Quotes about depression
page 5

“Depression is a democratic sickness: it afflicts everyone.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

cited in TV Ippocrate, Rai News, 13 giugno 2010.
2000s - 2010s

“First contact with occult, magical and enchanting forces. One of his best friends, a very intelligent and affectionate pink cockatoo, died in the night of 5 January. It was a terrible shock for Max when he found the dead bird in the morning, at the same moment as his father told him of the birth of his sister, Loni. The boy's consternation was so great that he fainted. In his imagination, he linked the two events and made the baby responsible for extinguishing the bird's life. A series of psychological crises and depressions followed. A dangerous amalgamation of birds and human beings became firmly established in his mind and later found expression in his paintings and drawings.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies', Max Ernst; as cited in 'Room 7, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to a childhood experience in 1906, when Max Ernst was c. 15 years old
posthumous

Life, Imagination, Intelligence, Boy

“Some economists believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s was aggravated by bad monetary policy and lack of American leadership. Britain was too weak to maintain an open international economy, and the United States was not living up to its new responsibilities.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 7, Globalization and Interdependence, p. 218.

“Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffected voice, his sentimentality, his defiant individualism. I found myself in the stories he told… I learned from Saroyan that you do not have to live in some great city — in New York or Paris — in order to write… When I was a student at Stanford, a generation ago, the name of William Saroyan was never mentioned by any professor in the English Department. William Saroyan apparently was not considered a major American talent. Instead, we undergraduates set about the business of psychoanalyzing Hamlet and deconstructing Lolita. In my mind Saroyan belongs with John Steinbeck, a fellow small town Californian and of the same generation. He belongs with Thornton Wilder, with those writers whose aching love of America was formed by the Depression and the shadow of war. … Saroyan's prose is as plain as it is strong. He talks about the pleasure of drinking water from a hose on a summer afternoon in California's Central Valley, and he holds you with the pure line. My favorite is his novel The Human Comedy… In 1943, The Human Comedy became an MGM movie starring Mickey Rooney, but I always imagined Homer Macaulay as a darker, more soulful boy, someone who looked very much like a young William Saroyan…”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

"Time Of Our Lives" (26 May 1997) http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_6.html

Love, War, Pleasure, Soul

“Obama-Clinton economic policies have produced 1.2 percent economic growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression. Now, this is, like, unbelievable — 1.2. Do you know China goes to 7 percent or 8 percent, it's like a national catastrophe. Now, what they do is they cut their currency. They devalue their currency, and big league, and then all of our businesses continue to be drained out of the United States. Our money, our jobs. They make our product, they sell our product to us. No tax, no nothing, you devalue — see devaluing is sort of cheating.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Money, Business, Cheating

“The people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part V, Chapter XIX, The Reservoir Plan and Tradition, p. 234 (See also; Karl Marx, Capital)
Storage and Stability (1937)

People, Nature

“Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — NATO. But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U. S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

The Republican Party is dead, May 8, 2016, latimes.com, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-republicans-in-exile-20160508-story.html,

War, World, History, Success

“A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

First published in the "Movie Answer Man" column (18 September 2005) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/ANSWERMAN/509180304/1023

People, Tree

“when a class of men is publicly depressed and harassed (as under Muslim rule)… it merely contents itself with dragging on an animal existence. The Hindus could not be expected to produce the utmost of what they were capable… Amidst such social conditions, the human hand and the human mind cannot achieve their best; the human soul cannot soar to its highest pitch.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzeb, p.153. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Men, Soul, Animals

“This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed —
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

London: A Poem (1738) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/london2.html, lines 176–177

Truth

“I think everybody, no matter how rich or poor, how young or old, has a phase in his life when he's depressive. It's reality. Not a lot of people want to talk about it. Most people rather hide that fact, but it's just one of the facts of life that absolutely fascinates me.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

NYROCK: Interview with Chris Cornell, October 1, 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20030919022841/http://www.nyrock.com/interviews/1999/cornell_int.asp, On depression and suicide

Life, People, Thinking, Reality

“As I feel a need to speak out frankly, I cannot hide from you that I am overcome by a feeling of great care, depression, a "je ne sais quoi" of discouragement and despair more than I can tell.
I take it so much to heart that I do not get on better with people in general; it quite worries me because on it depends so much my success in carrying out my work.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Autumn 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 328) p. 21 1880s, 1883

People, Feeling, Success, Heart

“The explanation of this book is that the 1929 depression was so wide, so deep, and so long because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and U. S. unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it by discharging five functions:(1) maintaining a relatively open market for distress goods;
(2) providing countercyclical, or at least stable, long term lending;
(3) policing a relatively stable system of exchange rates;
(4) ensuring the coordination of macroeconomic policies;
(5) acting as a lender of last resort by discounting or otherwise providing liquidity in financial crisis.”

Charles P. Kindleberger (1910–2003) American economic historian

The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (2nd ed., 1986), Ch. 14 : An Explanation of the 1929 Depression

Books

“It was on account of past depression, and in spite of present more encouraging conditions, that I have assembled an Agricultural Conference made up of those who are representative of this great industry in both its operating and economic sides. Everyone knows that the great need of the farmers is markets. The country is not suffering on the side of production. Almost the entire difficulty is on the side of distribution. This reaches back, of course, to unit costs and diversification, and many allied subjects. It is exceedingly intricate, for our domestic and foreign trade, transportation and banking, and in fact our entire economic system, are closely related to it. In time for action at this session, I hope to report to the Congress such legislative remedies as the conference may recommend. An appropriation should be made to defray their necessary expenses.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Hope, Suffering, Time, Past

“When you hear the name “Babur”, both sides – Hindus and Muslims – get excited. In Bombay you will get a Hindu backlash, in Hyderabad a Muslim backlash. We live in an insane country. We wouldn’t have to worry about the Christians or the Parsis and probably not the Buddhists. Very, very depressing.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

Country

“You and you alone are the sole arbiter of the meaning in your life. The second you turn to someone and say, “What does life mean?” or, “What should my life mean?” you have slipped into a mind-set that courts inauthenticity and depression. The second you agree with someone simply because of her position or reputation, whether that someone is a guru, author, cleric, parent, politician, general, or elder, you fall from the path of personal meaning-maker.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 53

Life, Parent, Personality

“Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs rolling the paper’s inner edge down and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper cylinder’s ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching their ends while right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spade’s mouth.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the Wiki, then ignore them and go about your business.”

Lee Daniel Crocker (1963) American software programmer

First version http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules&oldid=54587 of the Wikipedia:Ignore all rules policy (17 April 2002)

Business

“Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favour some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Equality (1931)

Life, Education, Democracy

“Schumann’s Kreisleriana: No other cycle among Schumann’s great works so perfectly expresses the sensation of dark nocturnal things, of chaos, lurking in the background. The last piece of this collection shows this particularly well. Like skeletons on horseback, shadowy figures flit before us in a soft, sustained rhythm; in the middle section horn-calls enliven the scene with visions of knightly strength and nobility, but at the end the figures vanish ghost - like into night and mystery. Looking into the first volume of Schumann’s diaries we find ‘Midnight Piece,’ a prose passage which provides moving, indeed alarming evidence of his perilously depressive mental state. It contains elements of a highly personal kind which memorably convey the particular quality of his imagination, mortally cold and never far from visions of death. It could have served perfectly as a model for the final, disturbing piece in the Kreisleriana set.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Death, Imagination, Personality, Night

“"Don't forget, there's a Depression coming."
"Who says?"
"I say; everybody says!"
"Why would we have a Depression?"
"Because we don't have any discipline! We're drowning in debt! We don't even own our own country any more!"”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

[Harry, to Nelson]
Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Country, Forgetting

“It would be deeply depressing if the only way children could get moral values was from religion. Either from scripture, and God knows we don't want them to get it from scripture, I mean, just look at scripture. Or, from being afraid of God, being intimidated by God. Anybody who is good for only those two reasons is not really being good at all. Why not teach children things like the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by, how would you like it if other children did that to you, so why do you do it to them… I think it's depressing that anybody should suggest that you actually need God in order to be moral. I would hope that our morals come from a better source than that, and therefore they are genuinely moral rather than based on outmoded scripture, or based on fear.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

BBC http://youtube.com/watch?v=HtUd7-tha_w, ()

God, Children, Fear, Religion

“…if peace is to be preserved we must see to it that the causes of war are removed. Freedom and democracy must be based not only on security but also on social justice. Hitlerism flourished on the breakdown of an outworn economic system. The world depression of 1930 was the opportunity of the gangsters. We must have planning for expansion and not restriction. Victory in war could only be achieved by putting the interest of the community before private profit and this was also the key to reconstruction after the war. Socialism had always been something far greater than an economic theory, far greater than the policy of a political party. It was a way of life. They sought to attain an organized society in which every human being would have the opportunity of living the good life—a society in which free men and women would cooperate together for the common good. The workers of the countries which had been under the yoke of tyranny would look to the Labour parties of the British Commonwealth for a lead and would not look in vain.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the conference of representatives of the British and Dominion Labour parties, Westminster, London (12 September 1944), quoted in The Times (13 September 1944), p. 8.
War Cabinet

Life, Women, Men, War

“In the wacky new world of fake news, conspiracy theories, hoaxes — and social media’s unthinking participation in spreading all of that — facts and truth get lost in the noise. A responsible media needs to be especially careful not to unwittingly spread lies by amplifying them. Some early coverage of Trump’s recent unwarranted, evidence-free blasts about the illegality of some of the popular vote fell into that trap. It’s depressing but a fact of life that a lot of people don’t know the difference between fake news and conspiracy bilge and verified fact. Nor do they seem to care.”

Margaret Sullivan (journalist) American journalist

Journalists in the age of Trump: Lose the smugness, keep the mission. (November 29, 2016)

Life, People, Truth, World

“But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1997 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Happiness, Hope, Sense, Future

“Father was almost always short of cash. He borrowed money to start new businesses, only to see them fail. The tide of the Depression was against him, but he didn't realize it. He did not have enough education to sense that the tide was coming to drown him, and that he should take evasive measures and run to high ground like some of the wealthier, better-educated businessmen of Singapore, Penang and Malacca.”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 1 "Moulded by Mother"

Money, Education, Business, Sense

“I told you so. Seems like I'm out here a lot saying that to you people, right? I know it seems like a lot, but the truth is i said that i would beat Jeff, and i did. I told you so. I said that i would get rid of Jeff Hardy FOREVER, and i did. I told you so. And then i said i would make The Undertaker tap out to the Anaconda Vice, and you laughed! But then i did just that. And contrary to what you people believe, i didn't come out here to brag about becoming the first and ONLY man in history to make the Phenom, The Undertaker, tap out. I came out here to confront The Undertaker. I came out here to confront The Undertaker in MY ring, or my yard, if you will. I came out here to stick MY World Heavyweight Championship in his face, and look him in the eye, and say to him, I TOLD YOU SO! But, of course, he's conveniently not here right now, so instead, i think i'll address all of you people. It's come to my attention that you people think I have been preaching to you. Alright, we'll call a space a spade. The truth is, YES i have. Because you people need a good preaching to. You people need somebody you can look up to, you need a leader who isn't morally corrupt, and you need someone that's righteous, not self-righteous. And i know what your all gonna do next, your gonna do exactly what your hero, the Undertaker, did, your gonna give up! Hell, by the looks at half of you, you already have. I mean, what kind of life is it that you live? What kind of existence do you have where you wake up in the morning and you have to pop a pill to help crawl out of bed? And then, then you ravage your body with pitchers of beer, and that's supposed to somehow heal your broken self-worth. And then you just make excuses about inhaling poison into your lungs just to calm your nerves. And then, at the end of your sad, pathetic, lonely day, your in need of another pill to make you forget everything. You need a pill to help you sleep. (The crowd boos as Punk mouths "you make me sick") You are all just a legion of inebriated zombies, waiting in line at the pharmacy with your hand out, begging and pleading for that newest anti-depressant that you think is going to put an artificial smile on your face. You scratch and you claw for scapegoats for all of your inadequacies, and believe me, you have a LOT of inadequacies. And don't tell me that you self medicate yourself to forget about it all, don't tell me you don't self medicate to hide from all your inadequacies, don't tell me you don't do it. Because if you do, well then your a liar too. Your lying to yourself, your lying to yourselves right now. Your lying to the person next to you, you go home and you lie to your family, and it's insulting because right now your lying to ME. And i can see right through all of you people and your lies, because i am not a liar. I am a man who means what he says and says what he means. What i am is a prophet, i am the choice of a new generation, i am a champion that everybody can finally be proud of, i am the first and only straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in history. And if your not straight-edge like me, well, that just means i'm better than you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 18, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Truth, Lie

“When credit is expanding, the rising price level and high profits bring about a high rate of interest. When the expansion has reached, the limit permitted by the stock of gold, the rate of interest is put still higher in order to bring about a fall in the price level. When the fall in prices takes effect, a low rate of interest becomes appropriate, and when credit contraction has proceeded so far that a redundant supply of gold has accumulated, the rate of interest is depressed still lower in order to bring about a renewed rise in the price level. Thus a high rate of interest corresponds first with rising, then with falling, prices, and so synchronizes with high prices. A low rate of interest corresponds first with falling, and then with rising, prices, and so synchronizes with low prices.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Ralph George Hawtrey, quoted in Irving Fisher, The Theory of Interest (1930), Chapter 19. The Relation of Interest to Money and Prices

“I do have the toughest, most comprehensive plan to go after Wall Street. And not just the big banks, all the other financial interests that pose a threat to our economy. And I have said no bank is too big to fail and no executive is too powerful to jail, and I will use the powers that have now been passed by the Congress, by President Obama, who, incidentally, took a lot of money from Wall Street, which didn’t stop him from signing into law the toughest regulations on the financial industry since the Great Depression. There are a lot of different powerful interests in Washington. I’ve taken them on. I took on the drug companies. I took on the insurance companies. Before there was something called Obamacare, there was something called Hillarycare, and I worked really hard to get comprehensive health care reform.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money, Law

“When my mind is operating at its peak, it should depress me to think that this is the best I can do, because it's not very good at all. When my mind is operating normally, I should be even more depressed.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

January 14
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Thinking

“Samuelson's textbook has delivered a great deal of economic wisdom. For many economists, the positive side of the balance sheet has outweighed the negative. Indeed, his defenders might ask: Might the United States and the West have suffered another Great Depression if Samuelson had not emphasized the need for "automatic stabilizers"? Did not Samuelson's heralding of the "mixed" economy curb the appetite of third world countries for national socialism?
We will never know, of course, but it is humbling to speculate on whether alterations in principles textbooks might have led to a different U. S. economy.”

Mark Skousen (1947) American economist, investment analyst, newsletter editor, college professor and author

Mark Skousen, "The Perseverance of Paul Samuelson's Economics", The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1997)

Wisdom, World, Suffering, Country

“A good way of finding out who won a war, who lost a war, and what the war was about, is to ask who's cheering and who's depressed after it's over - this can give you interesting answers. So, for example, if you ask that question about the Second World War, you find out that the winners were the Nazis, the German industrialists who had supported Hitler, the Italian Fascists and the war criminals that were sent off to South America - they were all cheering at the end of the war. The losers of the war were the anti-fascist resistance, who were crushed all over the world. Either they were massacred like in Greece or South Korea, or just crushed like in Italy and France. That's the winners and losers. That tells you partly what the war was about. Now let's take the Cold War: Who's cheering and who's depressed? Let's take the East first. The people who are cheering are the former Communist Party bureaucracy who are now the capitalist entrepreneurs, rich beyond their wildest dreams, linked to Western capital, as in the traditional Third World model, and the new Mafia. They won the Cold War. The people of East Europe obviously lost the Cold War; they did succeed in overthrowing Soviet tyranny, which is a gain, but beyond that they've lost - they're in miserable shape and declining further. If you move to the West, who won and who lost? Well, the investors in General Motors certainly won. They now have this new Third World open again to exploitation”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

and they can use it against their own working classes. On the other hand, the workers in GM certainly didn't win, they lost. They lost the Cold War, because now there's another way to exploit them and oppress them and they're suffering from it. Forum with John Pilger and Harold Pinter in Islington, London, May 1994 https://web.archive.org/web/20000823015510/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xalmeida.html. Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

War, People, World, Dreams

“A novelist has to enter deeper exile still. In most outward ways the experience was depressive, as many young would-be writers and painters who have ever gone to Greece have discovered. We used to have a nickname for the sense of inadequacy and accidie it produced – the ‘Aegean blues’. One has to be a very complete artist to create good work among the purest and most balanced landscapes on the planet…The Greece of the Islands is Circe still; no place for the artist-voyager to linger long, if he cares for his soul.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Introduction (1977 edition)
The Magus (1965)

Way, Soul, Sense

“Did I suffer from depression? Yes, a little, from time to time. Yes. … I'm not as depressed as I was. I get depressed now and then but not very much anymore. … At the height of it it was just God-awful. It was really bad.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

God, Suffering, Time

“In the large sense the primary cause of the Great Depression was the war of 1914-1918. Without the war there would have been no depression of such dimensions. There might have been a normal cyclical recession; but, with the usual timing, even that readjustment probably would not have taken place at that particular period, nor would it have been a "Great Depression."”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Source: The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929-1941 (1952), p. 2: Lead paragraph Chapter 1 : The origins of the Depression.

War, Sense, Time

“Ascetic rigor? This doesn’t mean something like ‘renounce’ or even a ‘lack’ of something. No, it means, in philosophical manner (and especially in the historic Greek sense of ‘Askesis’), a special kind of internal yearning, a special power wherein, despite all depressions, defeats, and failures you develop a new power to ‘keep’ to something, to create something. It’s something like an obsession. Bach, Mozart, Schubert, they all (and their oeuvre) are filled from this phenomenon, and it’s this spirit which keeps this music so vivid and alive – and fashioned for all times and generations.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Music, Fashion, Failure, Sense

“When it’s bad, I get depressed; when it’s good, I get nervous.”

David H. Levy (1948) Canadian astronomer

Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)

“Sometimes if you go to see a very, very, happy movie, a Hollywood movie, you can walk out of the movie and feel very depressed because it's so false. And other times you see a very depressing movie and it makes you feel good, happy because you've seen something real. You've seen something that talks to you and says that your bad feelings are legitimate. And then you can go further with that and say, "Well, this bad feeling is good, and this good feeling is bad, but is it good to feel bad and is it bad to feel good?" I'm concerned with feelings. And sometimes when I feel good, I'll write something very negative because I have the strength to do it. But when I really, really feel very bad, what I want to do is make myself feel better, so I'll write something happier.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

Quotes from interviews

Happiness, Feeling, Time, Falseness

“But by way of consolation: it is valueless to paint premature things, what counts is to be a personality, or at least to become one. The domination of life is one of the basic conditions of productive expression. For me this is surely the case; when I am depressed I am unable even to think about it – and this holds true for painting, sculpture, tragedy, or music. But I believe that pictures alone will abundantly fill out this one life.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (Bern, April 1902), as cited in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 442
1895 - 1902

Life, Music, Way, Thinking

“If social security depresses savings rates, it is only because it is unfunded.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 2, Capital, p. 77

“I think the reason why we're so disconnected and depressing is that…we don't talk to God anymore - or rather, he doesn't talk to us. Remember back in the day? He used to just come out of nowhere. 'Abraham?! Guess who?!…that's right, it's God, you're a genius…' He would then tell them to do something and then BAM! it would get done. Who's he talking to now?!…I don't know! I think he's talking to those homeless guys that talk to themselves. You know, the ones that walk down the street arguing with themselves going 'I can't!…I can't!!!!!' …what if at the other end of that conversation was 'You're the new leader!' 'I can't!…I can't!!!!!' They're not crazy homeless people…they're reluctant prophets!…better tip them an extra buck the next time you see 'em.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/a313mc/shorties-watchin--shorties-talking-to-god
Miscellaneous

God, People, Guy, Thinking

“As early as 1930, Fascist theoreticians had begun to speak of an internazionale fascista, a pan-fascist union of kindred have-not or proletarian, nations. By 1935, Fascist maintained that Fascism recognized that the ravages of war and depression in Europe could only be undone by international ‘antiplutocratic’ reconstruction and argued, as a consequence, that Fascism was to be both ‘patriotic and international at the same time.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 356

War, Time

“Having been trained in history and the humanities, where one learns early on how depressing life can be, I am delighted to have ultimately switched to biology, where a delusional optimism still abounds.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Life, History, Optimism, Learning

“Let's get rid of Infirmary Feminism, with its bedlam of bellyachers, anorexics, bulimics, depressives, rape victims, and incest survivors. Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

As quoted in The Quotable Bitch: Women Who Tell It Like It Really Is (2007) edited by Jessie Shiers, p. 167 ISBN 9781599212135

Sister

“By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots.
On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible. There is a smell of power and danger on these people, and one may be horrified, exhilarated, disgusted or mesmerized by the awful possibilities they suggest, but never simply depressed.
Depression comes in the presence of depravity that makes no pretense about itself, a kind of depravity that says, "You and I, we are base, ugly, tasteless, cruel and beastly; let's admit it and have a good wallow."
That is how Times Square speaks. And not only Times Square. Few cities in the country lack the same amenities. Pornography, prostitution, massage parlors, hard-core movies, narcotics dealers — all seem to be inescapable and permanent results of an enlightened view of liberty which has expanded the American's right to choose his own method of shaping a life.
Granted such freedom, it was probably inevitable that many of us would yield to the worst instincts, and many do, and not only in New York. Most cities, however, are able to keep the evidence out of the center of town. Under a rock, as it were. In New York, a concatenation of economics, shifting real estate values and subway lines has worked to turn the rock over and put the show on display in the middle of town.
What used to be called "The Crossroads of the World" is now a sprawling testament to the dreariness which liberty can produce when it permits people with no taste whatever to enjoy the same right to depravity as the elegant classes.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Cheesy" (p.231)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Life, People, Age, World

“Keeping people neurotic and depressed and ignorant and self-doubting is oppressive.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

People

“For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you’re depressed.
Will you ever feel ok?”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Sunrise, Sunset
Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Feeling

“Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day. The frame of mind supposed to be appropriate to an afternoon wedding can only be genuinely experienced by an Englishman at two o'clock in the morning.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love's Shadow (1908), Chapter xxiv.

People, Feeling, Sense, Wedding

“It is relatively easy to control your anger after a while, but to do that after facing such extremes and at the height of your troubles, when you are wearied and exhausted, when you are heart-broken and depressed, that is sublime morality and magnificent ethics.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

Heart, Anger

“One thing we’ve learned from the economic events of the past two years is that macroeconomics, or at least the part of macroeconomics that studies the business cycle, is a weak field. With only a few exceptions, macroeconomists, including the most illustrious, did not anticipate the current depression.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy (2010) Ch. 10 The Crisis of Macroeconomics.

Business, Study, Learning, Past

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

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

The Collected Works of Karen Horney‎ (1957) by Karen Horney, p. 154: "We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression."
Misattributed

Depressing

“I have two thoughts [on the question of interviewer Joseph S. Trovato: 'Were the projects a good thing for American art?']. That practically all of the best painters of my generation developed on the projects such as Pollock, de Kooning, Brooks, Hague (sculptor), B. Greene, and Baziotes. I could go on and on. My second thought is that the reason it was good is that it had a broad base due to the economic situation we were in - the depression - and all kinds of art and styles, plus all degrees of talent were employed. Everybody was given an opportunity to prove himself. The many painters I mentioned above who have come such a long way is proof of this.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Art, Way, Question

“It may be that the Greeks had it easy, with their light and their mountains and their plains and their islands waiting around for tourists. It was easy for them to believe that man fit in rather well. This fittingness may have given them the idea that we are seemlier than other evidence suggests. The heads of Rameses II at Abu Simbel and, for that matter, the skyscrapers of New York, have another idea of man. So do the artifacts of Albert Speer. It is depressing to wonder whether the Greeks just happened to be lucky, and the dream they left us is a lie about ourselves.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"The Caryatid" (p. 208)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Lie, Dreams, Mountain, Idea

“Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.”

Willa Cather book O Pioneers!

Part I, Ch. 2
O Pioneers! (1913)

Country, Depressing

“He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
The Principles of Ethics (1897), Part I: The Data of Ethics

Happiness, Health, Joy

“There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.”

Viggo Mortensen (1958) American actor

Quoted by Alex Kuczynski, Vanity Fair, "Finding Viggo" (January 1, 2004).

Sadness

“The Exxon Corporation was, and is, working hard to take the lead in setting the standard for the environmental clean-up along the 1,200 miles of damaged Alaskan coastline. Yet, despite all their efforts they still hear cries of foul. News articles claim the corporation is falling short of its responsibilities. Video footage of out-of-work fishermen sitting in idle boats carries the depressing message that the fishing industry cannot provide a livelihood for several more years. Exxon has spent billions of dollars related to that tragic oil spill. In spite of their efforts they continue to pay the price in money, damaged reputation, and ill-will.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 2

Money, Fish, Effort

“How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 11 “Regarding Gravious” section X (p. 372).

Personality

“Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, — to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, — this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, — this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 38 The Victory

Life, Death, Way, Feeling

“Responsibility has increased at times. We have no right to be in depression. We must pull ourselves out at any cost. We have a unique chance and we have no moral right to lose it. We have no right to lose Ukraine!”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

Vasyl Slipak // Ukraine and Israel. Oleg Vyshniakov consul Ukraine and Israel — 2017. — December 20. http://ukraine-consul.blogspot.com/2017/12/vasyl-slipak.html

Chance, Time

“When I was a boy I was always depressed and confused, now I think I'm not garbage. I don't try to prove to my parents that I am good at something anymore. But I am a failure with women. I can only be a one night lover.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

GIOIA Magazine Interview

Women, Boy, Lovers, Failure

“The reporting of depression is often associated with the dependency of women on men. But it is dependency on men successful enough to allow a woman the time to think about more than survival. Which is why, when we think about women who report depression, we think of middle-class women, not working-class women. The working-class woman is too worried about survival to report depression. Depression is a diagnosis that tends to increase among those with the luxury of worrying about something other than survival. The more a person is in Stage II, the more that person can afford to focus on depression.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 177.

Women, Men, Thinking, Time

“Mantle played ball almost under a shroud of depression, because he always thought he was going to die an early death. But Mays probably thinks he's going to live forever. Mantle acted like a man who was doomed. Mays never did, even though he played long beyond his ability. I talked to Willie after the 1973 World Series, in which he looked terrible. I said, "What were you doing out there, Willie?" "Oh, I was having fun!" he told me. Mantle never had fun. Mays, on the other hand, seemed to be inoculated from all the pressure. He simply went beyond the usual frames of reference. If I were writing this, I'd say that he went beyond the usual frames of reverence. That's the way we all felt, and I think it was true for not only the press, but also for managers and other players. And this bled into the other pages of the newspaper.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

As quoted in "In Willie's time, he was No. 1" http://static.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1191263.html Sports-related

Death, World, Way, Thinking

“[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India…. I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic Hindu religon and our political failure forced itself on my mind.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Radhakrishnan, 'The Spirit of Man', quoted in Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net, p. 316., 1st ed.

Religion, Feeling, Failure, Reality

“The experiences of the years…have brought the country, particularly its young people, to a mood of depression, disillusion, and withdrawal from the effort to affect the world.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Purpose of the Book

People, World, Mood, Effort

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.
"Control of Human Behavior", item 145
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

People, Way, Imagination, Science

“On Dirt, drugs and depression, quoted in”

Jerry Cantrell (1966) American musician and songwriter

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/interviews/a-looking-in-view-jerry-cantrell-on-alice-in-chains-legacy, A Looking In View: Jerry Cantrell on Alice in Chains' legacy, The Skinny, November 13, 2013
On Alice in Chains

Quotes

“I have to report that this motion picture is arguably the worst piece of cinematic crap I have ever experienced theatrically. Hyperbole, you wonder? I looked through my list of zero-star movies and couldn't find one entry (except the immortal Zombie vs. Mardi Gras, which was a straight-to-video release) that ranked as more difficult to endure. Words like abomination and travesty don't do this movie justice. Sitting through Freddy Got Fingered was one of the most depressing experiences in my 10 years of reviewing films. It's not even enjoyable on a campy level. It's just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad - Directed By Tom Green.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1485 of Freddy Got Fingered (2001). Zero star reviews

Justice, Star

“We would have fulfilled our duty to our blood and our people and to the freedom of the peoples, if we had exterminated the most cunning intellect of all the human intellects alive today. For that is what I said to Streicher, what I have always preached: we are fighting an enemy who, through many many thousands of years of schooling, is intellectually superior to us. Was it yesterday or the day before, or a year ago, I don't know, I heard or read: even before the Romans had their state, before Rome had even been founded, the Jews there were able to write. This is an understatement. They should have said, aeons before the Romans erected their state, aeons before the very founding of Rome itself, they were able to write. Look at the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Look at a race that today has recourse to, may I just say, six thousand years of written history, a race that has been making laws for let us say five thousand years or six thousand years - and I am not wrong, I believe, when I estimate a seventh millennium. The fact that the Christian church today makes use of this lawmaking is very depressing for me. But it tells me that this must be a race of the first order of magnitude, since lawmakers have always been great. And because of these realizations I fought against this enemy.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

People, School, Law, History

“What is this free enterprise system? It is the law of the jungle applied to economics. It is the law of every man for himself, as the elephant said when he was dancing among the chickens. That is not a bad philosophy if, like the hon. member for York - Sunbury, you happen to be in the elephant class, but it is likely to be depressing if you are a farmer or worker, and belong in the chicken group. Free enterprise means unrestricted competition; the race to the swift and the battle to the strong; nature red in tooth and claw.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Budget Debate, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 22, 1943.

Law, Nature, Strong, Dance

“I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

My Life on The Road

Women, Way, Feeling, Anger

“This kind of thinking is taking a long view, in which one must also count the imponderables, such as the effort of prolonged depression upon restless social forces; the inevitable necessity for National Socialism to move very far to the Left, the possible revolt of the people everywhere against dawdling tactics of their leaders.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, p. 355 (newspaper column, “As Litvinov Goes,” May 5, 1939)

People, Thinking, Effort

“I was studying agriculture, how to produce better chickens, better cattle, better horses — horses in those days — better fruit, better vegetables. This was in the early years of the Great Depression, and the thoughts crossed my mind that there wasn't a hell of a lot of use producing better crops and better livestock if you couldn't sell them, that the real problem of agriculture was not efficiency in production but the problem of whether you could make money after you produced the stuff. So I shifted from the technical side to, first, the study of agricultural economic issues and then on to economics itself.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Booknotes interview (1994)

Money, Hell, Problem, Study

“Without humor, a sports fan is a religious fanatic. Without humor, a newscast is a terrible, depressing, unpalatable thing.”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" News duo thinking young http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C565037325%2C00.html" by David Bauder, Deseretnews.com (2003-12-09)

Sport

“It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this. It is a game and a good game, at least for me; one of the few games which make life, difficult and depressing as it is sometimes, a little more interesting.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

Life, Art, Game

“We all possess, in our unconscious minds, a kind of servant who performs certain automatic functions. When I learn to type or drive a car or learn a foreign language, I have to do it painfully and consciously; then, suddenly, my robot takes over and does it automatically; in fact, he does it far more quickly and efficiently than "I" could. The main trouble with this mechanical valet is that he often takes over functions I would prefer to keep for myself -- for example, when I am tired I eat "automatically," and so do not enjoy my food. In fact, this is the reason that so much of our experience seems oddly "unreal"; the robot has taken it over. When I am feeling low, I may live for whole days in a "robotic" state, so that experience flows off me like water off a duck's back. And because I am not receiving any "feedback" of pleasure or interest from my activities, I become duller than ever, and experience becomes progressively less interesting. (This is, of course, the mechanism of depression and nervous breakdown.) And this is also why explorers deliberately seek out hardship and danger -- to cheat the robot and "feel the life in them more intensely."”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 89

Life, Pleasure, Food, Cars

“One of the century’s most famous intellectual pronouncements comes at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Reading this for the first time I was puzzled and continued to be throughout much of the essay, since despite the work’s persuasive logic and eloquence there was a lot that eluded me, and I always came back to grapple vainly with the initial hypothesis, unable to deal with the premise that anyone should come close to wishing to kill himself in the first place. A later short novel, The Fall, I admired with reservations; the guilt and self-condemnation of the lawyer-narrator, gloomily spinning out his monologue in an Amsterdam bar, seemed a touch clamorous and excessive, but at the time of my reading I was unable to perceive that the lawyer was behaving very much like a man in the throes of clinical depression. Such was my innocence of the very existence of this disease.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), II

Life, Disease, Question, Problem

“The usual and basic Keynesian answer to recessions is a monetary expansion. But Keynes worried that even this might sometimes not be enough, particularly if a recession had been allowed to get out of hand and become a true depression. Once the economy is deeply depressed, households and especially firms may be unwilling to increase spending no matter how much cash they have, they may simply add any monetary expansion to their board. Such a situation, in which monetary policy has become ineffective, has come to be known as a "liquidity trap"; Keynes believed that the British and American economies had entered such a trap by the mid-1930s, and some economists believed that the United States was on the edge of such a tap in 1992.
The Keynesian answer to a liquidity trap is for the government to do what the private sector will not: spend. When monetary expansion is ineffective, fiscal expansion—such as public works programs financed by borrowing—must take its place. Such a fiscal expansion can break the vicious circle of low spending and low incomes, "priming the pump: and getting the economy moving again. But remember that this is not by any means an all-purpose policy recommendation; it is essentially a strategy of desperation, a dangerous drug to be prescribed only when the usual over-the-counter remedy of monetary policy has failed.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

“Partly through choice, I was never willing to hire out more than three days a week [making illustrations for the magazines to support himself, c. 1912] I kept some time to do my own work. Illustrating was a depressing experience. And I didn't get very good prices because I didn't often do what they wanted.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Quote in: 'Edward Hopper: The Emptying Spaces', Suzanne Burrey; in 'Art Digest', April 1, 1955 pp. 8 - 10
1941 - 1967

Support, Time

“In many of Albrecht Dürer’s engravings there are harrowing depictions of his own melancholia; the manic wheeling stars of Van Gogh are the precursors of the artist’s plunge into dementia and the extinction of self. It is a suffering that often tinges the music of Beethoven, of Schumann and Mahler, and permeates the darker cantatas of Bach. The vast metaphor which most faithfully represents this fathomless ordeal, however, is that of Dante, and his all-too-familiar lines still arrest the imagination with their augury of the unknowable, the black struggle to come:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Ché la diritta via era smarrita.
In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood,
For I had lost the right path.
One can be sure that these words have been more than once employed to conjure the ravages of melancholia, but their somber foreboding has often overshadowed the last lines of the best-known part of that poem, with their evocation of hope. To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists. But in science and art the search will doubtless go on for a clear representation of its meaning, which sometimes, for those who have known it, is a simulacrum of all the evil of our world: of our everyday discord and chaos, our irrationality, warfare and crime, torture and violence, our impulse toward death and our flight from it held in the intolerable equipoise of history. If our lives had no other configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish; if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy. But one need not sound the false or inspirational note to stress the truth that depression is not the soul’s annihilation; men and women who have recovered from the disease — and they are countless — bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), X

Life, Death, Women, Men

“Do you enjoy your work? Are you happy to get out of bed each morning and dress for the office? If you answered ‘no’ to either of these questions, you are not alone. In a 2014 Conference Board survey, 52 per cent of Americans claimed to be unhappy at work and in a recent CIPD study 23 per cent of Britons claimed to be looking for a new job. In the same survey only about one-third claim to feel engaged with their work. You can see the effects of this in absence, stress and depression. In fact, you can see it in the rush hour in the tired and sad-looking faces of so many commuters.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Happiness, Sadness, Feeling, Question

“Individuals who participate in interaction rituals are filled with emotional energy, in proportion to the intensity of the interaction. Durkheim called this energy “moral force,” the flow of enthusiasm that allows individuals in the throes of ritual participation to carry out heroic acts of fervor or self-sacrifice. I would emphasize another result of group-generated emotional energy: it charges up individuals like an electric battery, giving them a corresponding degree of enthusiasm toward ritually created symbolic goals when they are out of the presence of the group. Much of what we consider individual personality consists of the extent to which persons carry the energy of intense interaction rituals; at the high end, such persons are charismatic; a little less intensely, they are forceful leaders and the stars of sociability; modest charges of emotional energy make passive individuals; and those whose interaction ritual participation is meager and unsuccessful are withdrawn and depressed.”

Randall Collins (1941) American sociologist

Source: The Sociology of Philosophies (1998), p. 23

Star, Personality

“When I am tired, it is easy to believe that my exhaustion is the reason I am depressed and lonely and uninspired. But when I am well-rested [sic], I can realize that these negative feelings are not a result of too little sleep. They are a result of my being a miserable, hopeless, misanthropic wretch.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

September 3
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Feeling, Sleep

“Originally I was going to take perverse satisfaction in making a depressing album. (Spin magazine 1989)”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

“The aim of Satanic power is to cut off communication with God. To accomplish this aim he deludes the soul with a sense of defeat, covers him with a thick cloud of darkness, depresses and oppresses the spirit, which in turn hinders prayer and leads to unbelief – thus destroying all power.”

James O. Fraser (1886–1938) missionary to China, inventor of Tibeto-Burman Nosu alphabet

20 March 1916 Source: Geraldine Taylor. Behind the Ranges: The Life-changing Story of J.O. Fraser. Singapore: OMF International (IHQ) Ltd., 1998, 157.

God, Soul, Communication, Sense

“Depression and hopelessness are not the only reasons terminally ill patients wish to end their lives. Many individuals see nothing undignified about choosing to end their lives at the time and manner of their choosing — and many view such a choice as the meaningful culmination of a good life.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"Is it compassionate to prohibit suicide?," http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/letters/bal-ed.le.letters17m11mar17,0,7530016.storyThe Baltimore Sun (2009-03-17)

Life, Time

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, I'm sorry to disappoint you.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

Disappointment, Change

“My dad is actually a manic depressive, which is very exciting half the time.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/2ufif7/comedy-central-presents-bipolar-coaster
Comedy Central Presents (2007)

Time

“Must one go through the five official stages? What are those five stages again: "anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance." Well, back up: here comes my acceptance speech. "I am now, and I have always been a flaming faggot, responsible for style in its every manifestation. I have my own five steps: flippancy, sentimentality, sarcasm, camp, and smut. They've got me through life, and deity dammit, they'll get me through death!"”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

Pouf Positive
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Life, Death, Anger

“Hence the one-sided errors—ces erreurs d'idée fixe—which we cannot escape when we stand too near to one or the other party; either deceives, yet does it unaware, and we confide most willingly in those who think as we do. But if we are by chance of such indifferent nature that we, without special predilection, keep in continual intercourse with all, then we are bewildered by the perfect self-confidence of either party, and our judgement is neutralised in the most depressing manner.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

French Affairs page 156
The Romantic School (1836)

Error, Confidence, Nature, Thinking

“Mossadeq, the orator, is difficult to judge as a politician because of the perpetual contradictions between his words and his acts, and because of his sudden changes of mood from elation to depression before one's very eyes. His absolute certainty, violently expressed in hysterical speeches, would turn to tears and sobbing. He had frequent "diplomatic" illensses and he played out macabre comedies in which he would exclaim: "I am a-dying…" and so forth. He has been compared to Robespierre, to Renzi and even to characters from the Commedia dell' Arte.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 53
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

Art, Mood, Tear, Change

“One of the uses of depression is the exposure of what auditors fail to find.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath I, Section II, p 135 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“The early thirties brought what liberal economists called the Great Depression and Marxist economists described as the great crisis of capitalism. It dawned on me that the economic world order was unreliable, unstable, and, most of all, iniquitous. I sought intellectual contacts and friendship with a group of socialist students and also with a small handful of communist-oriented students and unemployed workers.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

" Tjalling C. Koopmans - Biographical http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1975/koopmans-bio.html". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 9 Jun 2014.

Friendship, World