Quotes About Powerlessness

If a god had made the world, might world always be right, that would be so wise, we'd be spared so much suffering. But we made the world - out of our smallness and weakness. Our lives are awkward and fragile...

The thing is, Alex, you're never really in control, whatever you may think. Just keep paddling and never fight the current because the current will always win.

The reason I'm scared of flying is because I'm not in charge. Being so far out of control terrifies me.

Obviously you can stash money under your mattress, cut down on hazelnut lattes, but in terms of the larger economic frame of our lives, we have very little agency. About one of the only things you can do is understand it.

In my own country I am in a far off land. I am strong but have no power. I win all yet remain a loser. At break of day I say goodnight. When I lie down I have great fear of falling.

When dealing with myself I am powerless.

I can't keep a storm in my room

'Storm Warnings' is a poem about powerlessness - about a force so much greater than our human powers that while it can be measured and even predicted, it is beyond human control. All 'we' can do is create an interior space against the storm, an enclave of self-protection, though the winds of change till penetrate keyholes and 'unsealed apertures.'

Conspiracy theories are the refuge of the disempowered.

The fascist authoritarianism, characterized by sado-masochism and destructiveness, had a function which is comparable psychologically to a neurotic symptom - namely, fascism compensated for powerlessness and individual isolation and protected the individual from anxiety-creating situations. If one compare fascism to a neurotic symptom, it can be said that fascism is a neurotic form of community.

One means of allaying anxiety is frantic activity. The anxiety arising out of the dilemma of powerlessness in the face of suprapersonal economic forces on one hand, but theoretical belief in the efficacy of individual effort on the other, was symptomized partly by excessive activism.

it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or wants. Thus they feel swayed this way and that, with painful feelings of powerlessness, because they feel vacuous, empty.

He was confronted at an early age with adult-strength realizations about powerlessness, desperation, and distrust, taking his dose right alongside the overwhelmed adults. This steady stream of shocks and realizations leaves so many boys raised in poor, urban areas stumbling toward manhood with a hardened exterior masking deep insecurities.

Delphine witnessed awful things occurring yo other humans. Worse than that, she was powerless to alter their fate. It would be that way all her life- disasters, falling like chairs all around her, falling so close they disarranged her hair, but not touching her.

Helplessness was the one true fountain of youth.

People think that knowing the future can help you prepare for what is to come - but often it only makes you powerless.

The problem with Fate is that no matter how many times you call out to her, she has her own timing that's irrelevant to whatever anyone else happens to be doing

But I am not free. I am incapable of destruction.

The deeper and more debilitating form of powerlessness is to be cut off from making meaning.

Lena felt like a child. Worse than a child and less valuable. She felt like a mouse. No, smaller than a mouse and less alive. Her life seemed so small and crumpled you could shoot it through a straw like a spitball.

Powerlessness and poverty increase the chances that needs are so little satisfied that crime is an irresistible temptation to actors alienated from the social order and that punishment is non-credible to actors who have nothing to lose.

Is it not rather meant that it was placed far above us, in order to convince us of our utter feebleness?

That was madness. You're never going to bring one of those down with a handgun.

You can get into a place in your life where you no longer are in control of events, and events are in control of you.