Helplessness Quotes

• It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail.

  Lech Walesa

  Frustration, Frustrated, Bitterness

  Lech Walesa's Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1983.

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• The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Life, Lonely, Loneliness

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• If I look at the mass I will never act.

  Mother Teresa

  Apathy, Looks, Storytelling

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• Helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God with greater effect than all your uttered pleas.

  Ole Hallesby

  Prayer, Heart, Effects

  Ole Hallesby (1975). “Prayer”, Augsburg Fortress Publishing

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• Never underestimate the power of helplessness!

  Marilyn French

  Weakness, Underestimate, Never Underestimate

  Marilyn French (2013). “The Bleeding Heart: A Novel”, p.109, Open Road Media

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• It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart.

  Jack Kornfield

  Song, Prayer, Pain

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• There is no such thing as helplessness. It's just another word for giving up.

  Jefferson Smith

  Giving Up, Giving

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• One of the biggest defects in life is the inability to ask for help.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Inability, Helping, Life Is

  Twitter post from Apr 23, 2014

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• The utter helplessness of a conquered people is perhaps the most tragic feature of a civil war or any other sort of war.

  Rebecca Latimer Felton

  War, Hippie, People

  Rebecca Latimer Felton (1919). “Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth: Also Addresses Before Georgia Legislature Woman's Clubs, Women's Organizations and Other Noted Occasions”

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• As long as you feel your own weakness and helplessness, you will find help from above.

  John Wesley

  Long, Weakness, Helping

  John Wesley (1924). “Sayings and Portraits of John Wesley”

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• You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don't, you experience a sense of helplessness, paralysis, and depression-which is your clue that something is not working as it could. You, like all of us, deserve everything that is wonderful and exciting in life. And those feelings emerge only when you get in touch with your powerful self.

  Susan Jeffers

  Depression, Powerful, Self

  Susan Jeffers (2014). “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway”, p.48, Random House

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• The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims.

  Henri Nouwen

  Healing, Thinking, Our World

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• To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain.

  Howard Cutler

  Pain, Loneliness, Buddhism

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• Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Heart, Motherhood, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.159, A&C Black

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• Anger is a passion, so it makes people feel alive and makes them feel they matter and are in charge of their lives. So people often need to renew their anger a long time after the cause of it has died, because it is a protection against helplessness and emptiness just like howling in the night. And it makes them feel less vulnerable for a little while.

  Merle Shain

  Anger, Passion, Night

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• If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

  Frank Herbert

  Wise, Thinking, Government

  Frank Herbert (2017). “The Dosadi Experiment and The Eyes of Heisenberg: Two Classic Works of Science Fiction”, p.107, Tor Science Fiction

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• Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only he who is helpless can truly pray. Your helplessness is your best. prayer.

  Ole Hallesby

  Prayer, Praying, Inseparable

  Ole Hallesby (1975). “Prayer”, Augsburg Fortress Publishing

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• Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Motivational Sports, Giving Up, Matter

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• The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members

  Pearl S. Buck

  Inspiring, Civilization, Society

  My Several Worlds pt. 4 (1954) See Ramsey Clark 1; Dostoyevski 1; Humphrey 3; Samuel Johnson 69; Helen Keller 4

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• I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

  Samuel Beckett

  Asking For Help, Tone, Helping

  Samuel Beckett (1967). “Stories & Texts for Nothing”, p.62, Grove Press

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• Helplessness is the real secret and the impelling power of prayer.

  Ole Hallesby

  Prayer, Real, Secret

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• The very thing that most qualifies us to pray is our helplessness.

  David Jeremiah

  Praying

  Dr. David Jeremiah (2013). “The Prayer Matrix: Plugging into the Unseen Reality”, p.59, Multnomah

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• Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.

  Blaise Pascal

  Loneliness, Passion, Men

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• Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  War, Loss, Issues

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• The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult's reaction to the helplessness which he has to acknowledge - a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion.

  Sigmund Freud

  Adults, Defense, Characteristics

  Sigmund Freud (1973). “Abstracts of the Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud”

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