Negative thinking is a natural part of human psychology, often serving as the shadow that contrasts our brighter thoughts. Exploring negative thinking can provide insight into resilience, growth, and self-awareness. This piece curates a selection of quotes to delve into the many facets of negative thinking, from its challenges to the resilience it evokes. With ten themes and twelve quotes per theme, readers will gain varied perspectives on negativity and how it impacts the psyche.
Quotes on Self-Doubt
"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will." - Suzy Kassem
"When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt." - Honore de Balzac
"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." - William Shakespeare
"Doubt is the origin of wisdom." - Rene Descartes
"He who hesitates is lost." - Joseph Addison
"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath
"Your doubt can be destructive, use it cautiously." - Anonymous
"Doubt can only be removed by action." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." - Khalil Gibran
"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." - William James
"Doubt whom you will, but never yourself." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot." - Mark Twain
Overcoming Negative Quotes
"Our greatest glory is not in falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Confucius
"You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you." - Dan Millman
"Positive anything is better than negative nothing." - Elbert Hubbard
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." - Albert Einstein
"Within our dreams and aspirations, we find our opportunities." - Sugar Ray Leonard
"The best way to gain self-confidence is to do what you are afraid to do." - Swati Sharma
"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
"Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight." - Benjamin Franklin
"Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped." - African Proverb
"A problem is a chance for you to do your best." - Duke Ellington
"Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power." - Shirley MacLaine
"What we think, we become." - Buddha
Quotes on Fear of Failure
"Failure is another stepping stone to greatness." - Oprah Winfrey
"Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something." - Frederick W. Smith
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." - Henry Ford
"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." - Michael Jordan
"Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you." - Rob Liano
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." - Robert F. Kennedy
"Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable." - Coco Chanel
"Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement." - C.S. Lewis
"When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel." - Eloise Ristad
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas A. Edison
"The only real failure is the failure to try." - George Clooney
"Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever." - Lance Armstrong
Dealing with Negative People Quotes
"Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions." - Mark Twain
"Letting go of toxic people in your life is a big step in loving yourself." - Hussein Nishah
"You cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang with negative people." - Joel Osteen
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Don't let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out." - Robert Tew
"Don't let negative people drag you down to their level." - Anonymous
"Negativity is the enemy of creativity." - David Lynch
"We cannot control the behavior of others, but we can always choose how we respond to it." - Anonymous
"Surround yourself with positive people, and you'll have a positive outlook." - Anonymous
"People who repeatedly attack your confidence and self-esteem are quite aware of your potential, even if you are not." - Wayne Gerard Trotman
"What other people think of you is not your business." - Anonymous
"A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you." - Joyce Meyer
Quotes on Overthinking
"Overthinking—the art of creating problems that weren't even there." - Anonymous
"Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday." - Brian Tracy
"Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis." - Robert Herjavec
"Stop overthinking, you can't control everything, just let it be." - Jasmine Alvarez
"Overthinking is parasitic; it's viral; it's deadly, even." - Genereux Philip
"The more I think about it, the more I realize overthinking isn't the real problem. The real problem is that we're trying to control the future." - Anonymous
"Overthinking is the biggest cause of our unhappiness. Keep your mind off things that don't help you." - Anonymous
"Don't get too deep, it leads to overthinking, and overthinking leads to problems that don't even exist in the first place." - Jayson Engay
"Stop overthinking. Whatever happens, happens." - Anonymous
"Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere." - Glenn Turner
"Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will." - W. Clement Stone
"Fears are educated into us, and they can, if we wish, be educated out." - Karl Augustus Menninger
Quotes on Criticism
"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." - Aristotle
"To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Hubbard
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do." - Benjamin Franklin
"The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment." - Elbert Hubbard
"Criticism is the disapproval of people, not for having faults, but for having faults different from your own." - Anonymous
"Thoughtful criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger." - Franklin P. Jones
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger." - Franklin P. Jones
"People have the right to criticize you, but you have the right to ignore them." - Anonymous
"Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots." - Frank A. Clark
"He who throws dirt always loses ground." - Anonymous
"Every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration. Constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought." - Margaret Chase Smith
Inspirational Quotes for Negative Situations
"When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." - Alexander Graham Bell
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Believe you can and you're halfway there." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Fall seven times, stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." - William James
"If you're going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
"You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." - Rabindranath Tagore
"Sometimes you just have to throw on a crown and remind them who they’re dealing with." - Anonymous
"The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible." - Charles Kingsleigh
"Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try." - John F. Kennedy
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." - Haruki Murakami
"The best way out is always through." - Robert Frost
Quotes About Negative Energy
"Negative people need drama like they need oxygen. Stay positive, it'll take their breath away." - Anonymous
"Surround yourself with positive people who will support you when it rains, not just when it shines." - Anonymous
"Energy flows where attention goes." - Michael Beckwith
"Be the energy you want to attract." - Anonymous
"There's nothing wrong with having a bad day; there's everything wrong with making others live your bad day with you." - Annae White
"It's easy to be negative and unenthusiastic; it's easy to be positive and enthusiastic." - Anonymous
"Don't let the negativity given to you by the world disempower you. Instead, give to yourself that which empowers you." - Les Brown
"Avoid negative people, for they are the greatest destroyers of self-confidence and self-esteem. Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you." - Auliq Ice
"You are not responsible for what your friends do, but you are responsible for the company you keep." - Anonymous
"Positive energy evokes more energy, more initiative, and more happiness." - Anonymous
"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow." - Helen Keller
"Your energy introduces you before you even speak." - Anonymous
Quotes on Negative Self-Talk
"Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love." - Brene Brown
"Change your self-talk and change your world." - Anonymous
"Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening." - Lisa M. Hayes
"Your mind is a powerful thing. When you fill it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change." - Anonymous
"The way you speak to yourself matters." - Anonymous
"Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts." - Allan Lokos
"You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens." - Louise L. Hay
"Self-esteem is made up primarily of two things: feeling lovable and feeling capable." - Jack Canfield
"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not." - Anonymous
"Don't let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries." - Astrid Alauda
"Your self-worth is determined by you. You don’t have to depend on someone telling you who you are." - Beyonce
"You don't have to be positive all the time. It's perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared, and anxious. Having feelings doesn't make you a negative person. It makes you human." - Lori Deschene
Resilience Quotes in Adversity
"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance." - Jodi Picoult
"Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient." - Steve Maraboli
"Success is not the absence of failure; it's the persistence through failure." - Aisha Tyler
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become." - Carl Jung
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." - Arthur Ashe
"Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." - J.K. Rowling
"Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement." - Albert Camus
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Confucius
"Embrace the glorious mess that you are." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." - Khalil Gibran
"Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up." - Mary Holloway
"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" - Mary Anne Radmacher
Final words
Negative thinking is an inevitable part of life, but as these quotes demonstrate, it doesn't have to be a detrimental one. By addressing self-doubt, criticism, and fear of failure, we can transform negative energy into strength and resilience. Embracing positive thought processes can lead to personal growth and a more meaningful, fulfilled existence. Whether it's through choosing to associate with positive individuals or transforming negative self-talk, we hold the power to redefine negativity in our lives. Let these insights remind you of your capacity to rise, adapt, and shine even in the face of adversity.
