Helplessness Quotes - Page 7

• In America idea of freedom isn't actually about freedom. That's about power. The point of an artist is to find out what are the flavors that I must work with. Finding one's freedom is about surrendering to your helplessness.

  Chris Martin

  Artist, Ideas, America

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• All that Ruby said was so horribly true, she was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only. She had lived solely for the little things of life, the things that pass, forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing of one dwelling to the other. From twilight to unclouded day. ...it was no wonder her soul clung in blind helplessness to the only things she knew and loved.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Twilight, Two, Dwelling

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• The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her.

  Francis Thompson

  Family, Mother, Loneliness

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• Charlie Chaplin said something to the effect that humor is an act of defiance, that we must laugh in the face of our helplessness in the forces of nature or go insane. And where is he now? Dead.

  Doug Stanhope

  Laughing, Insane, Faces

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• What they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small... and you will escape the jealousy of the great.

  Philip K. Dick

  Men, Unseen, Doe

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.43, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today.

  Alfred Delp

  Song, Reality, Self

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• Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strong, Fighting, Violence

  Speech as the official date for Indian independence approached, June 16, 1947.

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• Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in the face of failure. I believe that optimistic explanatory style is the key to persistence.

  Martin Seligman

  Giving Up, Believe, Failure

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.162, Vintage

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• Let the church come to God in the strength of a perfect weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-like confidence, and then, either she has no strength, and has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite. Then and thus, will she stretch out the rod over the seas of difficulty that lie before her, and the waters shall divide, and she shall pass through, and sing the song of deliverance.

  Mark Hopkins

  Song, Children, Lying

  Adam Reid, Benjamin Wood, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Henry Brewster Stanton, Laurens Perseus Hickok (1850). “Strength and beauty: A baccalaureate sermon, delivered at Williamstown, Ms. August 17, 1851”

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• Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.

  Arundhati Roy

  Gratitude, Thinking, Giving

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”, p.136, Penguin Books India

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• So the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding scourged and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness

  Peter Weiss

  Bleeding, Bread, Christ

  Peter Weiss (1998). “Marat/Sade ; The Investigation ; and The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman”, p.60, A&C Black

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• This is not the time for political fun and games. This is the time for a new beginning. I ask you now to put aside any feelings of frustration or helplessness about our political institutions and join me in this dramatic but responsible plan to reduce the enormous burden of Federal taxation on you and your family.

  Ronald Reagan

  Fun, New Beginnings, Frustration

  Reagan, Ronald (1982). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981”, p.668, Best Books on

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• I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.

  Romain Gary

  Mother, Dream, Inspiration

  Romain Gary (1987). “Promise at Dawn”, p.19, New Directions Publishing

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• If you are sure that you are about to fail, then this strange and serene calmness can come over you or the most abject fear and panic and feeling of helplessness.

  Peter Gallagher

  Over You, Feelings, Panic

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• The optimistic style of explaining good events is the opposite of that used for bad events: It's internal rather than external.

  Martin Seligman

  Optimistic, Opposites, Style

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.92, Vintage

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• It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that's all it would take to make them whole again.

  Sarah Addison Allen

  Two, People, World

  Sarah Addison Allen (2011). “The Peach Keeper: A Novel”, p.209, Bantam

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• Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.

  Martin Seligman

  Practice, Despair, Causes

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.86, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

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• I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?

  Justina Chen

  Dad, Eggs, Firsts

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• Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Adults, Tiny

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• Another person is, at the heart of it, unknowable. And if you cannot know a person enough to always guess what they’re capable of, you certainly cannot know them enough to hold them in your hands, to control their behavior, to fight, manipulate, cajole or nurse or soothe them into doing what they should or shouldn’t. People will do what they will do. The trick is admitting your own helplessness about that little fact.

  Deb Caletti

  Heart, Fighting, Hands

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• In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane

  Charlie Chaplin

  Attitude, Laughing, Tragedy

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• People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances.

  Martin Seligman

  Believe, People, Causes

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.92, Vintage

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• Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning I am not here to tell you that defeat is a part of life: we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in the realm of love that we fight our first battles – and generally lose. I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought. They managed to avoid scars, humiliations, feelings of helplessness, as well as those moments when even warriors doubt the existence of God.’’ Manuscript Found In Accra – Paulo Coelho

  Paulo Coelho

  Fighting, Warrior, Winning

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• You're people, in short, who must be stupid, insane, or evil to continue arguing in the face of indisputable facts and irrefutable logic that others must be forced into a state of helplessness and victimized by individual criminals or the state. Stupid, insane, or evil.

  L. Neil Smith

  Stupid, People, Evil

  "Murder by Gun Control". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. March 31, 2000.

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• A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate...is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Fate

  Pearl S. Buck (2013). “My Several Worlds: A Personal Record”, p.69, Open Road Media

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