Quotes About Wasted Potential

“You can have all the words in the world,but if not said rightly, those words are simply wasted potential.”

— Joel T. McGrath

“Daybreak," he said, looking out at it. "I've always thought it was funny that dawn should be called daybreak. This is when the day is made: it's the beginning. It's the best part: you've got all the potential of the day to come, and you haven't wasted it yet. When it gets dark, that should be daybreak. When the day is broken. When it turns into nighttime, that's when it all starts to go wrong.”

— Erin Kelly

“Let it not be said by a future, forlorn generation that we wasted and lost our great potential because our despair was so deep we didn't even try, or because each of us thought someone else was worrying about our problems.”

— Ralph Nader

“The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.”

— Cornel West

“In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant. And even if it is not significant, it has the potential to be so - which amounts to the same thing. The world of the book comes to life, seething with possibilities, with secrets and contradictions. Since everything seen or said, even the slightest, most trivial thing, can bear a connection to the outcome of the story, nothing must be overlooked. Everything becomes essence; the center of the book shifts with each event that propels it forward. The center, then, is everywhere, and no circumference can be drawn until the book has come to its end.”

— Paul Auster

“The students we saw were all bright, attractive, and polite, and the teachers all seemed to be smart and dedicated, and I began to appreciate the benefits of a private school education. If only I'd had the opportunity to attend a place like this, who knows what I might have become? Perhaps instead of a mere blood-spatter analyst who slunk away at night to kill without conscience, I could have become a doctor, or a physicist, or even a senator who slunk away at night to kill without conscience. It was terribly sad to think of all my wasted potential.”

— Jeff Lindsay

“When people wish for harmony, I wish for chaos. I'd rather see imaginative means of self-destruction, than to see laziness and wasted potential.”

— Lionel Suggs

“Gene Roddenbury felt that television was being wasted. That it had the potential for enlightenment and even inspiration.”

— George Takei

“My brother,' Mortin says as Leidan shuffles away. 'So much potential, wasted.' He takes a swig of beer. I wonder whose potential he really thinks is wasted. I look through his upturned drink at the walls and ceiling. Things look sadder when glimpsed through alcohol.”

— Ned Vizzini

“In God's economy, nothing is slag, nothing is wasted. Every relationship we build is a teacher, every experience we have is a coach. In every scar there is a lesson. In every memory there lives potential to make more.”

— Toni Sorenson

“When leaders know how to lead great meetings, there's less time wasted and less frustration. We have more energy to do the work that matters, realize our full potential, and do great things.”

— Justin Rosenstein

“Greece has great strengths, but much of this potential has been wasted. That's because of a wider political system, but also because of a lack of an institutional framework.”

— George Papandreou

“It pains me to say this, Colin, but if you wish to continue to grow intellectually, you need to work harder right now than you ever have before. Otherwise you, you risk wasting your potential."
"Technically," Colin answered, "I think I might have already wasted it.”

— John Green

“Every human life contains a potential, if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted ...”

— C.G. Jung

“Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods and wasted potential”

— Malala Yousafzai

“People keep telling me I never lived up to my potential, that I wasted my talent ... I just didn't have as much as people thought. I got more ink for doing less than any pitcher who ever lived.”

— Bo Belinsky

“A life lived at less than its full potential is a life half wasted.”

— Tony Clark

“Tonight, I should watch the sun set, and think of the impending darkness as a metaphor for my wasted life: once it was bright, and full of potential, and now it is dark and hopeless and bleak. I should not make the mistake of thinking that the moon and the stars represent slim glimmers of hope, or evidence that there is light on the other side. Even if there is light somewhere I will never walk in it again.”

— John S. Hall

“In each of us lies sleeping beauty, wasted potential, dying dreams. We sleep and live in dormant twilight, never knowing what it means to live, to love the bits of heaven that we can unearth deep in our hearts; not recognizing that our salvation is ever-present in those parts that we have disowned, denied, forgotten. The thorns of fear thwart faint attempt. The prince is courage, the kiss believing and then with these our life begins.”

— Kay Thompson

“Sergey and I founded Google because we're super optimisitc about the potential for technology to make the world a better place. Think about how many people are underserved by transportation today, like those with disabilities, and how self driving cars will transform their lives. Or the wasted time you sit in your car every day commuting to and from work. Or the deaths and injuries that could be avoided.”

— Larry Page

“The most exciting thing about women's liberation is that this century will be able to take advantage of talent and potential genius that have been wasted because of taboos.”

— Helen Reddy