Powerless Quotes - Page 14

• The 'survival of the fittest' is beneficently inevitable; the capitalist is powerless against labor, unless the State . . . steps in, and helps him catch and fleece his victims. The old plea of despotism, that liberty is unsafe, reappears now in the mistaken notion that competition is hostile to labor.

  Ezra Heywood

  Competition, Survival, Liberty

  Ezra Hervey Heywood (1985). “The Collected Works of Ezra H. Heywood”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• People who have had power, when they become powerless, are really tragic.... We just allow ourselves to be conditioned by a society so we become as important as we're supposed to be.

  Maggie Kuhn

  Power, People, Important

  6 Copy quote

• I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.

  Libba Bray

  Powerful, Moments, Imagine

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.235, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not saying we have power over everything in our lives - if that were true, my hair would look so, so different - but I am saying that there's no circumstance in which we are completely powerless.

  Martha Beck

  Inspirational, Hair, Different

  4 Copy quote

• When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dark, Glasses, Confusion

  "Alias Grace". Book by Margaret Atwood, www.nytimes.com. September 1996.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Simple, Light, Hands

  Vladimir Nabokov (1970). “Mary: A Novel”, Vintage Books

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world." (p. 65)

  Howard Zinn

  Party, Reality, Two

  Howard Zinn (2013). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.65, City Lights Books

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are not helpless...Many times in our lives we’ve been powerless, but not this night. Right now we have the power to choose the manner in which we die. If you have been a master of nothing else in all your days, you are now a master of this moment. And I for one am going to give such an answer to this insult that others will dearly regret not being by my side to see it!

  Jeaniene Frost

  Regret, Night, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Believe, Blood, Knowing

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.227, Pan Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't stand clutter, and you have an obsession with orderliness. The furniture in here is centered exactly on the walls; the files on your desk are arranged in precise corners. If I had to guess, I would say you are probably a control freak, and that is usually symptomatic of a man who feels powerless to control his own life, so he tries to control every facet of his surroundings.

  Judith McNaught

  Wall, Men, Trying

  Judith McNaught (2016). “Someone to Watch Over Me: A Novel”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.

  Paulo Freire

  Justice, Weakness, Force

  Paulo Freire (2016). “Pedagogy of the Heart”, p.26, Bloomsbury Publishing

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• We may insist as often as we like that man's intellect is powerless in comparison to his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds.

  Sigmund Freud

  Men, Voice, Weakness

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1961). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.

  Matthew Scully

  Kindness, Character, Animal

  Matthew Scully (2011). “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy”, p.14, Souvenir Press

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Intolerance is evidence of fear, and fear is the consequence of feeling powerless.

  Dean Frazer

  Feelings, Intolerance, Evidence

  6 Copy quote

• There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.

  Molly Ivins

  Powerful, Two, People

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

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• No matter how much control kids get over the media they watch, they are still utterly powerless when it comes to the manufacturing of brands. Even a consumer revolt merely reinforces one's role as a consumer, not an autonomous or creative being.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Kids, Media, Creative

  4 Copy quote

• For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.

  Plato

  Light, Mind, Oracles

  Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.175, Booklassic

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Blood, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Labor is at its best when we are the party of ideas and action - ideas that empower the powerless and actions that build a better Australia for the long term.

  Bill Shorten

  Party, Ideas, Australia

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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man standing alongside the road, shouts, «Where are you going?» and the first man replies, «I don't know! Ask the horse!» This is also our story. We are riding a horse, and we don't know where we are going and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless.

  Nhat Hanh

  Horse, Men, Circles

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2015). “The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation”, p.24, Harmony

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

  Jerome Frank

  Civilization, Quality, Tests

  Jerome Frank (1977). “A man's reach: the philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank”, Greenwood Pub Group

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.

  Mason Cooley

  Power, People, Waiting

  5 Copy quote

• The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point. Poor people do not shut down factories... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits.

  Molly Ivins

  Powerful, People, Scary

  Molly Ivins (2010). “You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You”, p.72, Vintage

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• To lose one's health renders science null, are inglorious, strength unavailing, wealth useless, and eloquence powerless.

  Herophilos

  Health, Null, Useless

  6 Copy quote

• [I] have fantasies of killing myself and thus being the powerful one not the powerless one.

  Anne Sexton

  Suicide, Powerful, Fantasy

  Anne Sexton, Webster's II Dictionaries, Lois Ames (1979). “Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in Letters”, Mariner Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source