Exercising Futility

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility. -Errol Morris

It is futile to talk too much about the past ... like trying to make birth control retroactive. -Charles Wilson

Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.
-Erma Bombeck

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established. -George Carlin

Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. -Henry Ford

When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives. -Albert Einstein

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. -Dwight David Eisenhower

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.