Quotes About Powerlessness

I didn't stand up to my jailers because I realized how quickly I would have been overpowered.

One general rule is that when we have no control over stimulation, it is more upsetting, even more so if we feel we are someone's victim.

One must always be thinking," Isabel told Ralph. "I am not sure it's not a greater happiness to be powerless." And Ralph replied: "For weak people I have no doubt it's a greater happiness.'' It was a confirmation of my own idea of strength—of my determination to be strong.

Ninguno de los dos se tomó la molestia de averiguar si gozaba de aquellos momentos o si constituían un suplicio para ella. Al fin y al cabo, sólo era una esclava, y su opinión les tenía sin cuidado. Un

When fate arrives the physician becomes a fool.

Men jeg ville ikke spise, jeg kunne ikke heller – håndtaket var blitt for stort å bære, det styrte dagene mine fremdeles, styrte timene og ukene – alt bestemte dette håndtaket.

In my darker moments, I feel like the Queen of England, bound and gagged by reverence. Tin-crowned and irrelevant.

You have a plantation where you have 10 white people and you have about 50 or 60 black people. The automatic thought was, 'Why didn't they raise up? Why didn't they overpower? They had the numbers.' But really these people, their hope was broken. Their sense of love was broken. Their appreciation for who they were was broken.

As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.

I'm not in control of my fate, and that's a good thing.

The troops were cracking because they could not absorb what was happening to them, because they knew themselves to be utterly powerless (bravery had little survival value when one was on the receiving end of a bombardment), and because they had no confidence that the generals who had put them in danger knew what they were doing. Men whose courage was beyond challenge could and did break down if subjected to enough strain of this kind.

La fatalidad nos hace invisibles

I had to accept the fact that sometimes things happen that are out of our hands.

The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.

When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system?

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

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used. Powerlessness and silence go together.

She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is—incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.

She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is - incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like a view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness.

Every time I scratch apathy, I find powerlessness beneath it. Humans care, they just don't know what to do about it.

Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb.

it really is easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart. When things break up and fences fall over, desperation and powerlessness slink in, which turns out to be good: humility and sweetness often arrive in your garden not long after.

We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won't any longer be witnesses to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!