Quotes About Powerlessness

I think God is how you deal with everything that's out of your own control.

It's no use resenting a thing that you've no power to stop.

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

People have always asked me why I'm drawn to material about kids, and for me, it's - I remember being at that age and feeling completely and utterly powerless. You know, there's so many things you wanna do and so many things you're told you can't do.

When you really can't affect something, you almost don't wanna wish too hard, because it's just frustrating.

It's too great, too terrible, too much. You can shout words into the void forever and never fill it up.

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.

We may overcompensate for our feelings of powerlessness by attempting to control and manipulate other people and our environment. Or we may eventually burst forth with uncontrolled rage that is highly exaggerated and distorted by its long suppression.

I'm always surprised to rediscover that there's something kind of scary about life; and that the feeling we have that we're in charge is probably ill founded.

Stories move in from the shadows to the limelight. And though the stage presents the drama of our powerlessness, the shadows offer the secret of our power.

At my glummest, I sometimes think women get to choose—between being punished for being unsubjugated and the continual punishment of subjugation. If ideas don't go back in the box, there's still been a huge effort to put women back in their place. Or the place misogynists think we belong in, a place of silence and powerlessness.

You cannot of yourself move your arm or alter your position, situation, posture, do to other men good or evil, or effect the least change in the world.

When I was in jail I could only think about what the average person has to go through - the person who has no power to go to the press or no money to hire a lawyer.

He stood at the edge of town feeling very small, powerless. Night in the mountains could do that to you, reminding you of your place in the world and laughing at any sense of self-importance.

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

Almost all heroism is designed to make you inert by placing it in a context that you can't possibly act on.

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

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

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity.

We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don't control that. If politicians want a war we don't control that. Acts of terrorism, we can't control them.

Op dit moment gaat een tipje van de sluier omhoog die over het hele leven ligt: dat ik altijd en in alles weerloos, machteloos en vervangbaar als een atoom ben en dat alle bewustzijn, alle wil, hoop en vrees alleen maar manifestaties zijn van het mechanisme waarvolgens de menselijke moleculen zich bewegen in de peilloze kosmische materiedamp.

Addictions [...] started out like magical pets, pocket monsters. They did extraordinary tricks, showed you things you hadn't seen, were fun. But came, through some gradual dire alchemy, to make decisions for you. Eventually, they were making your most crucial life-decisions. And they were [...] less intelligent than goldfish.

The state of unregeneracy is a state of impotency.

The silent voices, unheard even in the twentieth century–the prisoners, the institutionalised patients, the casually abused–are silent in the historical record because they had very little influence over their personal fate or their city's shape.