Quotes About Powerlessness

If you are a junior member of a minority party - one of 100 people - in the U.S. Senate, what really can you do? Well, you're just going to get frustrated.

Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

Reading about people who were so truly voiceless and powerless - Liberian child soldiers, Sudanese refugees, and, especially, Kashmiri women whose husbands or sons were imprisoned by the army with no hope of release - made me think about how I would feel if someone took my brothers from me.

Let's stop hiding behind a pseudo-respect of cultures, in a sickening relativism that's only a mask for our cowardice, our cynicism, and our powerlessness. I, born Muslim, Moroccan, and French, I will say it to you: Sharia makes me vomit.

He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice. DONALD BARTHELME, THE DEAD FATHER

He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice. DONALD BARTHELME

Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn't dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain.

Die Ohnmacht des Einzelnen ist der Grund, aus dem alle es versuchen muessen

When a person feels powerless in regard to controlling his life, he can defend against the discomfort of such an experience by asserting control over someone else.

Well now I know I can control my tongue, my temper & my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic or luck. I can't make good things happen; I can't keep anybody safe; I can't influence the future & I can't fix up the past. What a relief!" from book A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas

A lifetime assault of contradictory messages–to be sexy, to respect, that all men were dogs but without them women were nothing–reinforced her sense of powerlessness and futility.

Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness

Through cruelty force confesses its powerlessness to achieve omnipotence . . . We see weakness dawning at the very height of force. Unable to admit that total destruction is impossible, the conqueror can only reply to the mute defiance of his defenseless adversary with an ever-growing violence.

Yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, I said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerlessness.

When I think of my child I am seized by the desire to make good all my former powerlessness, to love as I would like to be loved: mercifully, completely, unambiguously. Her experience of this love is for the moment rather shady and unclear. I want to write it down and put it in a drawer for her, like the title deeds to something, so that she will have some proof, some inheritance, should something happen to me before I get a chance to explain it to her.

When I first walked into Uber, it was very difficult because people were unsure about what was going to happen - there was a real sense of powerlessness.

Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind.

The reason for this is obvious: The suggestion of powerlessness to overcome the habit dominates his mind; the subconscious mind is always controlled by the dominant idea. The subconscious mind will accept the strongest of two contradictory propositions. The effortless way is the best; this method will be discussed in detail in this chapter.

It was like I wasn't thinking. I swear to God. It was like someone else was doing it. I remember I'm looking down at her just before I bring it down and I'm looking at her face . . . she's so scared . . . but it's like I had nothing to do with it. It's like I'm a million miles away.

and then I scream loud enough to wake the dead... but it doesn't.

One thing about pessimism is that it feels sane. Pessimists are those who can't be taken in, people who can't be fooled. I told you so. But it is also a habit of mind. It reconciles us to being powerless. It justifies detachment, indifference. It is even fear of having power....

Paradoxically, admitting your own powerlessness can free you from the need to fix everything and allow us to be truly present to the other person, and to listen. A cartoon in The New Yorker had one woman saying testily to her friend, 'There's no point in our being friends if you won't let me fix you.