Quotes About Inadequacy

Failure is becoming someone who needs others to fail.

Because we always lack more than we have, and because there are always more people who don't invite us than who do.

If you know less than everything, you always feel inadequate.

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.

Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.

Those were the 4:00 a.m. thoughts, when she felt so worthless and inadequate that it was almost funny. Not funny, but almost.

Because sometimes words were so pitifully inadequate, and I knew that, but I had to try anyway.

Sometimes words were so pitifully inadequate.

Suddenly I was struck with the strangest sensation, of wanting, needing, to reach out and touch his cheek with the back of my hand. So he would know, so he would feel exactly how much those words meant to me. Because sometimes words were so pitifully inadequate, and I knew that, but I had to try anyway.

For the materialist, advertising becomes the powerful drug that feeds the addiction. Advertising prays on one's sense of inadequacy and loneliness. It promises that products and services will enhance a person's personality and identity and make him or her more appealing

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.

A society whose members are helpless need idols.

They wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.

If you cannot give me all that I want—what my heart finds it hard now to breathe without—it is because I am not worthy. I know instinctively you could give it if I were—and if you understood,—understood the boy's heart that is in me and the simplicity of my need, which you could fill so that all my days would be radiant.

A definition I have found helpful is that envy relates to something you want but do not have, whereas jealousy relates to something you have but are afraid of losing. Therefore, envy is a tango between two people, yet the dance of jealousy requires three. Envy and jealousy are close cousins and often become intertwined.

I put the story aside and added it to the growing list of things I was inadequate at or incapable of doing.

the hardest job is being a burden to everyone around you, when no one wants you around then you are merely useless.

He had a chip on his shoulder about anybody with a posh voice and a fancy degree.

As always after a trip home, he wondered why he found it so difficult to get on with his father. There were never arguments, no real antagonism, but he always left feeling an edgy mixture of guilt and inadequacy.

They need you. They wouldn't feel superior without someone to despise. They're inadequate.

The truth is many of us have been socialized to think that if we are not the very best, if we are not at the top 1 percent of whatever it is we do, then we are not good enough. To reinforce this already pervasive mental model, society has established a competitive hierarchy for just about everything.

If you spend five minutes with me or watch me try to balance my checkbook, you can only imagine the disaster I would make of anyone's legal issues.

I have an enormous sense of having failed in life.

I know that I have a good career and I'm really busy, but there's always that part of my mind that's like, 'You're not doing enough, nobody knows you're alive, you're failing.'