Demetri Martin Quotes

I always thought that I was going to be up there, whether it's was in the top 20, top 10, and I wasn't training hard, but I thought, you know... my strength, my presence, my talent would just keep me up there, without really training hard and really committing myself to the game.

A professional is one who believes he has invented breathing.

You're all right, as long as you don't believe your own hype.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.

A certain death of an artist is overconfidence.

Thinking you're a genius is death.

They think they have God Almighty by the toe.

Nothing fails like success.

I've been a golden boy for too long.

The fool shouts loudly, thinking to impress the world.

For one thing, when you're playing as well as I was at the time, you think you can play with anything. That isn't true, of course, but I didn't know it then.

The worst thing that can happen for a writer is for a writer to start believing their own press. I think the industry, and the comics industry in particular, is littered with the bodies of writers who believed their own press. And you can see the moment they did, and then the work nosedives.

Of all spells that could be cast on a nation, that of believing itself invincible was perhaps the one most profitable broken …

They are most deceived that trusteth most in themselves.

A lot of players get to a certain point they don't want to make mistakes. They just want everyone to see how great they are. That ends up being their downfall. You put a cap on yourself.

There are a lot of people very sure of themselves that need to be brought back down to Earth. As good as they think they are, they're really not.

I had a bit of a lazy streak to me, I had high opinions of myself without any real grounding reason to, I made a bit of television that did ok, and all of a sudden life was pretty relaxed for me.

I find it alarming that people are so convinced they're the best at anything - presenting, hairdressing, getting dressed.

I was loving being the champion, and I wasn't listening to my body. I almost felt like I was untouchable in a way - that I could just keep going and everything would be OK.

Since the well-known victory over the hare by the tortoise, the descendants of the tortoise think themselves miracles of speed.

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

There was one who thought himself above me, and he was above me until he had that thought.

As to the human race. There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naive and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims without bashfulness or any sign of a blush that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it but I cannot bring myself to do it-it is like hitting a child.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.