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Insignificance Quotes

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Insignificance Quotes

“What then, will a little fame distract you? Look at the speed of universal oblivion, the gulf of immeasurable time both before and after, the vacuity of applause, the indiscriminate fickleness of your apparent supporters, the tiny room in which all this is confined. The whole earth is a mere point in space: what a minute cranny within this is your own habitation, and how many and what sort will sing your praises here!”

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Book:Meditations
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“Every man walks his own path, and every path has its fair share of locked doors. You never know who holds the key to a door you’ll need to open one day, so you best treat people as if they are all keyholders.”

PeopleImportantChoicesUnderstandingDestinyPathDoorsInfluenceAwarenessHumilityPerspectiveKeysListeningRespectGainsImportanceWordsCarefulToleranceSignificantChoiceSignificanceManipulationPotentialLockedActionsPersuasionCautionExpertiseActOthersBattlesHearInsignificanceKeyholders
Book:Rise of the Morningstar
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“To think of our greatest anxiety as an insignificant event, not only in the life of the universe but also in the life of our own soul, is the beginning of wisdom. To think this way right in the midst of our anxiety is the height of wisdom. While we're actually suffering, our human pain seems infinite. But human pain isn't infinite, because nothing human is infinite, and our pain has no value beyond its being a pain we feel.”

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Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“Edward: But I'm obsessed by the thought of my own significance. Rielly: Precisely. And I could make you feel important, And you would imagine it a marvelous cure; And you would go on, doing such amount of mischief As lay within your power -- until you came to grief. Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm--but the harm does not interest them Or they do not see it, or they justify it Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle To think well of themselves.”

HarmObsessionInsignificanceSelf JustificationSelf Absorbtion
Book:The Cocktail Party
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“Dwarf things. Small things. Little things in relation to the norm. Insignificant things. Things with different dimensions. Curiously, the stories I like the most are made up of trivialities. Details. Trifles. These days, people look to what's big. The big picture, big sales figures, success. Bright lights, interviews, breaking news. Whatever's famous. Importance judged by fame. Maybe small things are subversive. Living on a modest scale compared to the norm. Maybe the dwarf is the hero of our time.”

JudgementSignificanceSmall ThingsOpinionsAntithesisInsignificanceMiniature UniverseThe Norm
Book:Loop
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“I have always been considered a bit of an outsider, and a general failure at everything I put my hand towards. In fact, you might even go so far as to say that I’m a lesser being of great insignificance! I state this because, when writing a story, you should always start the first line off with at least one basic truth. -First lines from the novel Sukiyaki”

OutsidersWriting LifeBeginningBeginningsInsignificanceLosersFirst LinesFailures In LifeLesser BeingsSukiyakiBasic Truth
Author:Andrew James Pritchard
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“Living is a like waiting for a bus, with no posted schedule, that comes once every day. You're not waiting for #168, you're waiting for happiness. Sometimes you catch the bus, but it never takes you as far as you want to go, as far as you need to go. What good is a five minute ride when you have eight hours ahead? If anything, the ride pisses you off; you're zooming at seventy miles an hour, comfortable, air-conditioned and laid-back, when suddenly you get kicked out, into the blazing sun, to carry your heavy backpack the rest of the way. The bus can drop you off at indifference, insignificance, loneliness, anxiety, anger, or depression. Some three-hundred pound thug kicks you off and lets another wanderer on. You walk for hours with an aching back, sweating like a pig, hopeless and helpless, and all the while you're thinking, god damn, this would have taken 20 minutes on the bus. You whine and moan hoping someone will lend a helping hand, hoping someone will reach out to you and save you, but everyone only has trite, meaningless expressions to give. Let me clear up a common misconception: you will never help anybody by telling them to "feel better." "Feel better" isn't an air-conditioned ride. What happens when you arrive, eight hours later, at the end of the road? I don't know either. I doubt you ever get there.”

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Author:Byron Bernstein
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“If humans did not manufacture some of their own to appear like better people, people would not aspire to be someone else. They would stop dreaming. And if people didn't dream, they would be awake to discover the wonderful misery of being. There are no singular great people. There is only a small percentage of people manufactured to look significant, for the purpose of creating the feeling of mass insignificance.”

PeopleIfsHumansLooksFeelingsDreamWould BePurposeWonderfulCreatingMassMiserySignificantAwakeAspirePercentagesGreat PeopleBeing ThereInsignificanceStop Dreaming
Author:Craig Stone
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“The discussion of the sexual problem is only a somewhat crude prelude to a far deeper question, and that is the question of the psychological relationship between the sexes. In comparison with this the other pales into insignificance, and with it we enter the real domain of woman. Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos.”

MenRealProblemSexPrinciplesPsychologyAncientDeeperPsychologicalDiscussionComparisonPaleRulingDomainMen WomenCrudeMemories Dreams ReflectionsLogosErosInsignificancePreludeAncient TimesBinders
Book:The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Civilization in transition
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“There is one thing that makes life mighty in its veriest trifles, worthy in its smallest deeds, that delivers it from monotony, that delivers it from insignificance. All will be great, nothing will be overpowering, when, living in communion with Jesus Christ, we say as He says, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.”

JesusChristOne ThingJesus ChristDeedsWorthyMeatSmallestCommunionTriflesMonotonyInsignificanceOverpowering
Book:Sermons Preached in Manchester: third series
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“When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard.”

Has BeensDifferentSelfPastHabitImpressionEnthusiasmFormerInstantIntensityFadesSensibilityVividStimulusMomentaryDrunkardsInsignificanceTimes Past
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“Ever since the Reformation, the case of legislation confining Catholics had been constructed primarily to protect a nervously Protestant against what was assumed to be a fifth column in its midst... Ministers believedm with some justice, that Catholics retained an attachment to their exiled co-religionists, the princes of the House of Stuart. After the Battle of Culloden had confirmed Jacobitism's insignificance, however, government attitudes towards Catholicism began perceptibly and logically to relax.”

GovernmentHouseJusticeAttitudeCasesBattleProtectCatholicMinistersRelaxMidstAttachmentCatholicismLegislationFifthColumnsReformationProtestantsBritish HistoryInsignificance
Author:Linda Colley
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“There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.”

MenFeelsSoulPassionIssuesSadnessDespairIsolationEmptinessDependentOccupationApplicationNothingnessPowerlessAmusementReposeEnnuiInsignificanceVexationChagrin
Author:Blaise Pascal
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“Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.”

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Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.”

MenFeelsMomentsEarthSeeingFeetChildhoodEventsTypeImpressiveEarthquakesInsignificanceSolidity
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)
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“From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.”

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Book:The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter
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“When human beings are regarded as moral beings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon the summit, administering upon rights and responsibilities, sinks into insignificance and nothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do. Our duties originate, not from difference of sex, but from the diversity of our relations in life, the various gifts and talents committed to our care, and the different eras in which we live.”

MenHumansDifferentCareSexDifferencesHuman BeingsResponsibilityMoralRightsTalentDutyMoralityDiversityRelationCommittedVariousDoctrineErasNothingnessSummitInsignificanceGifts And TalentsDifferent ErasRights And Responsibilities
Author:Angelina Grimke
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“There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.”

WaySelfEnoughTurnsFallIndividualVirtuePiecesArmsEmptyUltimateOne WayUselessBreastsPessimismContemptSoleRecognizingRenunciationInsignificanceFolding
Author:Ivan Turgenev
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“If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?”

IfsMenShouldWritingMightAsksSpaceMadStriveDustBotherSatCosmosSymphonyFutilityMomentaryUnimaginableImmensityInsignificanceMicrobesNumbingTerminationAnomie
Author:Stanley Kubrick
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“Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that”

HeartSometimesReasonFaithUniverseMy HeartArgumentComparisonGlobesAssuredVastnessInsignificancePhilosophic
Book:The Life, Eulogy, and Great Orations of Daniel Webster
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“Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God… The reason for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us.”

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Author:John Piper
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