Quotes About Self-doubt

Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery. He

Now I don't know what I love any more. I don't know where the thing I make-pretend leaves off and the thing that's really there starts up.

When you doubt your powers, you power your doubts

There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.

Damned indecision and cursed pride.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I.

Every culture I've ever been subjected to appears to be frightened," he explains. "I've been working as a psychotherapist for 20 years, and if I could boil down every problem that ever walked through any office that I've occupied—and this includes when I've been alone in the office—every human being suffers from two things in varying degrees of intensity, two things that are taught to us. They're called self-doubt and fear.

In Buddhism we would say that you are lazy... Despising yourself, thinking you are no good, saying 'I can't do this.' This is the mind of weakness. You must work to overcome it .

In Buddhism"—the lama tilted his head back challengingly—"we would say that you are lazy." Sam's reaction was the opposite of his usual. Color drained from his face. "Despising yourself, thinking you are no good, saying 'I can't do this.' This is the mind of weakness. You must work to overcome it.

Sorry' he said. 'No, I'm sorry.' 'What are you sorry for?' 'Rattling on like a mad old cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being so...boring.' 'You're not that boring.' 'I am, Dex. God, I swear I bore myself.' 'Well, you don't bore me.' He took her hand in his. 'You could never bore me. You're one in a million, Em.

All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.

You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it?

Who me? God, no, I'm terrible . . . " Then, just as an experiment, I say, "And, besides, I don't think I'm good-looking enough to be an actor." Oh, that's not true! There are lots of actors who aren't good-looking . . .

In rare moments of self-doubt, Dexter had once worried that a lack of intellect might hold him back in life, but here was a job where confidence, energy, perhaps even a certain arrogance were all that mattered, all qualities that lay within his grasp.

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.

You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that...So why don't you believe it?

You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?

I don't think I'm going to do any good work this morning.

Through a long life, Franklin had been forced by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions . . . which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.

Socrates had it backward. He thought the unexamined life is not worth living. I think no one's life holds up to examination. The more time you spend thinking the more you notice that everyone else is doing something better or more important than you.

Well into adulthood, writing has never gotten easier. It still only ever begins badly, and there are no guarantees that this is not the day when the jig is finally up.

The central drama of my life is about being a fraud, alas. That's a complete lie, really; the central drama of my life is actually about being lonely, and staying thin, but fraudulence gets a fair amount of play.