets lost in translation again, because words mean different things to different people. "A long time" may mean 10 hours to one person, but 10 days to another. So when a thought is formed in my brain, and my mouth expresses it in words, and your ears hear it, and your brain processes it, your brain and my brain never truly see exactly the same thing. Communication is always just an approximation. ~ Oliver Gaspirtz

Low income is related to poorer housing, poorer diet, fewer social amenities, worse working conditions. ( ... ) After adjustment for age, sex, race, smoking, alcohol consumption, sleep habits, leisure-time physical activity, chest pain, diabetes, or cancer, there was still an increase risk of 1.6 for those with inadequate incomes. ~ Michael Marmot

And even though body has entwined with body, vows have been whispered into the lover's ears in the throws of unimaginable passion, there's a pang still. One has not felt understood by the lover. And that is a different quality of loneliness. A constant dull hammering. Like static hum. Dissonance. Ultimately it translates into a plain inability to see the other's view. We shout betrayal. We shift blame. We feel inadequate. When it is plain inability. So their intimacy has a narrow gap running across, like a rift between two continents and it's only when you examine it from above, do you really see it. You realize that the gap could be the breadth of a hairline but it is deep. It's darkness stretches all the way down into a free falling abyss. ~ Sakoon Singh

I grew up with a lot of dinner table conversations about health care and ways in which the system was inadequate for the needs of many of the patients they took care of. ~ Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

I should like to use another word: 'audience' or 'reader' or 'listener' seems inadequate. I suggest the old word 'witness,' which includes the act of seeing and knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence. ~ Muriel Rukeyser

People may be constrained in two basic ways: physically, by confining them in jails, mental hospitals, and so forth; and symbolically, by confining them in occupations, social roles, and so forth. Actually, confinement of the second type is more common and pervasive in the day-to-day conduct of society's business; as a rule, only when the symbolic, or socially informal, confinement of conduct fails or proves inadequate, is recourse taken to physical, or socially formal, confinement…. When people perform their social roles properly – in other words, when social expectations are adequately met – their behavior is considered normal. Though obvious, this deserves emphasis: a waiter must wait on tables; a secretary must type; a father must earn a living; a mother must cook and sew and take care of her children. Classic systems of psychiatric nosology had nothing to say about these people, so long as they remained neatly imprisoned in their respective social cells; or, as we say about the Negroes, so long as they "knew their place." But when such persons broke out of "jail" and asserted their liberty, they became of interest to the psychiatrist. ~ Thomas Szasz

1:5 God knew you, as he knew Jeremiah, long before you were born or even conceived. He thought about you and planned for you. When you feel discouraged or inadequate, remember that God has always thought of you as valuable and that he has a purpose in mind for you. ~ Anonymous

Justine's virtue, in action, is the liberal lie in action, a good heart and an inadequate methodology. ~ Angela Carter

You – you don't really want to hear me
talking about my love life, do you?"
"'No' seems such a flimsy and inadequate little word to express how very little interest I have in
hearing you rambling on about that particular topic," said the dragon. "Your mating rituals are
roughly as fascinating to me as the eating habits of snails."
"Right," said Merlin. "Fair enough. ~ FayJay

Now? I'm just another female faking orgasms to make a man not feel so inadequate. ~ Jess C. Scott

PCs don't suck. They're inadequate. ~ Marc Andreessen

The game embarrasses you until you feel inadequate. ~ Ben Crenshaw

I was the Secretary of State of New Jersey in November 2000. I paid careful attention to the challenges that stemmed from inadequate voting systems in various places. ~ DeForest Soaries

Marc wasn't good at this, so he figured killing those who were equally inadequate was a smart idea. ~ K.F. Breene

I found that men and women with high levels of shame resilience share these four elements: They understand shame and recognize what messages and expectations trigger shame for them. They practice critical awareness by reality-checking the messages and expectations that tell us that being imperfect means being inadequate. They reach out and share their stories with people they trust. They speak shame - they use the word shame, they talk about how they're feeling, and they ask for what they need. ~ Brene Brown

God is one among several hypotheses to account for the phenomena of human destiny, and it is now proving to be an inadequate hypothesis. To a great many people, including myself, this realization is a great relief, both intellectually and morally. It frees us to explore the real phenomena for which the God hypothesis seeks to account, to define them more accurately, and to work for a more satisfying set of concepts. ~ Julian Huxley

There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Our tests, our approaches...are ridiculously inadequate. They only show us deficits, they do not show us powers; they only show us puzzles and schemata, when we need to see music, narrative, play, a being conducting itself spontaneously in its own natural way. ~ Oliver Sacks

A patient's passivity must not be unilaterally interpreted as lack of motivation, resistance, lack of confidence, or the like. Many times, passivity is a function of inadequate knowledge and/or skills. ~ Marsha M. Linehan

I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people. ~ George Saunders

And yet in Britain, despite the constant buffetings of history, English survived. It is a cherishable irony that a language that succeeded almost by stealth, treated for centuries as the inadequate and second-rate tongue of peasants, should one day become the most important and successful language in the world. ~ Bill Bryson

When we consider reality itself we quickly become aware of its infinite complexity, and we realize that our habitual perception of it is often inadequate. If this were not so, the concept of deception would be meaningless. ~ Dalai Lama

Their home was nice, the food was nice, the girls were nice – nice, nice, nice.

I disappointed myself by finding our perfectly pleasant lunch with perfectly pleasant people inadequate. […] These were good people and they had been good to us and we had therefore had a good time. To conclude otherwise was frightening, raising the specter of some unnameable quantity without which we could not abide, but which we could not summon on demand, least of all by proceeding in virtuous accordance with an established formula.

You regarded redemption as an act of will. You disparaged people (people like me) for their cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions, because to fail to embrace the simple fineness of being alive betrayed a weakness of character. You always hated finicky eaters, hypochondriacs, and snobs who turned their noses up at Terms of Endearment just because it was popular. Nice eats, nice place, nice folks- what more could I possibly want? Besides, the good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job. So if you believed with sufficient industry that we had had a good time with Brian and Louise in theory, then we would have had a good time in fact. The only hint that in truth you'd found our afternoon laborious was that your enthusiasm was excessive. ~ Lionel Shriver

Tikkun Olam. There is a Jewish legend behind this notion. Sometime early in the life of the world, something happened to shatter the light of the universe into countless pieces. They lodged as sparks inside every part of the creation. The highest human calling is to look for this original light from where we sit, to point to it and gather it up and in so doing to repair the world. This can sound like an idealistic and fanciful tale. But Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who told it to me as her Hasidic grandfather told it to her, calls it an important and empowering story for our time. It insists that each one of us, flawed and inadequate as we may feel, has exactly what's needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch. ~ Krista Tippett

No doubt this works well enough for The Tale of Benjamin Bunny or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I can readily see that 'The Selfish Gene' on its own, without the large footnote of the book itself, might give an inadequate impression of its contents. ~ Richard Dawkins

Here are some key words to go along with shame: Inferior Alienated Embarrassed Minority Ridiculed Weak Powerless Failure Different Insulted Rejected Inadequate Humiliated Ignored Loser ~ Edward T. Welch

My orphan bones are stretched thin through wasp limbs that now seem woefully inadequate to support all the pressures I have placed upon them. There are only so many nights I can confide in strangers before they all begin to wear their apologies the same. ~ Tyler Kent White

Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we're small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we're magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the energy around us reflects our state of awareness. ~ Marianne Williamson

In myth, women's boundaries are pliant, porous, mutable. Her power to control them is inadequate, her concern for them unreliable. Deformation attends her. She swells, she shrinks, she leaks, she is penetrated, she suffers metamorphoses. The women of mythology regularly lose their form in monstrosity. ~ Anne Carson

Threats ... are the last resort of the inadequate negotiator. ~ Tom Holt

The wrong lover will always make your love feel inadequate. ~ Jasmine Sandozz

All images and sensations, if idolatrously mistaken for Joy itself, soon honestly confessed themselves inadequate. All said, in a last resort, "It is not high. I am only a reminder. Look! Look! What do I remind you of?" CS Lewis ~ Philip Zaleski

Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art? ~ Susanne Katherina Langer

We don't realise that we are actually perfect just the way we are. We are born perfect, but spend a lifetime trying to be something we are not, and then feel inadequate for failing. Your only purpose is to BE YOURSELF, otherwise you will deprive the universe of who you came here to be. ~ Anita Moorjani

The false argument has been used that only a man can represent a male Jesus. But this portrays an inadequate understanding of the incarnation. The Son of God, in assuming our humanity, became a man, not to sanctify maleness, but our common humanity so that, be we men or women, we can see the dignity and beauty of our humanity sanctified in him. ~ James B. Torrance

As so often during the US military intervention in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, there was excessive focus by the media on the actions of Western governments as the prime mover of events. This was accompanied by an inadequate understanding of the significance of developments on the ground in Iraq and Syria as the force really driving the crisis in both countries. ~ Patrick Cockburn

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side and light on scepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'.
But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder, and gained very little scepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they're willing to accept inadequate answers; they don't pose follow-up questions; the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. ~ Carl Sagan

It is only a woman who can make a man feel like a 'superhero' or 'inadequate'.
Its her attention and admiration that a man desperately seeks! ~ Sanjai Velayudhan

God, baby, you're so beautiful." It sounds lame and inadequate, and I want to create a new word just for her. She deserves a new word. Hell, she deserves a whole fucking language. ~ Brighton Walsh

Many historians, many sociologists and psychologists have written at lenght, and with deep concern, about the price that Western man has had to pay and will go on paying for technological progress. They point out, for example, that democracy can be hardly expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized.But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralisation of power.
As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive - and so less available to the eterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent producer; the Big Man has grobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State - that is to say, by small group of party leaders and soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders. ~ Aldous Huxley

If you feel inadequate to face challenges, unworthy of love or respect, untitled to happiness, and fear assertive thought, wants, or needs- if you lack basic self trust, self-respect, and self-confidence- your self-esteem deficiency will limit you, no matter what other assets you possess. ~ Nathaniel Branden

There is much asked and only so much I think I can or should answer, and so, in this post I would like to give a few thoughts on what seemed to be the overwhelming question: "WHY?"
And here is the best answer I can give: Because.
Because sometimes, life is damned unfair.
Because sometimes, we lose people we love and it hurts deeply.
Because sometimes, as the writer, you have to put your characters in harm's way and be willing to go there if it is the right thing for your book, even if it grieves you to do it.
Because sometimes there aren't really answers to our questions except for what we discover, the meaning we assign them over time.
Because acceptance is yet another of life's "here's a side of hurt" lessons and it is never truly acceptance unless it has cost us something to arrive there.
Why, you ask? Because, I answer.
Inadequate yet true. ~ Libba Bray

While he slept the world spun on, changed, situations altered and grew more complex, left him more inadequate to deal with them. ~ William Gay

She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials ... She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall. ~ John Steinbeck

As a result of that experience, I do think all Anthropologies should provide a courtesy volcano just outside their dressing rooms so every woman who is revealed as completely inadequate by the lighting can throw herself in rather than contaminate the store staging for any longer than absolutely necessary. ~ Laurie Notaro

All I know is that you are the only person that has ever made me feel this way. Break my heart and mend it at the same time, make my breathing feel inadequate. You, Clara, make me want more. ~ Len Webster

In many industries federal regulation is the outgrowth of inadequate self-regulation on the part of the industry. ~ Judith C. Waller

Teaching methods are often inadequate for the goals faculties are trying to achieve. Important courses such as expository writing and foreign languages are frequently taught by untrained graduate students and underpaid adjunct teachers. ~ Derek Bok

I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ~ Margaret Atwood

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love. ~ Patricia Highsmith

I've been blessed with two beautiful daughters. It is amazing how inadequate I can feel in being able to protect, teach, and take care of them. I'm not talking about a paranoid the-world-is-a-dangerous-place kind of way. I mean when they just give me a simple look or ask me something like "Where do stars comes from, Daddy?" I'm opened up in a way I had not thought possible. ~ Patrick Fabian

That's when I feel like the real me. I want to be a rock for you too, but I often feel inadequate to do so. I know I should express my self-doubt to you rather than leave you guessing my feelings. If I am given the chance, I will show you just how much my very essence is intertwined with yours and that I am incomplete without you. I will commit to nurturing our union, including keeping the lines of communication open. ~ Kristen James

Yet historians still start their books with a ritual lament about 'the sources' and their inadequacy. The lament is not entirely insincere (though it is something of a self-constructed problem): the sources often are inadequate for the particular questions that historians choose to pose. But that is part of the ancient-historical game: first pick your question, then demonstrate the appalling difficulty of finding an answer given the paucity of the evidence, finally triumph over that difficulty by scholarly 'skill'. Prestige in this business goes to those who outwit their sources, prising unexpected answers from unexpected places, and who play the clever (sometimes too clever) detective against an apparent conspiracy of ancient silence. ~ Mary Beard

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

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is "I didn't get enough sleep." The next one is "I don't have enough time." Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of ... Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get, or didn't get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack ... This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life. ~ Brene Brown

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation. ~ Sharon Salzberg

The first treatise on the interior of the body, which is to say, the treatise that gave the body an interior , written by Henri De Mondeville in the fourteenth century, argues that the body is a house, the house of the soul, which like any house can only be maintained as such by constant surveillance of its openings. The woman's body is seen as an inadequate enclosure because its boundaries are convoluted. While it is made of the same material as a man's body, it has ben turned inside out. Her house has been disordered, leaving its walls full of openings. Consequently, she must always occupy a second house, a building to protect her soul. Gradually this sense of vulnerability to the exterior was extended to all bodies which were then subjected to a kind of supervision traditionally given to the woman. The classical argument about her lack of self-control had been generalized. ~ Mark Wigley

Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn. ~ Jessica Valenti

I always hated hearing old people yammering on like this when I was young. And I do what to assure you: I'm aware that many thing were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding. ~ V.C. Andrews

I simply am going to look you in the eye and say that if the United States hopes to remain a major player among nations, facing challenges such as poverty, inadequate education, and global market competition, we're going to need to draw deeply from our entire talent pool, not just half of it. ~ Kathy Cloninger

A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate. ~ Christopher Hampton

You're wrong means that I don't understand you, I'm not seeing what you're seeing- and I'm not seeing all of you there is to see. But there is nothing wrong with you. You are what you need to be, doing what you need to be doing, and although I may take steps to protect myself of others, I do not know all and therefore am literally inadequate to judge. ~ Hugh Prather

A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence
often the sole evidence offered
of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions. ~ Thomas Sowell

When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, at least, let him be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labour; let not his substance be ravaged from him by cruel imposts; let him not be discouraged from work, by finding all his labour inadequate to support his existence, let him not be driven into that idleness that will surely lead him on to crime: let him consider his present existence, without carrying his views to that which may attend him after his death: let his industry be excited; let his talents be rewarded; let him be rendered active, laborious, beneficent, and virtuous, in the world he inhabits; let it be shown to him that his actions are capable of having an influence over his fellow men, but not on those imaginary beings located in an ideal world. ~ Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach

Does inadequacy not characterize all that we make use of to perceive and describe the world? Are the signs of language not just as inadequate, albeit differently, as are images? ~ Georges Didi-Huberman

In India, a "bride burning"-- to punish a woman for inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry-- takes place approximately once every two hours, but rarely constitute news. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

Whatever word you use to describe diving into the deepest part of a human. Take your pick; they're all woefully inadequate, but they're also all we have. ~ Marisa De Los Santos

Just as instinct may fail an animal under some shift of environmental conditions, so man's cultural beliefs may prove inadequate to meet a new situation, or, on an individual level, the confused mind may substitute, by some terrible alchemy, cruelty for love. The ~ Loren Eiseley

We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words. ~ John Wyndham

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. ~ Banksy

I spend the next few days watching Maï die. I can't stand that voice, that protest. Katzenelenbogen shows up and explains in that rational, no-nonsense, doctoral tone that no one has the right to make such a fuss over a cat, while the whole world. . . . . I kick them out, both him and the world.
Maï is no longer a cat. She is a human being in agony. Every living thing that suffers is a human being.
She is cuddled in my arms, a small ball of lackluster fur, which gives her a horrible stuffed air already smacking of taxidermists. Every now and then she raises her head, looks at me inquiringly and miaows a question I understand, but am unable to answer. Our vocal cords are totally inadequate there.
What goings-on about a mere cat, huh? I hate your guts, you antisentimental, antiemotional, hardheaded rationalists. You are the ones who have raised the going rate of sensitivity. You have put all your emphasis on ideas, and ideas without "emotions" and without "sentimentalism," that's the world you have built, your work.
All the pseudo-people who have the Nazi arrogance to be reading this book make my hands ache for a grenade. ~ Romain Gary

Let's not dismiss or attack individual ideas as being inadequate before we have had a chance to assess their positive effect as part of a whole solution. ~ John Thune

I think the existential dilemma is: We're social animals, so we all wrestle with a sense of inadequacy. But when we realize that we're not as inadequate as we thought we were, and when we realize that everybody else also thinks they're inadequate, then that ache goes away and the idea that we're not a person of value disappears to some extent. ~ Neil Strauss

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time. ~ Vita Sackville-West

In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can't buy love with gifts or favors, you can't hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can't be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider. ~ B.F. Skinner

Do u sometimes feel dumb or duffer are inadequate words to describe some people?

How about DUMFER? ~ EverSkeptic

Paul's exciting and paradoxical proclamation is that "God's folly is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25). He says that only Spirit can hold and absorb the seeming contradictions and allow us to see and to know from an utterly new and unitive vantage point, which is the deepening fruit of contemplation. Only Spirit-in-us can know non-dually or paradoxically and absorb contradictions - inside of and with God. Only God's Spirit-with-us can fully forgive, accept, and allow reality to be what it is. Neither logic nor law can fully achieve this, but participation with and in God can. (This does not make logic or law unnecessary; they are simply inadequate to the work of transformation.) ~ Richard Rohr