Quotes about depression
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“My thoughts travelled more to other countries, and I watched and studied, as far as I could in goal, the world situation in the grip of the great depression. I lead as many books as I could find on the subject, and the more I read the more fascinated I grew. India with her problems and struggles became just a part of this mighty world drama, of the great struggle of political and economic forces that was going on everywhere, nationally and internationally. In that struggle my own sympathies went increasingly towards the communist side.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

Books, World, Travel, Problem

“The Soviet Union in Europe and Asia stands today a continuing challenge to the tottering capitalism of the western world. While trade depression and slump and unemployment and repeated crises paralyse capitalism, and the old order gasps for breath, the Soviet Union is a land full of hope and energy and enthusiasm, feverishly building away and establishing the socialist order. And this abounding youth and life, and the success the Soviet Union has already achieved, are impressing and attracting thinking people all over the world.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Life, People, Youth, World

“I used to be a hide-bound Tory simply for traditional and antiquarian reasons—and because I had never done any real thinking on civics and industry and the future. The depression—and its concomitant publicisation of industrial, financial, and governmental problems—jolted me out of my lethargy and led me to reëxamine the facts of history in the light of unsentimental scientific analysis; and it was not long before I realised what an ass I had been. The liberals at whom I used to laugh were the ones who were right—for they were living in the present while I had been living in the past. They had been using science while I had been using romantic antiquarianism. At last I began to recognise something of the way in which capitalism works—always piling up concentrated wealth and impoverishing the bulk of the population until the strain becomes so intolerable as to force artificial reform.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Jennie K. Plaiser (8 July 1936), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 564
Non-Fiction, Letters

Way, History, Problem, Thinking

“My father, Hugh Everett, III, author of the Many Worlds Theory, was a quiet man during the eighteen or so years I shared a house with him. Turns out he was depressed over a sad childhood and then being dismissed as a kook, only later - too late - to be recognized as a genius.”

Hugh Everett (1930–1982) American physicist, author of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

Mark Oliver Everett, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, ISBN 978-0-316-02787-8, pg 11

World, Sadness, Childhood, Housing

“Human beings free of debt, insecurity, and fear become much more amiable. With no one out to sell anyone anything or to deprive another of possessions or money, the basis for unhealthy human aggression is outgrown. People no longer are burdened by the nagging concerns that consume so much attention such as mortgages, health care costs, education fees, fire insurance, economic recession or depression, the loss of jobs, and taxes. With the elimination of these burdens and the removal of the conditions that create feelings of envy, greed, and competition, people’s lives would be far more meaningful.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 76

Money, People, Health, Education

“I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence. Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997) - Introduction

Life, Books, Feeling, Thinking

“Confusion, anger, depression, violence, and conflict arise when humans forget who they are. Yet how easy it is to remember the truth and thus return home: I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 4

Life, Truth, Home, Sense

“I wanted to tell people, "My depression is acting up today" as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

People

“There were impressive stone paths and benches and even a statue of an angel that gave Simon nervous fits, since he was a Doctor Who fan. The angel wasn’t weeping, exactly, but it looked too depressed for Simon’s liking.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Angels

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

People, Time, Dependency

“Wallowing was for elephants, depressing people and depressing elephants”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

People

“Danish. I’d come to believe there was no food more depressing than Danish, a pastry that seemed stale upon arrival.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Food

“These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Joy

“Sometimes, I get so consumed by depression that it is hard to believe that the whole world doesn't stop and suffer with me.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

World, Suffering

“I will do my best to dodge tonight's depression
Hide in sleep
Damage myself in dreams
Wake up older, slightly more used.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

Dreams, Sleep

“And an inky-colored despair of rejection enveloped me like the black tortilla of depression around a pain burrito.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: Bite Me

Pain, Color, Despair

“I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Fear, Parting, Depressing

“Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Learning, Help

“Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.”

Barbara Kingsolver Pigs in Heaven

Source: Pigs in Heaven

Money, People, Thinking, Time

“My God, I could raise a family of six children and hold down a full-time job with all the energy I expend on depression!”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

God, Children, Family, Time

“No one should know his entire fate. It's too dangerous and too depressing. Just keep going, do your best, and hope it's good enough. That's all any of us can do.”

Rick Riordan book Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

Fate, Hope

“Why should women have to fit into child sizes in order to be considered desirable? That is both sick and depressing.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble

Women

“I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Love, Happiness, Hope, Loss

“If you're fighting moodiness and depression you don't want to hang around a bunch of other moody and depressed people.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

People, Fight

“sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Help

“With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.”

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Source: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Truth, Madness

“So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

People

“i find nothing more depressing than optimism.”

Paul Fussell (1924–2012) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Optimism

“My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

People

“His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Lovers, Nostalgia

“Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

People, Depressing

“Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Feeling, Drawing

“Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Depressing

“Depression starts slow.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Love, Faith, Confidence, Depressing

“I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Country

“Republicans don't like people to talk about depressions. You can hardly blame them for that. You remember the old saying: Don't talk about rope in the house where somebody has been hanged.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

People, Housing

“So why am I depressed? That's the million-dollar question, baby, the Tootsie Roll question; not even the owl knows the answer to that one. I don't know either. All I know is the chronology.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Question, Baby

“Perspective is the cure for depression.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

“Because I'm not, in fact, depressed, Prozac makes me manic and numb - one of the reasons I slice my arm in the first place is that I'm coked to the gills on something utterly wrong for what I have.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

War, Depressing

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), III
Context: This general unawareness of what depression is really like was apparent most recently in the matter of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer and survivor of Auschwitz who, at the age of sixty-seven, hurled himself down a stairwell in Turin in 1987. Since my own involvement with the illness, I had been more than ordinarily interested in Levi’s death, and so, late in 1988, when I read an account in The New York Times about a symposium on the writer and his work held at New York University, I was fascinated but, finally, appalled. For, according to the article, many of the participants, worldly writers and scholars, seemed mystified by Levi’s suicide, mystified and disappointed. It was as if this man whom they had all so greatly admired, and who had endured so much at the hands of the Nazis — a man of exemplary resilience and courage — had by his suicide demonstrated a frailty, a crumbling of character they were loath to accept. In the face of a terrible absolute — self-destruction — their reaction was helplessness and (the reader could not avoid it) a touch of shame.
My annoyance over all this was so intense that I was prompted to write a short piece for the op-ed page of the Times. The argument I put forth was fairly straightforward: the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time — and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases — most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.

Pain, Suffering, Depressing

“The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.”

Julia Kristeva (1941) Bulgarian-French philosopher, psychoanalyst & academic

Personality

“Depression is boring, I think
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Thinking, Light

“Dear Depression, please keep your distance. Don’t be nasty. Find some other person with more reason than me to look in the mirror and say: “What a pointless existence.” Whether you like it or not, I know how to defeat you. You’re wasting your time.”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Time, Personality

“The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Communication

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Depressing

“Your explanation depresses me,"" I said.
""Your nonsense depresses me,"" said Simple.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

“The Lord's way builds individual self esteem and develops and heals the dignity of the individual, whereas the world's way depresses the individual's view of himself and causes deep resentment”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

World, Way

“Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Love, Despair

“Depressed people cannot lead a revolution because depressed people can barely manage to get out of bed and put on their shoes and socks.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

People, Shoe

“On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor.”

Robert M. Sapolsky book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Thinking

“I don't want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“Sometimes I wish I had an easy answer for why I'm depressed.”

Ned Vizzini (1981–2013) American writer

“But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Money, Business, Loss

“To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Help, Anger

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.”

Robert M. Sapolsky book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Strong

“I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Loneliness, Cute, Romantic, For Her

“Even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Happiness, Depressing

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

Misattributed <br class="br">Source: thought to be Gibson's words as a result of Twitter attribution decay, despite repeated disavowals. https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144940064990961664 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941061578559488 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941447936884736 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/171091202161131520. The source, according to Gibson, is Steven Winterburn https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/119133581598666752 https://twitter.com/5tevenw/status/73091190475595776. However, Steven Winterburn is NOT the original creator of that quote. The original quote is the creation of Twitter account holder "@debihope" https://twitter.com/debihope?lang=en. See research by quoteinvestigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/25/diagnose/.

Powerful

“Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

People, Way, Nature

“You don’t think in depression that you’ve put on a grey veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you’re seeing truly.”

Andrew Solomon (1963) American journalist

Source: The Noonday Demon

Happiness, World, Mood, Thinking

“I can't join a gym! I'm depressed, not suicidal!”

Meg Cabot The Boy Next Door

Source: The Boy Next Door

Suicide

“I was getting depressed. My life wasn't going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Life, Drink, Light, Dead

“Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.”

Karen Horney (1885–1952) American-German psychoanalyst

Depressing

“Hemingway has his classic moment in "The Sun Also Rises" when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, "Gradually, then suddenly." That's how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you're gonna live.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Variant: There is a classic moment in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” When someone asks how I lost my mind, that’s all I can say too.
Source: Prozac Nation

Sun

“I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Feeling, Thinking

“We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

War