Powerless Quotes - Page 10

Without doubt one is allowed to resist against the unjust aggressor to one's life, one's goods or one's physical integrity; sometimes, even 'til the aggressor's death... In fact, this act is aimed at preserving one's life or one's goods and to make the aggressor powerless. Thus, it is a good act, which is the right of the victim.

Thomas Aquinas

Integrity, Gun, Doubt

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Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

Henry David Thoreau

Giving Up, Fear, War

Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.11, Hayes Barton Press

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It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

A. C. Benson

Overcoming, Helping, Sometimes

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The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help they have no hope.

Russell Brand

Drinking, Addiction, Alcohol

"My life without drugs" by Russell Brand, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2013.

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It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing?

Russell Brand

Lying, People, Drunk

"Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery". Book by Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader, www.npr.org. August 23, 2016.

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There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

Chinua Achebe

Thinking, Allies, Moral

Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.50, Penguin

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She knew, of course that she was being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she ever had- he was intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good-but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence, defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength

Milan Kundera

Intelligent, Men, Handsome

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Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.

Philip Pullman

Names, Law, Forgiving

Philip Pullman (2009). “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ”, p.88, Canongate Books

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She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.

Paolo Giordano

Girl, Effort, Curiosity

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If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

J. K. Rowling

Powerful, Reality, Voice

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Life needed a fast forward button. Because there were days you just don't want to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it.

Sara Zarr

Buttons, Want, Faces

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At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.

Robert Walser

Suffering, Weakness, Misery

Robert Walser (2012). “Berlin Stories”, p.119, New York Review of Books

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In the first place, you shouldn't believe in promises. The world is full of them: the promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead, as, I suspect is your case. Those who make promises they don't keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the fate awaits those who believe promises.

Paulo Coelho

Believe, Fate, Thinking

Paulo Coelho (2009). “The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation”, p.10, Harper Collins

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Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

Inspirational, Patience, Hurt

Leonardo (da Vinci) (1957). “Notebooks”

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Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.

Erich Fromm

Powerful, Men, Machines

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I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, and have made, in a curious way, the worst of both.

Aldous Huxley

Two, World, Way

Aldous Huxley (1970). “Letters of Aldous Huxley”

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Those in powerless positions aren't about to complain about bullying bosses, abusive supervisors or corrupt co-workers. There is no safe way to do so and no process that promises redress.

Margaret Heffernan

Bullying, Boss, Promise

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I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

Michael Eric Dyson

Real, Responsibility, Thinking

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I suspect most politicians feel overwhelmed because people's lives are a real struggle, full of unhappiness, and you would probably feel powerless to do anything about it.

Jo Brand

Real, Struggle, People

"Jo Brand: If the Tories are re-elected in 2015, it could be the end of the NHS" by Rachael Bletchly, www.mirror.co.uk. June 14, 2013.

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Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Henri Nouwen

Lonely, Hurt, Pain

Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

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I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the spirit. They are nothing but vicious animals. They are greedy, self-indulgent, predatory dollar-chasers

Ayn Rand

Believe, Animal, Men

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In loneliness, in sickness, in confusion-the mere knowledge of friendship makes it possible to endure, even if the friend is powerless to help. It is enough that they exist. Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots most deeply. It is from these things that it flowers.

Pam Brown

Friendship, War, Distance

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They're just words is all. Powerless. Vocabulary. Dialogue.

Chuck Palahniuk

Vocabulary, Dialogue

Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

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It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.

James A. Baldwin

Suicidal, Mean, Ideas

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No one must ever let power or social, economic, or political interest turn him or her away from other human beings, from the attention they deserve and the respect they are entitled to. nothing must ever lead to a person to compromise this principle or faith in favor of a political strategy aimed at saving or protecting a community from some peril. The freely offered, sincere heart of a poor, powerless individual is worth a thousand times more in the sight of God than the assiduously courted, self-interested heart of a rich one.

Tariq Ramadan

Heart, Sight, Self

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