Self Doubt Quotes

“Dreams taught me never to doubt myself, by letting me do the impossible.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“It must be exhausting to be in your head," Sam told me once. I think what he must have meant was it was exhausting for him to hear about it. I exhausted him.”
― Rachel Harrison, Cackle

“Many children, however, are in some or many important respects unable to fulfill the expectations of their parents, and carry round with them, so to speak, raw, painful areas of disconfirmation which leave them exposed to sudden attacks of self-doubt and uncertainty, sudden ebbings of self-confidence which may well be experienced as 'symptoms' of anxiety or depression.”
― David Smail, Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety

“The reason why you doubt yourself so much is that you have never seen yourself in action.
You have never seen yourself breaking limits.
You have never seen yourself standing in the spotlight and getting cheered by the audience.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Before You Doubt Yourself: Pep Talks and other Crucial Discussions

“Doubt destroys more dreams than defeats.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“capitalism got inside my head
and made me think my only value
is how much i produce
for people to consume
capitalism got inside my head
and made me think
i am of worth
as long as i am working
i learned impatience from it
i learned self-doubt from it
learned to plant seeds in the ground
and expect flowers the next day
but magic doesn’t work like that
magic doesn’t happen
cause i’ve figured out how to
pack more work in a day
magic moves
by the laws of nature
and nature has its own clock
magic happens
when we play
when we escape
daydream and imagine
that’s where everything
with the power to fulfill us
is waiting on its knees for us
- productivity anxiety”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“Why do the ambiance of self-doubt and a shroud of multiple layers of contradictions underscore my confusion? Can I attain happiness by carving out a protective niche in the world, a place where my thoughts can roam free, a safe place where I can work unencumbered by silly worries that mar an ordinary life? I am free to do as I please, so why does life seem so bewildering, difficult, frustrating, and unsatisfying? Am I any different from other people? Do all people by their very nature stretch their puniness to know? Does it place a person in jeopardy to reach out to explore the difference between the known and the unknown? Is the risk to gain self-knowledge and determine how one fits into the world that surrounds us a worthwhile proposition? Is the desire to expand a person’s understanding of humanity and enhance their comprehension of humankind’s role in an interconnected world a journey that we each must undertake in our own way in order to exact a hard won scrap of perception that every civilization builds its structural pillars upon and every person relies upon in order to survive? Will a haphazard quest to obtain personal knowledge parlay my ruin or can cerebral effort jumpstart personal salvation?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“As soon as you begin to love yourself, the war within will end.”
― Laura Chouette

“Self-doubt is when you think you are not good enough.”
Self-confidence is when you are crazy enough to believe that you are the best.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Before You Doubt Yourself: Pep Talks and other Crucial Discussions

“You think you are a loser just because you haven’t yet won. When you start winning, you will realize that your insinuations were just a figment of your imagination.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Before You Doubt Yourself: Pep Talks and other Crucial Discussions

“I admit to not being an aficionado of children, having been one and having found my cohort and myself generally despicable. Unlike many, I was not intent on reproducing myself, deliberately or accidentally, since one of myself was more than enough for me to handle.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Gradually, as my bruised forehead healed, and as I absorbed my own words, I developed a growing sympathy for the man in these pages, the intelligence operative of doubtful intelligence. Was he a fool or too smart for his own good? Had he chosen the right side or the wrong side of history? And were not these the questions we should all ask ourselves? Or was it only me and myself who should be so concerned?”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Is this last note a sign that I'm incurable, that when reality smashes my dream to bits, I mope and snarl while the first shock lasts, and then patiently, idiotically, start putting it together again? And so always? However often the house of cards falls, shall I set about rebuilding it? Is that what I'm doing now?”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“It's all I can do,
Give him something he'll regret losing
The villains in my head already told me,
That you'd never be mine”
― Iona Baird, All My Bones that Bleed

“In your moments of self-doubt, it helps to have someone in your life who believes in you more than you believe in yourself.”
― Hrishikesh Agnihotri

“A little self-doubt will do no harm and may do a great deal of good: we will be more open to learn and correct our mistakes. But too much will shackle and stifle us with deep insecurities and make us so much aware of methods that we may overlook truth itself.”
― D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies

“Through training your mind to pay more attention to nourishing thoughts and beliefs than 'junk' ones, you can start rewiring your brain. You can strengthen the neural networks of any positive trait you want to cultivate – such as more confidence or courage – while weakening the neural networks of self-doubt and fear.”
― Simona Ondrejkova

“Stop thinking about, what they're thinking about you”
― Caleb Jack

“Before you doubt yourself, do something. Before you quit, try again. Before you leave, get back in.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Before You Doubt Yourself: Pep Talks and other Crucial Discussions

“If you had the ability to time-travel to the future to see what you would become, would you still be doubtful?”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Before You Doubt Yourself: Pep Talks and other Crucial Discussions

“Some break their hearts themselves
to be healed of the wrong love.”
― Laura Chouette

“I realized that two beasts had been slain this day: the gryphon, and my own self-doubt”
― Daniel Thorman, Mayhem at the Mill

“All I wanted to do was to keep on drinking, live life, not give a toss, yet I hit a wall whenever I did that, a wall of petite bourgeoisie and middle-class manners, which could not be broken down without enormous anguish and fear. I wanted to, but I couldn't. Deep down I was decent and proper, a goody-goody, and, I thought, perhaps that was also why I couldn't write. I wasn't wild enough, not artistic enough, in short, much too normal for my writing to take off. What had made me believe anything else?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 5

“What is difficult to acknowledge is that I saw this mistake coming and second-guessed myself, went against my own intuitive judgment. It wasn’t that I had not seen the truth. I had. But I failed to find the courage to act on it. Of course, my intuition can be wrong. But making a wrong decision, acting on an intuition that is inaccurate, is a real mistake, one I can live with more easily than the mistake of failing to act on what, to the best of my ability, I know.”
― Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

“The issue with low self-esteem is that you’re continually combing for indications to feel like you matter despite how senseless they are.”
― Elelwani Anita Ravhuhali, From Seeking To Radiating Love: Evolution is unavoidable in the process of overpowering doubt

“I feel a hand on the left side of my chest, only, since nothing womanly has really developed there yet, I’m wondering if he’s just trying to check my heartbeat.”
― Carolita Blythe, Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl

“It must be exhausting to be in your head," Sam told me once. I think what he must have meant was it was exhausting for him to hear about it. I exhausted him.
-Cackle by Kim Harrison”
― Kim Harrison

“Your entire life can change in the blink of an eye. Storms can come in and rock you to the core. I started to doubt myself, but I eventually learned two unbelievably valuable lessons at that moment:
1. Never doubt yourself.
2. Never stop pursuing your dreams.
Setbacks are temporary and a natural occurrence on the road to success. So I figured I better get used to them.”
― Cliff Beach, Side Hustle & Flow: 10 Principles to Live and Lead a More Productive Life in Less Time

“Something hideous scratched below the surface of my mind, like a monster just beneath a layer of ice on a lake.I couldn't put my finger on it, and I didn't want to.”
― Laura Hatosy, Drawn from Memory

“You need to trust that your art, once created, has a value apart from you, just as a child, come into the world, has a value separate from the parents who gave it life. When you give in to self-loathing, insecurity, or stage fright, you are looking at your work from the outside, and the outside is a shapeless darkness that contains all your self-doubt and fears.”
― Kent Nerburn, Dancing with the Gods: Reflections on Life and Art