Not Having Confidence Quotes

“No hay problema," Orlando agreed. "But you haven't said where?" His eyes grazed over the rumpled tux, Aiden not having thought about where the tattoo might go. Isabel had an answer.
"His neck."
"My neck?"
"Tiene cojones," Orlando said slyly grinning.
"Yes, your neck. It'll be your thing, you know, when you're famous
like an insigna. It's sexy and dangerous. Aidan's going to be a famous rock star, Orlando."
Aidan admired her confidence. "From her lips ... "
"I surely hope, mis amigos, because putting that thing on your neck does not say nine-to-five employment.”

— Laura Spinella

“I had considered envying men before
I pretend to envy things like their higher incidence of ungrounded confidence and monomania
but I don't really envy those things, and I'm not sure I even believe in them
but this, the covert-baby-having thing, was the first real thing.”

— Rivka Galchen

“Having interests translates as confidence to do and be things on your own without expecting a man to do and be for you. And confidence is attractive. Not to mention independence.”

— Belle De Jour

“One should never tell anyone anything or give information or pass on stories or make people remember beings who have never existed or trodden the earth or traversed the world or who, having done so, are now almost safe in uncertain, one-eyed oblivion. Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.”

— Javier Marías

“Having been brought up in a serf-owner's family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises ... I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline, and acting on the principle of common understanding ... Men of initiative are required everywhere; but once the impulse has been given, the enterprise must be conducted, ... not in military fashion, but in a sort of communal way.”

— Pyotr Kropotkin

“Self-evaluation and self-criticism are, basically, neurotic tendencies which derive from our not having enough confidence in ourselves, confidence in the sense of seeing what we are, knowing what we are, knowing that we can afford to open. We can afford to surrender that raw and rugged neurotic quality of self and step out of fascination, step out of preconceived ideas.”

— Chgyam Trungpa

“Mr. Malfoy is new to the business of having ideas, and so when he has one, he becomes proud of himself for having it. He has not yet had enough ideas to unflinchingly discard those that are beautiful in some aspects and impractical in others; he has not yet acquired confidence in his own ability to think of better ideas as he requires them. What we are seeing here is not Mr. Malfoy's best idea, I fear, but rather his only idea.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

“There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken. No one knew who he was. No one knew where he came from. He'd become Kaz Brekker, cripple and confidence man, bastard of the Barrel.
The gloves were his one concession to weakness. Since that night among the bodies and the swim from the Reaper's Barge, he had not been able to bear the feeling of skin against skin. It was excruciating to him, revolting. It was the only piece of his past that he could not forge into something dangerous.”

— Leigh Bardugo

“Not only is there no need of an intermediary through whom He would want you to speak to Him, but He finds His delight in having you treat with Him personally and in all confidence.”

— Alphonsus Liguori

“What the young writer needs to develop, to achieve his goal of becoming a great artist, is not a set of aesthetic laws but artistic mastery. He cannot hope to develop mastery all at once; it involves too much. But if he pursues his goal in the proper way, he can approach it much more rapidly than he would if he went at it hit-or-miss, and the more successful he is at each stage along the way, the swifter his progress is likely to be. Invariably when the beginning writer hands in a short story to his writing teacher, the story has many things about it that mark it as amateur. But almost as invariably, when the beginning writer deals with some particular, small problem, such as description of a setting, description of a character, or brief dialogue that has some definite purpose, the quality of the work approaches the professional. Having written some small thing very well, he begins to learn confidence.”

— John Gardner

“You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write it at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don't see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later, you wonder if it may not be all right after all.”

— Agatha Christie

“Humans will believe anything you say provided you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners. It is much easier to signal self-confidence if you are exceedingly polite and friendly; you can control people without having to offend their sensitivity.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Girl power is about loving yourself and having confidence and strength from within, so even if you're not wearing a sexy outfit, you feel sexy.”

— Nicole Scherzinger

“I would never speak about faith, but speak about the Lord himself - not theologically, as to the why and wherefore of his death - but as he showed himself in his life on earth, full of grace, love, beauty, tenderness and truth. Then the needy heart cannot help hoping and trusting in him, and having faith, without ever thinking about faith. How a human heart with human feelings and necessities is ever to put confidence in the theological phantom which is commonly called Christ in our pulpits, I do not know. It is commonly a miserable representation of him who spent thirty-three years on our Earth, living himself into the hearts and souls of men, and thus manifesting God to them.”

— George MacDonald

“If I'm thinking about a particular injury, then I'm already a step behind. If I'm so gun shy in the pocket and not worried about the receivers that are open down field, something's going to happen that's not going to get the job done. So my main focus is having confidence in myself knowing that I'm able to be myself when I'm out there.”

— Cam Newton

“The Chief Justice's ... main point seemed to be that the references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance aren't really religious and therefore are not that important - something I would think would offend Christians who think it should stay because it is religious and does matter. Too many Christians appear to be desperate to shore up their failing confidence in their own religious beliefs by having the government officially endorse those beliefs.”

— Ed Buckner

“Being an actor is definitely not about sitting around on set and having a cigarette or something. It's about acting. The more you can audition, then that's the best thing ever because you learn so much and you get your face out there and you grow your confidence.”

— Erika Christensen

“When I was 17 until, I don't know, 20, I had this massive, baseless confidence. This very clear idea of myself and how I would achieve success, which involved making decisions. I saw myself picking up the phone and saying 'Absolutely not' or 'Definitely yes.' Having control. Except you have to figure out whether the way you think at 19 or 20 has any value. And eventually I understood, with all that control, which was probably illusory, I wasn't progressing. So now I'm relinquishing a bit. I'll be a tiny bit naked.”

— Robert Pattinson

“Confidence is not based on you having all the resources needed to take care of yourself; confidence is based upon the truth that God is faithful.”

— Roy Lessin

“Successful investors tend to be unemotional, allowing the greed and fear of others to play into their hands. By having confidence in their own analysis and judgement, they respond to market forces not with blind emotion but with calculated reason. Successful investors, for example, demonstrate caution in frothy markets and steadfast conviction in panicky ones. Indeed, the very way an investor views the market and it's price fluctuations is a key factor in his or her ultimate investment success or failure.”

— Seth Klarman

“Magazines don't have enough confidence to have their own style, so they use a borrowed style. That is shocking to me, but your perception is very accurate. It's a way to be more commercially viable, but to me, that's not having a style, that's having a schtick.”

— Gregory Heisler

“He [Mencken] was an autodidact, with all the misplaced confidence and all the astonishing gaps that characterize that breed. Not many of us would venture to write a book about democracy without ever having read de Tocqueville, nor embark on a translation of Nietzsche with only a sketchy knowledge of German.”

— John Derbyshire

“I understand that the results I've had in my career, or I'm having now, they are very good. And that gives me confidence, of course, but I do not feel invincible.”

— Novak Djokovic

“A champion is suppose to hate to lose, and it wasn't like I was ever crazy about the idea. But I learned to deal with losing without having my spirit or confidence broken, which would help immensely over time, not just in the big picture but even in specific matches when I found myself in a jam. Fear of losing is a terrible thing.”

— Pete Sampras

“We must not pick and choose which commandments we think are important to keep but acknowledge all of God's commandments. We must stand firm and steadfast, having perfect confidence in the Lord's consistency and perfect trust in His promises.”

— L. Tom Perry

“For me, it's not important whether [subjects] are naked, half-naked, or dressed. What I'm more interested in is how they present themselves: if someone is half-naked and having self-confidence or you have the feeling that she has or he has control of the situation. She likes to do it. Then I have nothing against it. But it's true that society doesn't talk about such issues. They just talk about whether there is a breast or not, but for me it's more interesting how the power game of camera and object is shown. And if it's a cool picture.”

— Pipilotti Rist

“Have confidence in the compassion of our Creator. Reflect well on what you are now doing, and keep before you the things you have done. Lift up your eyes to the overflowing compassion of heaven, and while He waits for you, draw near in tears to our merciful Judge. Having before your mind that He is a Just Judge, do not take your sins lightly; and having also in mind that He is compassionate, do not despair. The God-Man gives man confidence before God.”

— Pope Gregory I

“Everyday, the mail brings the thousands of letters, and you hand over to Me personally hundreds more. Yet, I do not take the help of anyone else, even to open the envelopes. For, you write to me intimate details of your personal problems, believing that I alone will read them and having implicit confidence in Me. You write, each one only a single letter, that makes for Me a huge bundle a day; and I have to go through all of them. You may ask how I manage it? Well I do not waste a single moment.”

— Sathya Sai Baba

“It'd be nice to just hear, "You did a great job." I don't say this from personal experience because I have an amazing husband who is an amazing father. I say this knowing he does it all the time. He's always great about saying, "You were amazing today." He does it without me having to ask for it and there's something so beautiful about not fishing for that compliment from your partner that gives you that much more of stability and confidence.”

— Mila Kunis

“Having strength, having a strong military, is the ally of peace. Exercising that strength through military action is not always necessary if you have the confidence and clarity of vision and purpose which America demands.”

— Mitt Romney

“I've read some of Kurt Vonnegut letters from when he was young. He was a prisoner of war, and even when he was in his early twenties, there were things mentioned that showed up in his novels. One of the sweetest things in those letters was him wanting to be a writer but doubting himself, not having confidence in himself.”

— Susan Sarandon

“There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.”

— Paul Theroux

“It's not that I wrote those details, but photos can give you the confidence that you have a real feel for the landscape. Then you can invent with a solid kind of faith, and recreate a feel and flavor of the time, and, one hopes, a tonality, a sense of that time having been lived by those characters.”

— Chang-rae Lee

“I think after doing Push and Shove and having it not be successful, I lost a lot of confidence. Songwriting, for me, has always been traumatic, and I've always made all these excuses. But I've realized that you have to just accept that it was a gift: "I don't know where it came from, I don't know how I did it, but I did write all those songs, and I gotta do it again."”

— Gwen Stefani

“Security is not a static thing. Security would only lie in a man's confidence in reaching his goals and, indeed, in his having goals to reach.”

— L. Ron Hubbard