"Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment"
About this Quote
The intent is quietly therapeutic but also strategic. Work is socially legible; worry is not. By blaming fatigue on emotional waste rather than labor, he grants permission to stop rehearsing worst-case scenarios, to quit relitigating slights, to unclench. The subtext is less about rest than control: you may not be able to reduce your workload, but you can reduce the internal drag of rumination. The resentment clause matters most. Carnegie is pointing to the way grievance turns time into a treadmill: you do the task, then you do it again in your head, with a running commentary about unfairness.
Context sharpens the message. Carnegie rose during the early 20th-century boom in self-help and corporate culture, when white-collar stress was becoming normalized and advertised as ambition. His psychology is preclinical but culturally shrewd: he treats emotion as an efficiency leak. In an era selling optimism as a skill, this quote is both compassion and a productivity hack, suggesting that peace of mind is not a luxury, its an energy budget.
Quote Details
| Topic | Stress |
|---|---|
| Source | Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948). |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Carnegie, Dale. (2026, January 14). Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-fatigue-is-often-caused-not-by-work-but-by-6068/
Chicago Style
Carnegie, Dale. "Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-fatigue-is-often-caused-not-by-work-but-by-6068/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-fatigue-is-often-caused-not-by-work-but-by-6068/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.









