Quotes About Powerlessness

Life must have sucked growing up without TV." "Back then people could wait a few days to learn about all the things they couldn't control. . . Nowadays we're much more impatient for our impotence.

To be human is to struggle. Eventually we realize that when we sit under the umbrella of "shoulds" — "This shouldn't be so hard. I should be happy." — the pain rains down harder. But when we accept the fact that anxiety, depression, loneliness, powerlessness, grief, joy, and exhilaration are all part of the design, we step out into the rain and perhaps even dance a little.

This was always the most painful part of my work: the searching eyes of the mothers and fathers whose children had been killed or were imprisoned, seeing in me some potential help. But the reality is that the fate of their sons and daughters rests largely on the political conditions of Iran, not on my abilities as a lawyer.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.

You cannot control what you love--you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead.

Anxiety increases as perceived control diminishes.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense.

It was a little like Switzerland in World War II. Shells were bursting all around me, souls were tortured and I was powerless in the confines of imposed neutrality - hopes were dying.

alien to him, gripped him by the balls, freezing his insides. He rubbed at his chest in an effort to alleviate the discomfort and closed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the images the threat had invoked.

It's not fair. It's not our fault. We have no say in our own lives. We're living a fairy tale someone else wrote.

Control is an illusion. It doesn't work. We cannot control alcoholism. We cannot control anyone's compulsive behaviors—overeating, sexual, gambling—or any of their behaviors. We cannot (and have no business trying to) control anyone's emotions, mind, or choices. We cannot control the outcome of events.

That's the thing with addicts. We don't intend to drink or use drugs. Usually the times we most shouldn't drink or use is when we end up drinking and using the most. Loss of control is the identifying stamp and seal of addiction. We lose control of when we use, what we use, how much we use, and what we do when we're drunk or stoned.

I believe that clutching tightly to a person or thing, or forcing my will on any given situation eliminates the possibility of my Higher Power doing anything constructive about the situation, the person, or me. My controlling blocks God's power. It blocks other people's ability to grow. It stops events from happening naturally. It prevents me from enjoying people or events.

If you're powerless, lord, then why be ashamed of what the strong inflict on you? It's for them to be ashamed.

When you are young and powerless you dream of possessing mystical strength, and once you are grown and strong you condemn lesser folk to that same dream

From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.

herself in powerlessness to the ridicule of the world. We can't blame the devil. For the most part we've dumbed-down New Testament Christianity and accepted our reality as theology rather than biblical theology as our reality. We've reversed the standard, walking by sight and not by faith. We

A person cannot be whole in a relationship where he or she feels powerless to make healthy choices.

You can't stop your heart from loving, really -- it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.

A wave of fear passed through me. Our lives and fates left to men. This world, this God-forsaken world.

there. Of course, the DPRK purposely infantilized its citizens, making everyone helpless and powerless so that they depended on the state.

We accepted our situation meekly. How quickly we became prisoners, how quickly we gave up our freedom, how quickly we tolerated the loss of that freedom, like a child being abused, in silence. In this world, there were no individual demands, and asking permission for everything was infantilizing. So we began to understand our students, who had never been able to do anything on their own.