Futility Quotes - Page 3

• Futility has become a great subject, full of opportunities.

  Mason Cooley

  Opportunity, Subjects

  4 Copy quote

• I was always face to face with total futility and powerlessness.

  Vanessa Veselka

  Powerlessness

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the situation developed, the futility of attempting suicide in the middle of a hospital became apparent.

  Steig Larsson

  Suicide, Middle, Attempting

  4 Copy quote

• Any story about revenge is ultimately a story about forgiveness, redemption, or the futility of revenge.

  Nick Wechsler

  Revenge, Stories, Redemption

  48 Copy quote

• Accustomed as I am to public speaking, I know the futility of it.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Public Speaking, Accustomed, Knows

  Franklin P. Adams (''F.P.A.'') (1944). “Nods and Becks”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• How I hated the dark part of me that continually foretold of failure or futility.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Dark, Hated

  4 Copy quote

• Happiness is living by inner purpose, not by outer pressures. Happiness is having a sense of meaning, not a feeling of futility.

  David W Augsburger

  Happiness, Feelings, Purpose

  David W. Augsburger (1982). “From Here to Maturity”, Tyndale House Pub

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Voting is actually an exercise in futility and only used to convey false credibility to a controlled political system totally divorced from the people

  Ron Holland

  Exercise, People, Voting

  45 Copy quote

• Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Book, Artist, Men

  9 Copy quote

• Convictions that outcomes are determined by one's own actions can be either demoralizing or heartening, depending on the level of self-judged efficacy. People who regard outcomes as personally determined, but who lack the requisite skills, would experience low self-efficacy and view the activities with a sense of futility

  Albert Bandura

  Self, Views, Skills

  4 Copy quote

• The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.

  Carl Jung

  Attitude, Real, Men

  "Memories, dreams, reflections".

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• For time is inches
  And the heart's changes,
  Where ghost has haunted
  Lost and wanted.

  W. H. Auden

  Time, Heart, Ghost

  4 Copy quote

• If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams are something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death.

  Monty Oum

  Dream, Effort, May

  "Monty Oum: A Life Remembered" by Mateo Hurtado Statz, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 10, 2015.

  382 Copy quote

  Show source

• No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Party, Alcohol, Political

  4 Copy quote

• In this hope, among the things we teach to the young are such truths as the transcendent value of the individual and the dignity of all people, the futility and stupidity of war, its destructiveness of life and its degradation of human values.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  War, People, Stupidity

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1961). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960-1961”, p.315, Best Books on

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• Death is the only monastery; the tomb is the only cell, and the grave that adjoins the convent is the bitterest mock of its futility.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Death, Cells, Graves

  4 Copy quote

• Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Strong, Mistake, Butterfly

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.160, OUP Oxford

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.

  Bill Mollison

  Change, Food, Garden

  "An introduction to permaculture". Book by Bill Mollison, 1991.

  259 Copy quote

  Show source

• What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Life, Essence, Alienation

  6 Copy quote

• How infuriating it is to be continually born to war that continues one's whole lifetime, even as one protests it - what futility. It is perhaps a more public epic in this regard, and carries a ritual vocalization.

  Anne Waldman

  War, Epic, Lifetime

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What do you mean by meant? Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is it the only value passing time as comfortably as possible?

  John Green

  Art, Struggle, Mean

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.52, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.

  Dorothy Day

  Time, People, Evil

  11 Copy quote

• If one is devoid of hope and thanksgiving, he cannot for long remain sinless, for he will, in despair, have slackened his resolve. Feelings of futility foster vulnerability. Self-pity is such a busy stagehand, rearranging the scenery to help sin make its entrance. No wonder the prophets say that without faith in the Lord, there is no hope.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Adversity, Self, Long

  5 Copy quote

• Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.

  Abba Eban

  Humility, Golf, Futility Of Life

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Names, Squirrels

  5 Copy quote