Quotes About Futility

Futility can lead to thought, the laughable can become serious, and depth can succeed superficiality. Not all the time, and not necessarily, it goes without saying. Not every idiocy contains a philosophical pearl. But there exist ordinary situations, everyday gestures, actions we carry out continuously, which can become the starting point for that astonishment that gives rise to philosophy.

If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)

Invoking posterity is like making speeches to worms.

We people are just worms on top of it, worms on its fat, revolting carcass, eating its entrails and all its poisons … Nothing can help us, we were born rotten … There you have it!

Zemlja je mrtva... A mi smo samo crvi na njoj, crvi na njenom velikom lešu, koji sve vreme žderu njena creva i njene otrove... Ništa ne može da bude od nas. Truli smo od ro?enja... I eto, tako je to!

I'd never felt so useless as I did amid all those bullets in the sunlight. A vast and universal mockery.

N'importe quoi dans la vanité c'est mieux que rien

Somos, por naturaleza, tan fútiles, que solo las distracciones pueden impedirnos de verdad morir.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

Siamo o non siamo su un'invisibile trottolina, cui fa da ferza un fil di sole, su un granellino di sabbia impazzito che gira e gira e gira, senza saper perché, senza pervenir mai a destino, come se ci provasse gusto a girar così, per farci sentire ora un po' più di caldo, ora un po' più di freddo, e per farci morire – spesso con la coscienza d'aver commesso una sequela di piccole sciocchezze – dopo cinquanta o sessanta giri?

Are we or are we not on an invisible spinning top, whipped by a thread of sunlight, on a grain of crazed sand which turns and turns without ever knowing why, without ever reaching a destination, as if it enjoyed turning like that, to make us feel a little colder or warmer, and make us die (often feeling that we have merely carried out a series of meaningless gestures) after fifty or sixty years?

I had no children, I did not transmit to any creature the legacy of our misery.

the futility of something is not always (in love and in politics) a sufficient argument against it.

First (but not last) lesson about futility of trying to replicate good thing or good experience—never as good second time, only causes disappointment.

We listened patiently to Lester, words skittering out of his mouth like cartoon dogs on fresh-waxed linoleum, frantically going nowhere.

The humiliations and defeats, given with a primitive honesty, end not in frustration, despair or futility, but in hunger, an ecstatic devouring hunger—for more life." - Anais Nin

But I see New York written all over it. Ennui. Futility. Dreary nights. Sad jokes. Creamy voices. Crooning melodies.

What you said the other day about the futility of running away was very profound; and very courageous. Listen, Henry, I believe you should talk with Jung. I

He knows the absurdity of asking someone to explain love or sorrow. You can't point to it. It would be as futile, as unconveyable, as pointing at the sky and saying: that one, that star, there.

And Robert says nothing; he knows the absurdity of asking someone to explain love or sorrow. You can't point to it. It would be as futile, as unconveyable, as pointing at the sky and saying, "That one, that star, there.

he knows the absurdity of asking someone to explain love or sorrow. You can't point to it. It would be as futile, as unconveyable, as pointing at the sky and saying, "That one, that star, there.

You think everyone will stay behind and do everything you did all over again, forever. You picture old geezers in jean jackets doing whip-its behind the plaza.

In "A Problem from Hell," I had highlighted the work of Albert Hirschman, the Princeton economist who published the landmark book The Rhetoric of Reaction in 1991. Hirschman's thesis was that those who didn't want to pursue a particular course of action tended to argue that a given policy would be futile ("futility"), that it would likely make matters worse ("perversity"), or that it would imperil some other goal ("jeopardy").

Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!