Impostor Syndrome Quotes

Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

God, it would be good to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody.

One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.

There's still, even now, a part of me that can't believe that I got published. That part of me has never gone away.

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

Throughout my life, whenever I thought I'm dancing welI, I'm not.

I don't think I'm very cool as a person. I'm just better than anyone else at acting cool.

I've always believed that I had talent, even when I felt like a very inferior sort of person, which I spent a lot of time living my life feeling that I wasn't worthy.

Fake confidence on the outside often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.

Once I actually get in the studio and I start working, I'm fine, but it's just getting there and these hours of torment with myself and self doubt, thinking 'I'm useless' and 'Who am I, conning myself into thinking I can do it again.'

I never felt like I had made it.

I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave ma a relaxex manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.

Not having gone to drama school, I always feel like a bit of a fraud, but so far it looks as though I've not been found out.

Ninety percent of the time when I'm working, there's this very palpable sensation that I'm doing everything wrong and should just give up.

If I'm not good at acting, I'm not good at anything else.

I'm a short, fairly plain person who's bluffing his case and getting away with it.

I'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills. Suddenly I was in this world where I was surrounded by these incredibly polished and wealthy kids who had gone to prep schools, and I felt daunted by them. I don't think people were aware of how full of anxiety I was... For a long time I felt like I was living in a place where I shouldn't have been.

I'm an idiot, basically. I don't think that I'm a dumb guy, but I also realise that I have access to about 0.1 percent of the information that I need to have a truly informed opinion about half the stuff I talk about. I'm like that loud guy in the bar, who kind of makes sense for about ten minutes, and then you realise he flunked everything at high school so you just laugh at him.

When I started writing, I said, 'I don't know how to do this. I don't know if it sounds good.' Coming from being an underdog or being told that something wasn't for you over and over repeatedly, it took a lot out of me. It took a lot of my self-confidence.

I've never been critically acclaimed. I've never been nominated for no Grammy. I've never been on no magazine cover. It's almost taboo to say I'm actually good.

It feels like my hard work has paid off, but at the same time, I still have the impostor, you know, syndrome. I still feel like I'm going to wake up, and everybody's going to see me for the hack I am.

One can ever assume to be what he is not, and to conceal what he is.

I'm not a professional. Yet somehow, I manage to get away with it.

She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can't seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are- impostors with limited skills or abilities.

And yet I understood the alienation of being around others who couldn't really see you or chose not to. I'd felt the self-loathing that came with being a fraud, protraying an image of what you wished you could be but weren't. I'd lived with the fear that people you loved might turn away from you if they ever got to know the true person hidden inside.