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Life & Wisdom Quote by Antonio Tabucchi

"People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots"

About this Quote

Doubt, for Tabucchi, is less a personal flaw than a metabolic condition: it burns fuel. The line turns a familiar complaint (indecision is tiring) into a pointed moral distinction. Yes, people who question themselves can experience life as “oppressive and exhausting” - a word pair that suggests not just mental strain but the weight of systems, expectations, and history pressing down. But then he flips the valence: the doubters are “more energetic.” Not happier. Not calmer. More alive.

The trick is in the last clause, “they aren’t robots,” which reads like a small jab at the modern fantasy of smooth-functioning humans: optimized, certain, unbothered. Tabucchi’s subtext is that certainty is often purchased by outsourcing your thinking - to ideology, routine, authority, or convenience. Doubt, by contrast, keeps the engine running because it refuses to let the world become automatic. It’s exhausting precisely because it’s ethical: you keep re-checking your premises, your complicity, your desires.

Context matters: Tabucchi’s fiction is steeped in Portugal’s authoritarian past and in the slippery boundaries between identity, memory, and political responsibility. In a landscape where regimes demand compliance and narratives demand clean endings, doubt becomes a form of resistance. The quote isn’t romanticizing anxiety; it’s defending inner friction as proof of agency. The “robot” isn’t just a metaphor for emotional numbness - it’s a warning about what happens when we trade ambiguity for obedience.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Tabucchi, Antonio. (2026, January 18). People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-with-lots-of-doubts-sometimes-find-life-21701/

Chicago Style
Tabucchi, Antonio. "People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-with-lots-of-doubts-sometimes-find-life-21701/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-with-lots-of-doubts-sometimes-find-life-21701/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Antonio Tabucchi

Antonio Tabucchi (September 23, 1943 - March 25, 2012) was a Writer from Italy.

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