Quotes About Futility

The futility of attempting to upgrade the teaching profession by paying higher salaries is obvious, so long as legal barriers keep out all those who refuse to take education courses. These courses are negative barriers, in the sense that they keep out the competent. It is Darwinism stood on its head, with the unfittest being most likely to survive as public school teachers. The

As the Greeks saw it, to be a man was to be defined by your ability to exert power in a world articulated through transcendent forces ultimately beyond human control. The apparent futility of this perspective was outweighed by the nobility that came with the struggle.

Even if you were to discover it, I don't imagine you could simply shin up a drainpipe and jemmy open the bathroom window. Fort Knox is most likely a bus shelter in comparison.

We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

My life has been of but little worth mostly fild [sic] up with vanity.

It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

We can't change things, you and I. We sit up here all day, under a bad sun, but we can't stop the weather turning. We make our piles of earth and they become graves around us. Nothing's as important as it seems.

What I mean is, even a dumbass like me can think everything's pointless. Why do I get up and eat? It all ends up shit anyway. Why am I going to school and studying? Even if I happen to succeed I'm going to die anyway. You wear nice clothes, you seek respect, you make a lot of money, but what's the point? It's all pointless. But… but, you see, we still have emotions like joy and happiness, right? They may not amount to much but they fill up our emptiness.

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

She had as much use for a baby as a lion has for fins.

It may not be terribly fruitful to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, but that doesn't mean it isn't satisfying.

It is natural to feel helpless when attempting the impossible.

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagance.

You can't get blood out of a turnip.

This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

Time is that which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not your hands to it for help - for it As impotently moves as you or I.

Worry is a futile thing, it's somewhat like a rocking chair, Although is keeps you occupied, it doesn't get you anywhere.

Worry is as useless as a handle on a snowball.

Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.

The game is not worth the candle.