Quotes About Futility

Nothing matters when you are dead, and, you are dead when nothing matters.

Human efforts to avoid or overcome death are always doomed to disappointment.

To what purpose should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?

You are going to die in front of dozens of witnesses, and none of them will do a thing to help you or avenge you. Because they know exactly what you know: The world is ending.

Dying in vain isn't really all that bad since nearly everyone does it. It's the living in vain you really have to watch out for.

It's all a waste of time. Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything.

We are sentenced to die the day we are born.

You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.

It is easy to identify a shallow person by the attention he gives to what will do him absolutely no good.

If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.

Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

Nihil sub sole novum, I thought as I walked back down the hall to my room. Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

Nihil sub sole novum [...] Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born – never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born-never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming

The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game.

For humans—trapped in biology—there was no mercy: we lived a while, we fussed around for a bit and died, we rotted in the ground like garbage.

It was better never to have been born - never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

An arrow shot into the sea, it can hurt no one.

My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.

In their vain quest for happiness, they only succeed in rendering it more inaccessible not only for themselves, but for everybody else.

Sometimes all the energy you put into something you think matters doesn't matter one bit.

This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing. All in vain. All wasted. The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker. More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain.