Imposter Quotes & Sayings

To go straight to the deepest depth, I went for Hegel; what unclear thoughtless flow of words I was to find there! My unlucky star led me from Hegel to Schopenhauer ... Even in Kant there were many things that I could grasp so little that given his general acuity of mind I almost suspected that he was pulling the reader's leg or was even an imposter. — Ludwig Boltzmann

When the pope sits on the chamber pot to shit, does he believe in his own infallibility? Does not every imposter occasionally recognize his own hairy, homely humanity? Perhaps not; worn long enough, sometimes the Mask of Authority becomes the man. Even looking in a mirror, he will see the sacred Mask and not his own ordinary human face. — Robert Anton Wilson

The imposter syndrome is at the core off every human being's soul. We're born with it. It's why human beings are alive today. It's an innate sense you're born with. It's why our ancestors avoided the saber-toothed tiger, because they doubted themselves. They were scared of certain things. That's why they worked hard to learn how to build fire, and taking it all through the generations, that impostor syndrome is always going to be there. Instead of being afraid and letting it get you down, be that 1% who embraces the impostor syndrome and realizes that it's never going away. Because the impostor syndrome exists, it weeds out the 99% of people who cannot get over it and cannot get over their fear. It puts the people who do, into the top 1%, and anyone can join us here, when you just embrace the impostor syndrome. — Harry Duran

Everyone wears masks. They come in all different shapes and sizes. The only problem with trying one on - is that it fits. How easily we fall into the trap that we don't have to be who we really are. How easily we convince ourselves that we need to cover up what we were born to be. It's a tragedy - that fear keeps us from our destiny. It's hell - when the person you were created to be - is covered up by some cheap imposter. — Rachel Van Dyken

I am drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness - and even I am not strong enough to deny the routine, the rote, to simplify. No, I go plodding on, afraid that the blank hell in back of my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a dark pestilence; afraid that the disease which eats away the pith of my body with merciless impersonality will break forth in obvious sores and warts, screaming Traitor, sinner, imposter. — Sylvia Plath

The defense mechanisms of The Imposter are: sarcasm, name-dropping, self-righteousness, the need to impress others and the need for others' approval. — Manning Brennan

I still feel very much an imposter in the whole music scene, which I'm quite happy about to be honest. — Nick Cave

I feel a bit of an imposter talking about the science. I'm not a scientist, you may be aware. I read English Literature. — James Delingpole

The fundamental thing about my personality is that I think I'm an imposter. — Sally Mann

Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Many students go through "imposter syndrome" as they try to assimilate into a professional culture. — Claude M. Steele

I succeeded at math, at least by the usual evaluation criteria: grades. Yet while I might have earned top marks in geometry and algebra, I was merely following memorized rules, plugging in numbers and dutifully crunching out answers by rote, with no real grasp of the significance of what I was doing or its usefulness in solving real-world problems. Worse, I knew the depth of my own ignorance, and I lived in fear that my lack of comprehension would be discovered and I would be exposed as an academic fraud
psychologists call this "imposter syndrome". — Jennifer Ouellette

Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to. — David Sedaris

Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit. — Damon Galgut

The hardest thing to do in politics is campaign as someone you aren't. People can spot an imposter from a mile away. — Chuck Todd

I walked into Aquagrill and began my experience of trying to help a new restaurant get off the ground. The owners were talented and lovely, but I felt like an imposter in all of our pre-opening meetings. I wanted to earn a living as an actor, and I wanted to pay off my student loans and maybe get some health insurance. — Amy Poehler

life is real,
and pain is real,
but death is an imposter, — Mary Oliver

Lo didn't have a splendid time either. He drank something Captain America gave him. Turns out the Cap imposter wasn't too noble, having spiked his booze with roofies. Nerds can be vicious too. — Krista Ritchie

I have a very vibrant imposter syndrome that goes on throughout most of my life, but nothing more than when someone has to put a hat on me or some kind of sash and go, 'We're giving you this certificate.' — Robin Ince

A political leader is necessarily an imposter since he believes in solving life's problems without asking its question. — Andre Malraux

So then, sometimes you are not out of ideas. Sometimes you are afraid of the idea you have. This idea, it is an imposter. It will ravage your life. Undo all your hard work. Destroy you. You're sure of it. At the least it will humiliate you.

Are you really not inspired or are you afraid of being the person who will write the thing that will come if you sit down with the idea you have? Who do you need to love you so much that you will hide this idea from you and act like it doesn't exist?

Which is to say, sometimes you need to be destroyed. The person you are is in the way and the person you will be is waiting on the other side of the shell that you call you. — Alexander Chee

At one point I found myself simultaneously cursing him and reaching for the phone to call him and tell him all about how my terrible husband had wronged me, as if there were two versions of him: the imposter who had just hurt me, and the real Tom, who would curse imposter Tom and make it all better. — Camille Pagan

A con artist, a total imposter, had played on my desires for the Cinderella dream and won a Monopoly trip to jail. I had hoped for uprightness, integrity, and potentially a relationship. Longing overshadowed the voice of conscience. — Debra Moffitt

Something was wrong. I felt a cold shiver. I didn't know what at first. Something was just ... wrong. I thought of Azrael for some reason, the Imposter, in that cowl, pretending he was Batman. It was that same sick feeling, a crazy kind of panic sparking deep beneath the surface, ready to erupt any second but held in check for the moment by the cold shiver getting colder by the minute.
My fingers were so cold ... against the warmth of Bruce's chest ... and then the realization came, right underneath those cold fingertips, I knew what was wrong.
"When did these heal?" I whispered. — Chris Dee

The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one! — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Imposter syndrome" wasn't coined as a term until the 1970s, but it's safe to assume women have always felt it: that nagging feeling that, even after you've just done something great, maybe you actually don't deserve the
praise. — Jessica Bennett

Maybe we all have imposter syndrome and perpetually feel like our real life is right around the corner, — Anna Kendrick

What is conditional love?

Conditional love is an oxymoron.
Conditional love is an imposter of love.
Conditional love is something other than love,
because you cannot conditionalize the un-conditional. — Donald L. Hicks

Reading 'Blood Will Out,' one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships. — Amity Gaige

And the characters are all invented as to their psychological evolution, though some are based upon those of real persons easily identifiable in that narrative. The drama is that of the actual events in its main development; but the vital incidents, or the vital uses of them, are the author's. At times he has enlarged them; at times he has paraphrased the accounts of the witnesses; in one instance he has frankly reproduced the words of the imposter as reported by one who heard Dylks's last address in — William Dean Howells

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter. — Emile M. Cioran

He who claims to be sure of something for which there is no evidence is a fool, and he who acts on the basis of what cannot be proved is an imposter. — Han Fei

A true friend loves you when you are being kind and when you are PMS-ing all over the place. They may not love what you are doing, or the dragon you are manifesting, but they love you. They know who the true you is, and even in the midst of your living as an imposter to your very self, a friend calls you up and out. A friend sees who you are meant to be and beckons you to rise to the higher version of yourself. — Stasi Eldredge

To attain "success" without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an imposter anxiously awaiting exposure. — Nathaniel Branden

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter? — Jonathan Safran Foer

A forced silence is a dangerous imposter, painting a canvas of safety while plotting our demise. — Jo Ann Fore

How good it had felt to be chosen by him, even in the midst of her horror at what was about to happen, at his discovering she was an imposter. It was like being in his arms after he rescued her from falling off the balcony, his fine woolen tunic against her cheek. So much heaven . . . but it could never be. Not for her. She was Avelina the servant, not Dorothea the earl's daughter. Dear heavenly saints. How she wanted him to love her, wanted his love. The pain was so great she doubled over. Lady — Melanie Dickerson

Who am i, really? What does any of it mean? i'm so afraid someday everyone will see that i'm just an imposter, a fake, among all the real and gorgeous godheads.
- — Catherynne M Valente

The Bible says that the devil is like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8). He comes in the darkness, and tries to frighten the children of God with his mighty roar. But when you switch on the light of the Word of God, you discover that there is no lion. There is only a mouse with a microphone! The devil is an imposter. Got it? — Reinhard Bonnke

If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not. — Aristophanes

Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people. — Augusten Burroughs

It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God and have credit among us. — Thomas Paine

I have pledged my word to help people on to truth while living and - will keep my word. Let them abuse and revile me. Let some call me a medium, and a Spiritualist, and others an imposter. The day will come when posterity will learn to know me better. — H. P. Blavatsky

Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone. — Maureen Brady

If you always feel like an imposter, you work harder, and that makes you better at your job. You've got to keep a level of variation; otherwise, you'll end up talking about nails and beauty products all the time. — Edie Campbell

Some wits, too, like oracles, deal in ambiguities, but not with equal success; for though ambiguities are the first excellence of an imposter, they are the last of a wit. — Edward Young

Technology, for instance, has become a kind of imposter for connection, making us believe we're connected when we're really not - at least not in the ways we need to be. — Brene Brown

There is no substitute for victory" Oscar Wilde
"I didn't say that--wouldn't have. Maybe it was Vince Lombardi" O.W.

"Not I, either. Try Count von Schlieffen" Vince Lombardi

"What's the big deal. I said it---I think. Doh!" Homer Simpson

"Imposter. 'Twas I." Homer the original (Greek guy) — James J. Bloom

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that at any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened The Fraud Police.

In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don't know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. — Neil Gaiman

Christ is God or He is the world's greatest liar and imposter. — Dorothy Day

I am in love with Joshua Miles, and it's bringing me to life. It's killing me. It's making me crazy. I think I love that part, too. It twists and loops around us, tying us to one another. It steals my thoughts and makes me think of him. It steals my hands and makes me touch his skin. It's brutal and kind and sharp and soft and warm and cold and freeing and imprisoning. It's an incognito imposter taking over my world, spreading itself like a disease. — Karina Halle

Self-doubt is common, but when it impedes you from attaining your goals it's time to take action. This book shows you how to move beyond feeling like an imposter so that you can achieve your full personal and professional potential. — Lois P Frankel

I've always felt like an imposter, in the whole, as a musician. — Nick Cave

It was difficult to not compare the two men as they stood together. Mr. Beaufort was certainly dashing, with his stylish golden hair and the flair of his dress. But seeing him next to Philip, his appeal faded greatly in my mind. For it was obvious, comparing them side by side, that Mr. Beaufort was like a set of paste jewels - flashy on the outside but really an imposter, with nothing of great value within. Philip, on the other hand, shone like a real gem - without even trying. His clothes were just as well-made as Mr. Beaufort's, but he wore them with a natural, athletic grace, and he didn't employ any extreme fashions to create an impression. He was purely elegant, naturally, without thought or planning, and upon looking at them, I found that I would infinitely prefer the real gem to the imposter. — Julianne Donaldson

I am regarded as a usurper, as an imposter and dilettante, because I do technically come from the wrong side of the tracks in musical terms. — Rufus Wainwright

Several recent authors have written of "the imposter phenomenon," describing the feeling of many apparently successful people that their success is undeserved and that one day people will unmask them for the frauds they are. — Harold S. Kushner

Like most other creatives, I struggle with self-sabotage, self-doubt, and feeling like an imposter more often than not. I struggle with expressing myself, because it does sometimes feel easier or safer not to. — Jeff Jarvis

This lifeless paper, cruel imposter, was the only to take her with him — Lauren Kate

Those who must control everything fear being vulnerable. Why? Because to be vulnerable opens one up to being shamed. All my life I used up my energies by always having to be guarded. This was a mighty waste of time and energy. The fear was that I would be exposed. And when exposed, all would see that I was flawed and defective as a person - an imposter. Control is a way to ensure that no one can ever shame us again. It involves controlling our own thoughts, expressions, feelings and actions. And it involves attempting to control other people's thoughts, feelings and actions. Control is the ultimate villain in destroying intimacy. We cannot share freely unless we are equal. When one person controls another, equality is ruptured. — John Bradshaw

Sow seed
but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth
let no imposter heap;
Weave robes
let not the idle wear;
Forge arms
in your defence to bear. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who are the slumlords in the Black community? The so-called Jews. ... Who is it sucking our blood in the Black community? A white imposter Arab and a white imposter Jew. — Louis Farrakhan

Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter. — Sam Altman

If we could believe that Jesus ... countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ... the conclusion would be irresistible ... that he was an imposter. — Thomas Jefferson

He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of drawing is an imposter. — William Blake

that imposter or phony feeling at work or school rarely has anything to do with our abilities, but has more to do with that fearful voice inside of us that scolds and asks, "Who do you think you are? — Brene Brown

Ladies and gentleman of Florida, this is the real Jeff Ament ... take a very good look because there's an imposter running around ... if someone comes up to you and says he's Jeff Ament and says he wants to take your pot or wants to take you to a strip club, it's probably not him. — Eddie Vedder

Chantal's only ruse ... was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy. — Georges Bernanos

There's nothing I want. There's nothing I can't do. I don't care about anything. No matter what, I am an imposter. An actor in my own life. — Michelle Hodkin