Powerless Quotes

• When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.

  Maya Angelou

  Hope, Honesty, Integrity

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• But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

  Lysander Spooner

  Government, Constitution, Cases

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

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• Worry comes from the belief you are powerless.

  Robert Anthony

  Worry, Belief

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• The deep root of failure in our lives is to think, 'Oh how useless and powerless I am.' It is essential to think strongly and forcefully, 'I can do it,' without boasting or fretting.

  Dalai Lama

  Thinking, Roots, Essentials

  16 Copy quote

• Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

  Paulo Freire

  Peace, Honesty, Powerful

  Paulo Freire (1985). “The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation”, p.122, Greenwood Publishing Group

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  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

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• Never feel too small or powerless to make a difference.

  Anita Roddick

  Differences, Making A Difference, Activism

  Anita Roddick (2001). “Take It Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World”, HarperThorsons

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• Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.

  Eric Clapton

  Risk, Trying

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  There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

  Elie Wiesel

  Freedom, Philosophy, Military

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.182, Schocken

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• Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

  Blaise Pascal

  Strength, Umpires, Justice

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Blaise Pascal Thoughts: Selected and Translated”, p.56, Cambridge University Press

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• A man is truly free, even here in this embodied state, if he knows that God is the true agent and he by himself is powerless to do anything.

  Ramakrishna

  Men, Agents, States

  Ramakrishna (1960). “Sayings: The Most Exhaustive Collection of Them, Their Number Being 1120”

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• Unlike a lot of people, I don't feel powerless. I know I can do something. But anyone can do something, it's not about being special. It's about deciding to do it - to dive into work for peace and justice and care for everybody on the planet.

  Patch Adams

  People, Justice, Special

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.

  Rumi

  Love, Happiness, Spiritual

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• Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strength, Peace, War

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.

  E. B. White

  Country, Jobs, Tasks

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• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

  Molly Ivins

  Powerful, Weapons, Satire

  The Mouth of Texas", People Weekly, December 9, 1991.

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• The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

  Vaclav Havel

  Leadership, Powerful, Hero

  "Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala". Book by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson. Chapter 5: "The Politics of Hope", 1990.

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• People feel powerless and useless in the world. But they can buy something. It can give them a sense of value, of power

  Daphne Zuniga

  Power, People, Giving

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• Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?

  Camille Paglia

  Past, Rome, Hopeless

  "Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous Times". Book by Charles Derber, p. 12, 2017.

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• Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.

  Matthew Arnold

  Two, World, Born

  "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" l. 85 (1855)

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• A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet 'for sale', who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society.

  Erich Fromm

  Lonely, Suffering Of Others, Feelings

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Being”, p.90, Open Road Media

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• What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If you feel powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do with as you will.

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Memories, Power, Voice

  Marion Zimmer Bradley (2002). “The Ages of Chaos”, p.38, Penguin

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• You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Patience, Mind, Vex

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1938). “The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci”

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• There have been a number of philosophers who have reveled in the dismantling of truth. I think they did so with good ethical motives, and for good philosophical reasons. I can see the sense in what they were talking about; the idea that truth is often claimed by elites in order to further certain agendas. They crowd-out alternative perspectives - particularly those of the powerless. But the undermining of truth contributed - in the weird, indirect way that philosophy contributes to the culture - to a rejection of the idea of truth as having any kind of proper meaning at all.

  Julian Baggini

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I do not like that I allowed my past to close me off. I do not like that I let circumstances rob me of the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, to have friends, to be happy. I do not like it, but I had felt myself powerless against it.

  Megan Hart

  Past, Men, Normal

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