Quotes About Self-doubt

I was a very, very slow learner. I was good at nothing.

I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.

Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe. It hardly matters, though. The termite that asks itself why it keeps chewing risks becoming sluggish and inefficient, as does the writer who grows self-conscious in the middle of chapter five.

It's always frustrated me when I've seen other players able to smack balls over the bowler's head and stuff like that. I can't, though. When I've tried I've let myself down.

I feel like I'm not smart enough to answer the questions I'm asked.

I felt ashamed about everything. Me dropping out of high school, me not, you know, just not being beautiful enough. I just didn't feel like I was smart enough or beautiful enough, you know, for years.

I'm not a writer. I'm not smart. I couldn't possibly even write my own story.

I am not sure that I am that smart. I think we work harder. When I was at university, there were a lot of smarter people than me, and they seem not to have done quite so well.

At any given moment, I've always assumed that nearly everyone around me was smarter than I was, more naturally gifted, quicker-witted, and probably capable of understanding Heidegger and Derrida.

When I was a young executive, I was always nervous that my idea wouldn't be great. So I asked around, 'What do you think of this?' That became my filter for whether my idea was good enough. Then I realized it just plain made me smarter.

When I was finishing my PhD, I could just see people who were a bit quicker and brighter and smarter than me and I thought, 'well they are the people who are going to make the great discoveries.'

There are times you start to doubt yourself a little bit but you have to snap out of it.

I'm pretty self-critical about everything I've ever done: stand-up, 'SNL.'

I missed so many opportunities along the way to do what I wanted to do because I didn't have the confidence to tell myself, much less anybody else, 'Yes, this is the business I wanted to be a part of'.

I missed so many opportunities along the way to do what I wanted to do because I didn't have the confidence to tell myself, much less anybody else, 'Yes, this is the business I wanted to be a part of, and not feeling that I had the talent... and letting it go all the way through Notre Dame and then through two years of Navy service.

I think I might as well give up being a candidate. There are so many people in the country who don't like me.

My big fear is that I'll put down so many people, I'll have to leave show biz.

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word.

The idea that only the swaggering, all-knowing, and ruthlessly ambitious succeed is a lie. One that has discouraged so many people with so much potential - and worse, encouraged many more to crash and burn.

My dad will always criticize me. He doesn't care if it hurts my feelings. If I start acting a certain way, he would be like, 'Who do you think you are?' So many people can tell me, 'You're amazing,' but I don't think it. I'm really hard on myself.

So many people can tell me, 'You're amazing,' rather, but I don't think it. You know, so, I don't go around thinking this. I'm really hard on myself. I think that's quite good.

For so many years, I thought I wasn't good enough.

To take those risks not only do you need to silence the external critics, you also need to let go of the inner critic that tries to worry you about the fear of rejection.

I keep feeling like everyone wants me to apologize for something.