Less Confident Quotes & Sayings

I think you can train yourself to block out some of that pressure and replace it with confidence. It's about preparation, and the more prepared I am, the less pressure I feel and the more confident I am. As your confidence grows, it's only natural that the pressure you feel diminishes. — Aaron Rodgers

Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful. — Mark Victor Hansen

I'm less confident now than I've ever been. In this peculiar craft, confidence is something you spend a lifetime losing. I used to be frightened only one night a week but now I'm frightened of every performance. I mean really frightened. — Glenda Jackson

Be humbler about what [you] know, more confident about what's possible, and less afraid of things that don't matter. — Tim Urban

are less confident in a choice when they are asked to produce more arguments to support it — Daniel Kahneman

When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it. — Paul Theroux

Give parents the tools to nurture their child in infancy and the result will be a more self-confident and resilient individual for decades to come. It's far less expensive to coach parents to support children than to maintain prisons years later. — Nicholas D. Kristof

As you get older, you just lose that confidence and narcissism you have in your twenties. You realize you have less time on the planet, and you become cynical and less confident. — Rose Byrne

So here we are, a pack of Homo sapiens thinking that we know whether a person is female or male. Now that I've spent a few years researching and talking with people who fall under the transgender umbrella, I am confident saying that male/ female is not the only way to describe gender. The people I've come to know and love in the course of writing and photographing this book have helped me better understand the fluidity of gender and sex.

This lesson for me also reinforces what I've been writing about for years: once we get to know individuals who may be different from ourselves, it is less likely we will be wary of them. And maybe, just maybe, we will learn a little more about ourselves. — Susan Kuklin

You're cute when you're confident. And less when you're not. -John Green, Paper Towns — John Green

Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights. — Samuel Alito

I wasn't quick-witted or confident enough to play them at their cruel games. I'd feel the heat rush to my face as I flumbed for a rebuff, and I'd become highly aware of my heavy bottom lip, the position of my hands, of my entire body, and I'd end up looking silly and uneasy. I'd walk away hearing the other girls snigger, and it hurt. I didn't cry, but each time it changed something in me, deep down, shaping who I was and who I would become. Each time less confident yet stronger, more insular yet more self-contained. — Poppy Adams

Watson,' said he, 'if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways. — Richard Eyre

Chesterton says, in essence, that there is a dislocation of humility in our times. We have become more confident in who we are and less in what we believe. Our pride has moved us from the organ of conviction to the organ of ambition, when it is intended to be the other way around. In short, our confidence should be in our message and not in ourselves. — Ravi Zacharias

There is no way to overpower, outrun, or outsmart the mad dog of hopelessness because it's simply more vicious than I. The only thing to do is let it attack, go limp in its jaws, and be shaken. But I notice one promising pattern. If I play dead, it will eventually let me go. I start thinking of the dog of hopelessness as an obstacle that will reappear on every curve of the spiral staircase. He'll always be there waiting and snarling, but with every go-round, I'll be more confident and less fearful. Eventually, I'll learn the tricks that will allow me to breeze right past him. But the mad dog of hopelessness will always be there. My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I'll never be "over it," but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won't change, but I will. I keep climbing. — Glennon Doyle Melton

With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made. — Emma Donoghue

Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible. — Chris Matakas

I feel quite confident that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are growing 'dumber,' if what you really mean to say is 'less culturally literate.' — Terry Teachout

The older Kit gets, the less confident he feels judging other people as spouses or parents. These days, driving past the home of the Naked Hemp Society, he finds himself more curious than contemptuous about their easily ridiculed New Age ways. Why shouldn't they nurse their babies till age four? Why shouldn't they want to keep their children away from factory-farmed meats, from clothing soaked in fire-retardant chemicals, from dull-witted burned-out public school teachers whose tenure is all too easily approved? Why not frolic naked in the sprinkler
under the full moon, perhaps? Why not turn one's family into a small nurturing country protected by a virtual moat? — Julia Glass

Are you sure you want to come, Mat?" Rand asked.
Mat shrugged and affected a grin, not a very confident one. "Who could pass up a chance to see bloody Rhuidean?" Egwene raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh, pardon my language, Aes Sedai. I've heard you say as bad, and for less cause, I'll wager. — Robert Jordan

Instead, I realized that people are allowed to say whatever they want to me about my weight, but it's entirely up to me how much power I let those words have over me. I'm not obligated or required to accept negative commentary about my looks. I'm not less confident or honest for ignoring that it's there. I'm just confident enough to know it's not true. — Brittany Gibbons

Nixon's avowedly 'square' White House was, in fact, less cheesy than Clinton's Lite FM programming and more confident than the Kennedys' culturally craven collect-the-set approach. — Mark Steyn

I look back at my twenties and see that I was much less confident. — Katherine Heigl

In our time, no less than any other, traditionalists should live out their faiths and their ways in the world, confident that their instruction and example will make that world better and that people will be drawn to the spark. — Yuval Levin

I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority ... in less than 20 years. — Elon Musk

I drink during every show. I can't remember the last show I did completely sober. It works for me. I use it as a tool. It's like steroids are for athletes. I'm looser and more self-confident. If I drank less, I wouldn't have been on stage this long. — Doug Stanhope

I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect. — Robert De Niro

The more confident one becomes, the less one needs all people to be the same. — Jasmine Guy

Lucas hated the word. It was so easy to say, but it could honestly cut someone in half if they thought for a second that they were. Lucas was a confident man, but with his dyslexia, he never felt like he was smart. Fallon had never made him feel like he was less of a man; she always treated him like he was the smartest man in the room, until now. Now she had called him it. — Toni Aleo

I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions. — Thomas Jefferson

And next time we hear someone saying something like, 'We are pursuing this strategy because other strategies, when we had considered them, we concluded that, in terms of overall effectiveness, they were not sound strategies, which is why we enacted the one we are now embarked upon, which our enemies would like to see us fail, due to they hate freedom,' we will wait to see if the anchorperson cracks up, or chokes back a sob of disgust, and if he or she does not, we'll feel a bit insane, and therefore less confident, and therefore more passive. — George Saunders

Life cannot impose on you that which you aren't willing to accept. Don't let your emotions/feelings push you towards accepting less than what you truly deserve. Believe in yourself, be confident and stay focused. The best lies before and within you...it's all matter of your choice. Choose wisely! — Kemi Sogunle

Why love the healthy, confident, proud and happy?They don't need it. They take love as their rightful due, as the duty owed to them, they accept it indifferently and arrogantly. Other people's devotion is just another gift to them, a clasp to wear in the hair, a bangle for the wrist, not the whole meaning and happiness of their lives. Love can truly help only those not favoured by fate, the distressed and disadvantaged, those who are less than confident and not beautiful, the meek-minded. When love is given to them it makes up for what life has taken away. They alone know how to love and be loved in the right way, humbly and with gratitude. — Stefan Zweig

This does not mean that the profession is about to abandon Darwin forever or indorse [sic] my views publicly. The situation remains much as it was: the inner circles are full of doubt, but the public utterances are confident. The doubts may be greater now and the confidence less serene, but it will be a long time before the public is given the full dark picture. There is still need for a dissenting voice, a devil's advocate, a skeptical whistle-blower. — Norman Macbeth

She felt a little betrayed and sad, but presently a moving object came into sight. It was a huge horse-chestnut tree in full bloom bound for the Champs Elysees, strapped now into a long truck and simply shaking with laughter - like a lovely person in an undignified position yet confident none the less of being lovely. Looking at it with fascination, Rosemary identified herself with it, and laughed cheerfully with it, and everything all at once seemed gorgeous. — F Scott Fitzgerald

We now concern ourselves with a labor less spectacular but nevertheless not unrewarding: that of making the terrain for these majestic moral edifices level and firm enough to be built upon; for under this ground there are all sorts of passageways, such as moles might have dug, left over from reason's vain but confident treasure hunting, that make every building insecure. (A319/B377) — Immanuel Kant

I just have to be confident and actually try to do less, not try to do more. — Andre Ethier

Even if you didn't lose your job, if you're one of the two-thirds of Ontarians who don't have a pension, you lost savings. Even if you've earned most of that back now, you are a changed person. You are less secure, less confident. And I understand that. — Dalton McGuinty

And I have always had an especially great desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see my way clearly in my actions, and to go forward with confidence in this life. It is true that, so long as I merely considered the customs of other men, I found hardly anything there about which to be confident, and that I noticed there was about as much diversity as I had previously found among the opinions of philosophers. Thus the greatest profit I derived from this was that, on seeing many things that, although they seem to us very extravagant and ridiculous, do not cease to be commonly accepted and approved among other great peoples, I learned not to believe anything too firmly of which I had been persuaded only by example and custom; and thus I little by little freed myself from many errors that can darken our natural light and render us less able to listen to reason. — Rene Descartes

It's less so now, but sometimes, when I had a serious thought, I would almost say it in a goofy way--like, I'd take on a weird voice so I'd be like (in a weird voice), 'You know, I think women have to be able to get access to free abortions!' It was this strange defense mechanism. But as I've become more confident, I'm more comfortable having a serious thought and owning it as a serious thought. — Lena Dunham

I am less blindly confident than I once was, for I have been learning a truer estimate of myself, my failings and limitations, in these dark days. I have learnt to hope that if there be a Judgment Day of some kind, God will not see us with our own eyes, nor judge us as we judge ourselves. — Vera Brittain

If every mother in the United States could wrap her mind around her true value as a woman and mother, her life would never be the same. We would wake up every morning excited for the day rather feeling as though we'd been hit by a truck during the night. We would talk differently to our kids, fret less about our husbands' annoying habits, and speak with greater tenderness and clarity. We would find more contentment in our relationships, let means remarks roll off our backs, and leave work feeling confident in the job we performed. And best of all - we wouldn't obsess about our weight (can you imagine?), physical fitness, or what kind of home we live in. We would live a kinda of home we live in. We would live free from superficial needs because we would know deep in our hearts what we need and more importantly, what we don't need. Each of us would live a life of extraordinary freedom. — Meg Meeker

It seemed ... that intelligence wasn't as pure and unalterable a characteristic as people believed. Being intelligent was like being good: you could be virtuous in one person's company and yet wicked in another's. You could be intelligent with one person and stupid with another. It was partly to do with confidence ... In a way she had been more confident when she had been eighteen and foolish. At twenty-three, with Michael, she felt less confident and therefore less intelligent. — Julian Barnes

The people who defend their initial reactions the most are highly-confident, educated people. If a smart person has a strong initial reaction to something, it is very difficult for him to change his mind. Why? He feels that he is smart, which gives him confidence in his choices. Instead of doubting himself, he will defend his position, possibly with a compelling argument. A person who is not as confident in his intellectual ability will not have the same confidence level and will keep more of an open mind. The person with less confidence thinks he has something to learn, whereas the person with hubris thinks he has something to teach. — Michael Angelo Costa

I think I'm much less self confident today. I actually went through a quite painful period because of that thinking that I was completely hopeless. But I think that's something that we all go through at various times of our lives and it was quite a sustained thing with me. — Hugo Weaving

People are perfectly capable of giving love even if they feel less confident about themselves. — Anna Agoncillo

I've become more confident as I have got older. I care less what others think. — Helen McCrory

In a longitudinal study of college students, freshmen were evaluated for fixed mindsets or growth mindsets and then followed across their four years of enrollment. When the students with fixed mindsets encountered academic challenges such as daunting projects or low grades, they gave up, while the students with growth mindsets responded by working harder or trying new strategies. Rather than strengthening their skills and toughening their resolve, four years of college left the students with fixed mindsets feeling less confident. The feelings they most associated with school were distress, shame, and upset. Those with growth mindsets performed better in school overall and, at graduation time, they reported feeling confident, determined, enthusiastic, inspired, and strong. — Meg Jay

For too long some of our schools have taught too many subjects as subsets of dogmatic commitments ... Too often, education made our students less flexible- confident to the point of arrogance that they now had all the answers- rather than more flexible- humble in their lifelong openness to new questions and new responses. An important goal of quality education is to equip each generation to participate effectively in what has been called 'the great conversation' of our times. This means, on one hand, being unafraid of controversy. But, on the other hand, it also means being sensitive to the values and outlooks of others. — His Highness The Aga Khan

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Children are just different from one another, especially in temperament. Some are shy, others bold; some active, others quiet; some confident, others less so. Respect for individual differences is in my view the cornerstone of good parent-child relationships. — Sandra Scarr

With a fractured sense of self, we come to depend on what people feed back to us - often mediated through social networks - not what we are. We have complex identities but may become less able to act as a subject - confident in what we really are. — Geoff Mulgan

Confidence doesn't come from the inside out. It moves from the outside in. People feel less anxious
and more confident
on the inside when they can point to things they have done well on the outside. Fake confidence comes from stuffing our self-doubt. Empty confidence comes from parental platitudes on our lunch hour. Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult. Whether we are talking about love or work, the confidence that overrides insecurity comes from experience. There is no other way. — Meg Jay

How strange," she said, "not to recognize one's own face."
"You have no cause for complaint," Grant said huskily. Even bruised and pale and ravaged, her face was incomparable.
"Do you think so?" She stared into the looking glass without a trace of self-satisfactionshe had displayed at the ball. *That* Vivien had had no doubt of her many attractions. This woman was far less confident.
"Everyone thinks so. You're known as one of the great beauties of London."
"I don't see why." Catching his skeptical expression, she added, "Truly, I'm not fishing for compliments, it's just... seems a very ordinary face." She produced a comical, clownish expression, like a child experimenting with her reflection. A shaken laugh escaped her. "It doesn't seem to belong to me. — Lisa Kleypas

Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he felt no need to explain himself. (As a young man during the French and Indian war he had been more outspoken, but he learned from experience to allow his sheer presence to speak for itself.) While less confident men blathered on, he remained silent, thereby making himself a vessel into which admirers for their fondest convictions, becoming a kind of receptacle for diverse aspirations that magically came together in one man. — Joseph J. Ellis

The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit ... people understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less ... coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing. — Nigel Lawson

Here's a tip: you're cute when you're confident. And less when you're not. — John Green

If you're like most people, you'll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then - somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale - you'll see a need to fully commit to something that's a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to 'cast your whole vote,' you're reasonably confident you're not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you're on is really yours, and not someone else's? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way - holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome - you're less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger." Yikes! — Marina Keegan

But those misgivings come less from the resulting loss of familial memories than because it gave Lorelai the working-class skills to escape inherited class obligations and to make her own way in the world. That's one reason why Lorelai is powerful and fearless in ways Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Gilmore are not. She's self-confident enough to accept those things she can't control and to rely upon the kindness of strangers. — Jennifer Crusie

Through the practice of yoga, you come to feel confident and develop a feeling of wholeness and completeness; you are not likely to feel deprived or 'less than.' People steal because they feel deprived. They try to make up for their deficits by depriving others. — Sharon Gannon

People are more motivated and confident when they believe they have more control over their environment. "People with low-power mindsets do less than they otherwise could," said one motivation researcher (Rigoglioso, 2008). Inviting students to have a voice in classroom decisions - where they sit, what day a test takes place, in what order units are studied, or even where a plant should be placed in the classroom - can help them develop that greater sense of control. An added benefit to this strategy could be fewer discipline issues. William Glasser suggests that power is a key need of students, and that 95% of classroom management problems happen because students are trying to fulfill that need (Ryan & Cooper, 2008, p. 85). — Larry Ferlazzo

Fear nothing but what thy industry may prevent; be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat; it is no less folly to fear what is impossible to be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility to be deprived. — Francis Quarles

The closer he was the less confident I was. — Shannon A. Thompson

I think the good news for me in life is that I really trust my instincts when I come to work. Maybe less in life and in love, but in work and in comedic beats, I feel pretty confident. — Ari Graynor

Put another way, to be more confident you need to give a whole lot less of a shit about what other people think of you. Confidence is not something you feel or possess; it's something others use to describe what they see when they look at you. — Augusten Burroughs

It's hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I'm sad to say that this method works. If you don't give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do. — Alan Cumming

Religion," [some] argue, "may be all right for certain emotional people, but you can't beat a man who believes in himself." But this self-confident generation has produced more alcoholics, more dope addicts, more criminals, more wars, more broken homes, more assaults, more embezzlements, more murders, and more suicides than any other generation that ever lived. It is time for all of us to take stock of our failures, blunders, and costly mistakes. It is about time that we put less confidence in ourselves and more trust and faith in God. — Billy Graham

They were confident and cunning. They weren't mucking around looking for nuclear weapon secret sloppy seconds in America. They could care less about America. They were busy with the whole world domination thing. — Ira Levin

Happiness increases and decreases depending on the level of power one has. When you have more power, more control on your life, you feel more happy and self-confident, as your power decreases and the control of your life slips away, you get less and less happy and when you no longer have any power to rely on you reach depression and despair. This is the point where your power meter has hit 0. You now need to rely on the good favors of others to live. For those who believe in the power of god, it sustains them through this dark hour. For those who do not believe, they think they have reached the end and may take their lives. That's why all conflict in life is about power and many lose life in its pursuit. Power is life itself. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Jeddah is the natural cultural capital, an old fortified port on the Red Sea, the home of merchants and immigrants. Jeddah is historic, confident, less threatened by new ideas. Riyadh today is bible-belt fierce, and brash. — Patrick Tom Notestine

The study of Marxism outside of revolutionary struggle can form library rats, but not revolutionaries. Participation in the revolutionary struggle without the study of Marxism will inevitably be filled with hazards, be less confident, and turn out to be half-blind. — Joshua Rubenstein

I stared at my lap. I wished I were confident, I wished I were brave. I wished he didn't scare me. But the more he spoke the less I wanted to look away, and the more I did. — Rose Fall

When you become confident of what you deserve , dont allow yourself to settle for less. The power lies in YOU because no one else can be YOU."

DREAM , WORK AND ACHIEVE !!! — Dipika Agarwal

Sleep makes people calmer, more alert, less fearful - just plain happier, or so I see around me and in me. I am sure that if this great nation were to concentrate on getting more sleep, we would be a happier, more confident people, and that by itself would be a major achievement. — Ben Stein

Because confidence is not the presence of anything at all. Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking. Put another way, to be more confident you need to give a whole lot less of a shit about what other people think of you. Confidence is not something you feel or possess; it's something others use to describe what they see when they look at you. The experience others call confidence you experience as being at ease, fully yourself, and not self-conscious but rather task conscious. When — Augusten Burroughs

Higher unemployment generally bodes well for franchising. People are looking for a new opportunity, and people who have jobs are a little less confident they'll always have a job. — Fred DeLuca

To be more confident you need to give a whole lot less of a shit about that other people think of you. — Augusten Burroughs

I was once told that I had become too confident and that it made me less likeable. Many successful people will get this at some point, because the people who haven't followed a similar path can be threatened by someone who has and is unabashed about it. — Aimee Mullins

A man's voice was saying, "Odette seems a little off tonight."
"You think?" answered a woman.
"Less confident than last night's," said the man. "I wonder if she's injured." A loud put-upon sigh. "Not to mention that the swans sound more like a herd of elephants."
Oh, come on, Grigori wanted to say: You spoiled, spoiled people. The dancer was wonderful, just like the swan-girls, doing their best to deliver them magnificence. If she was "slightly off", it was nothing Grigori had been able to notice. These people - himself included - were all so thoroughly indulged, could they not simply accept the wonder of it, sitting in this lush, gilded theater while a live orchestra accompanied so much physical exquisiteness? And this man thought he had the right to be disappointed! That these people expected so much, that they could expect that much, and not be ashamed of their petty disappointments. — Daphne Kalotay

Absolutely everybody wants to be liked (law 1).

Everyone feels different inside (less confident, less able, etc.) from how they infer other people to feel (law 2).

Few honest and courageous people who have achieved anything of real value in life do not feel a fraud much of the time (law 3).

Acceptance of these three 'laws' alone would save an awful lot of people an awful lot of grief! — David Smail

Empowered Women 101: A confident woman doesn't have to talk a man into loving her. He either loves her completely, not enough or not at all. Regardless, she doesn't settle for less than she deserves. — Shannon L. Alder

Entrepreneurs are perennially short on cash, so they tend to hire less expensive and less experienced team members. Yet most founders are overworked, so they have no time and budget for coaching and training. Team members not confident in their roles lose motivation quickly. — Martin Zwilling

When we dislike someone, or feel threatened by someone, the natural tendency is to focus on something we dislike about the person, something that irritates us. Unfortunately, when we do this
instead of seeing the deeper beauty of the person and giving them energy
we take energy away and actually do them harm. All they know is that they suddenly feel less beautiful and less confident, and it is because we sapped their energy. — James Redfield