Powerless Quotes - Page 12

Conspiracy theory is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.

Roger Cohen

World, Conspiracy, Force

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Don't let the politicians chip away at the New Deal and the Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare, that puts a floor beyond which the elderly, the sick, the powerless do not starve or lack for medicine or shelter.

Helen Thomas

Medicine, Elderly, Sick

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Conflicts are fueled by the tendency of the powerful to exploit the power and the anger and frustration of the powerless, which turns into violence. International Solidarity Movement activists are attempting to confront the exploitation of power and to bring back hope to the powerless.

Ghassan Andoni

Powerful, Frustration, Movement

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For where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.

Dante Alighieri

Power, Evil, Defense

Dante Alighieri, John Ciardi (1954). “The inferno”, Signet

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Say, "I can do everything ." "Even if poison of a snake is powerless if you can firmly deny it."

Swami Vivekananda

Inspirational, Motivational, Snakes

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A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don't respect their victimhood, they'll destroy you.

Joseph Sobran

Hypocritical, Victim, Force

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A man's mind should be single to the glory of God in everything that he starts to accomplish. We should consider that of ourselves we can do nothing. We are the children of God. We are in darkness, only as God enlightens our understanding. We are powerless, only as God helps us. The work that we have to do here is of that nature that we cannot do it unless we have the assistance of the Almighty.

Lorenzo Snow

Nature, Children, Men

Lorenzo Snow (1984). “The Teachings of Lorenzo Snow: Fifth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”, Bookcraft Pubs

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Many white people experience themselves as powerless, even in the face of privilege. But the fact is that we all have a sphere of influence, some domain in which we exercise some level of power and control. The task for each of us, White and of color, is to identify what our own sphere of influence is (however large or small) and to consider how it might be used to interrupt the cycle of racism.

Beverly Daniel Tatum

Exercise, Color, White

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To believe in the God over us and around us and not in the God within us - that would be a powerless and fruitless faith.

Phillips Brooks

Believe, Would Be, Belief

Phillips Brooks, John Cotton Brooks (1910). “Sermons: Sermons for the principal festivals and fasts of the church year, ed. by Rev John Cotton Brooks”

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Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

Salman Rushdie

Thinking, Stories, Storytelling

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I feel strongly that Mother Teresa’s life has a great message for young people. We so often feel powerless to do anything about the many problems in the world around us. We are so often left to wonder whether one person can possibly make a difference. Mother Teresa said yes, we can. Her life was resounding proof that it is possible

Craig Kielburger

Mother, Yes We Can, Differences

Craig Kielburger (2010). “Free The Children”, p.64, Greystone Books

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That's why I've come to you, to seek release from a curse of misery and horror against which I'm powerless to fight alone.

Edward T. Lowe, Jr.

Fighting, Misery, Horror

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Given one has before oneself a strong, healthy, youth rich in spirited blood and a powerless, weak, cachectic old man scarcely capable of breathing. If now the physician wishes to practise the rejuvenating art on the latter, he should make silver tubes which fit into each other: open then the artery of the healthy person and introduce one of the tubes into it and fasten it into the artery; thereupon he opens also the artery of the ill person.

Andreas Libavius

Strong, Art, Men

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If you achieve a voice that will be heard, you should use it to speak up for the voiceless and oppressed. If you possess any power or authority, you must strive to use it to help and empower the powerless.

Craig Murray

Voice, Empowering, Use

Craig Murray (2007). “Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough-and-Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror”, p.335, Simon and Schuster

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It is only in times of social dissolution, as in the last age of the small Semitic states, when men and their gods were alike powerless before the advance of the Assyrians, that magical superstitions based on mere terror, or rites designed to conciliate alien gods, invade the sphere of tribal or national religion. In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.

William Robertson Smith

Men, Age, May

William Robertson Smith (1889). “Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions”

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You do not have to love what is going on in your life, but you must accept that it, whatever it is, is going on. As long as you do not accept reality, you are powerless to define the role you will play.

Iyanla Vanzant

Reality, Play, Long

FaceBook post by Iyanla Vanzant from Oct 27, 2016

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Fischer was a master of clarity and a king of artful positioning. His opponents would see where he was going but were powerless to stop him

Bruce Pandolfini

Kings, Opponents, Chess

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The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining-it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process.

Paul Clark

Struggle, Skills, Unions

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A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

William James

Family, Power, Men

William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.67, Harvard University Press

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Animal liberation is also human liberation. Animal liberationists care about the quality of life for all. We recognize our kinship with all feeling beings. We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable, the victims, all those dominated, oppressed and exploited. And it is the non-human animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned of all.

Henry Spira

Animal, Feelings, Suffering

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Don't blame anyone or anything for your situation or problems. When you do that, you are saying that you are powerless over your own life—which is utter crap. An empowering step to reclaiming your life is taking responsibility.

Jillian Michaels

Motivational, Responsibility, Empowering

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In some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.

Joseph Conrad

Regret, Hate, Heart

Joseph Conrad (1999). “Heart of Darkness - Second Edition”, p.71, Broadview Press

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Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

Clive James

Change, People, Television

Clive James (1983). “Glued to the box: television criticism from the Observer, 1979-82”, Jonathan Cape

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As a form of moral insurance, at least, literature is much more dependable than a system of beliefs or a philosophical doctrine. Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material suppression of literature - the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books - we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: that of not reading the books. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is a nation, it pays with its history.

Joseph Brodsky

Philosophical, Reading, Book

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Powerful people never educate powerless people in what they need that they can use to take the power away from powerful people; it's too much to expect. If I was in power, I would not educate people in how to take my powers away.

Dr. John

Powerful, People, African American

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