Quotes & Sayings About Being Unreliable

If one discards the Bible as being unreliable, then he must discard almost all literature of antiquity. — Josh McDowell

I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board. — Emma Cline

Some folks live lives that are complete and total shit. But that's all they know, so it's home for them. They can't see things being any different, so don't mess with what they got going. Pile it on; they can take it.
What they can't see, because they don't want to, is that things could get better; they could step out of it. It wouldn't take much more than just seeing they can.
But that's scary, 'cause it's so unreliable. They can always count on shit coming at them; but is hope always gonna be there when they need it? — Edward Fahey

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. — Paul Theroux

Right, we've got a few questions for you," Harry told Mundungus, who shouted at once.
"I panicked okay? I never wanted to come along, no offense, mate, but I never volunteered to die for you, an' that was bleedin' You-Know-Who come flying at me, anyone woulda got outta there, I said all along I didn't wanna do it--"
"For your information, none of the rest of us Disapparated," said Hermione.
"Well, you're a bunch of bleedin' 'eroes then, aren't you, but I never pretended I was up for killing meself--"
"We're not interested in why you ran out on Mad-Eye," said Harry, moving his wand a little closer to Mundungus's baggy, bloodshot eyes. "We already knew you were an unreliable bit of scum."
"Well then, why the 'ell am I being 'unted down by 'ouse-elves? Or is this about them goblets again? I ain't got none of 'em left, or you could 'ave 'em--"
"It's not about the goblets either, although you're getting warmer," said Harry. "Shut up and listen. — J.K. Rowling

When we are relaxed and reasonable content, we are naturally wise. We accept that life is unpredictable, unreliable. We say jokingly or philosophically, "Nothing is sure except death and taxes," or "God willing and the creek don't rise," reminding each other that, notwithstanding the level of planning, we are continually dealing with being surprised. We get startled. We recover. We are disappointed. We adjust. Mostly-with Wisdom intact-we manage. — Sylvia Boorstein

Yesterday, when I took the stage for the sixth time, I read a poem about unreliable friends, people you love and feel bonded to but can never truly trust. It was about feeling alone and vulnerable, and never being able to fully let your guard down. — Tamara Ireland Stone

Eleven-year-olds are supposed to be unreliable. We're past the age of being poppets: the age where people bend over and poke us in the tum with their fingers and make idiotic noises that sound like "boof-boof" - just the thought of which is enough to make me bring up my Bovril. And yet we're still not at the age where anyone ever mistakes us for a grown-up. The fact is, we're invisible - except when we choose not to be. — Alan Bradley

I think the large part of the function of the Internet is it is archival. It's unreliable to the extent that word on the street is unreliable. It's no more unreliable than that. You can find the truth on the street if you work at it. I don't think of the Internet or the virtual as being inherently inferior to the so-called real. — William Gibson

The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it's a witness to God making it down to the worst people. Far from being a book full of moral heroes whom we are commanded to emulate, what we discover is that the so-called heroes in the Bible are not really heroes at all. They fall and fail; they make huge mistakes; they get afraid; they're selfish, deceptive, egotistical, and unreliable. The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. — Tullian Tchividjian

Hope founded upon a human being, a man-made philosophy or any institution is always misplaced ... because these things are unreliable and fleeting. — Charles Stanley

Do you not know how uncontrolled and unreliable the average human being is in all that concerns sexual life? — Sigmund Freud

I believe in some sense much akin to the belief of faith, that I noticed, felt, or underwent what I describe - but it may be that the only reason childhood memories act on us so strongly is that, being the most remote we possess, they are the worst remembered and so offer the least resistance to that process by which we mold them nearer and nearer to an ideal which is fundamentally artistic, or at least nonfactual; so it may be that some of these events I describe never occurred at all, but only should have, and that others had not the shades and flavors - for example, of jealousy or antiquity or shame - that I have later unconsciously chosen to give them ... — Gene Wolfe

They didn't have very far to fall--I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board. My childhood visits to the family doctor were stressful events for that reason. He'd ask me gentle questions: How was I feeling? How would I describe the pain? Was it more sharp or more spread out? I'd just look at him with desperation. I needed to be told, that was the whole point of going to the doctor. To take a test, be put through a machine that would comb my insides with radiated precision and tell me what the truth was. — Emma Cline

Motivation is about feeling - determined, enthusiastic, frenzied, even angry - and is therefore fickle and unreliable. You can't count on it being there. Consistency, however, is about doing. Consistency isn't something that you need to wind up like a coiled spring every morning. You don't need to plug it in and recharge it every few hours. It is that steady yet relentless journey to an end. It doesn't require profound thought. You quite literally just effing do it. — Michelle Bridges

This is a little dirty secret of mental health economics: if you're depressed, you don't think you're worth the cost of treatment. You feel guilty enough about being unproductive and unreliable. — Richard O'Connor

I am going to the City myself, human girl. After my mother was widowed, my siblings and I went each our separate ways: M-Through-S to be a governess, T-Through-Z to be a soldier, and I to seek our old grandfather - the Municipal Library of Fairyland, which owns all the books in all the world. I hope that he will accept me and love me as a grandson and teach me to be a librarian, for every creature must know a trade. I know I have bad qualities that stand against me - a fiery breath being chief among these - but I am a good beast, and I enjoy alphabetizing, and perhaps, I may get some credit for following in the family business." The Wyverary pursed his great lips. "Perhaps we might travel together for a little while? Those beasts with unreliable fathers must stick together after all. And I may be a good deal of help in the arena of Locating Suppers. — Catherynne M Valente

There is nothing novel about trying to become happy. And one can become happy, within certain limits, without any recourse to the practice of meditation. But conventional sources of happiness are unreliable, being dependent upon changing conditions. It is difficult to raise a happy family, to keep yourself and those you love healthy, to acquire wealth and find creative and fulfilling ways to enjoy it, to form deep friendships, to contribute to society in ways that are emotionally rewarding, to perfect a wide variety of artistic, athletic, and intellectual skills - and to keep the machinery of happiness running day after day. There is nothing wrong with being fulfilled in all these ways - except for the fact that, if you pay close attention, you will see that there is still something wrong with it. These forms of happiness aren't good enough. Our feelings of fulfillment do not last. And the stress of life continues. — Sam Harris

Trend analyses for extreme tropical cyclones are unreliable because of operational changes that have artificially resulted in more intense tropical cyclones being recorded, casting severe doubts on any such trend linkages to global warming. — Christopher Landsea

How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another. — Karl Kraus