Powerless Quotes - Page 8

• Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Fall, Arms

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3594, Delphi Classics

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• When we think of a criminal, we imagine someone with criminal motives. And when we look at Eichmann, he doesn't actually have any criminal motives. Not what is usually understood by "criminal motives." He wanted to go along with the rest. He wanted to say "we," and going-along-with-the-rest and wanting-to-say-we like this were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible. The Hitlers, after all, really aren't the ones who are typical in this kind of situation--they'd be powerless without the support of others.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Support, Typical

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• To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.

  Audre Lorde

  Motivation, Reality, Self

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• The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Powerful, Light, Revolution

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I would urge you to give priority to the search for God. Allow his spirit to permeate your being. ... If you do not have a deep and patient faith in God, you will be powerless to face the delays, disappointments, and vicissitudes that inevitably come.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Disappointment, Giving, Priorities

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• Our founders understood that divine authority was necessary in order to establish a ground on which the weak, the defenseless, the powerless, the poor and the wretched would be able to stand, in the face of every human power whatsoever, and demand respect for their human rights and dignity.

  Alan Keyes

  Rights, Order, Would Be

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• When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating that amazing time when the Word that shouted all the galaxies into being limited all power and, for love of us, came to us in the powerless body of a human baby.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Baby, Body, Celebrate

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• Despite billions of Sun, the universe is still in darkness! The wisdom of light is yet powerless!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Light, Darkness, Sun

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• The more you care about the powerless, the more power you have. The more you serve those with no influence, the more influence God gives you. The more you humble yourself, the more you're honored by others.

  Rick Warren

  Humble, Giving, Care

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• In that way, as an actor in particular, you're powerless. And so in that way as an actor in particular you can't make mistakes.

  Jake Gyllenhaal

  Mistake, Actors, Way

  "10 Years After 'Brokeback,' Jake Gyllenhaal Remembers Heath Ledger: "Way Beyond His Years as a Human"". Interview with Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 25, 2015.

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• ... True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger; but in feeding one child, we protest against hunger. True, we are too timid and powerless to take on all the guards of all the political prisons in the world; but in offering our solidarity to one prisoner we denounce all the tormentors. True, we are powerless against death; but as long as we help one man, one woman, one child live one hour longer in safety and dignity, we affirm man's [woman's] right to live.

  Elie Wiesel

  Children, Men, Offering

  Elie Wiesel (1993). “Sages and Dreamers: Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Portraits and Legends”, Touchstone Books

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• Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.

  Claude Debussy

  Shadow, Want, Return

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• Throughout our world the cry of the poor so often goes unheard. The prophets harangued Israel and Judah unceasingly about the powerless and marginalized, the overlooked widows, orphans, and "sojourners in our midst," who are still with us today as single mothers, hungry children, and helpless immigrants, wraiths invisible in our prosperous societies.

  Thomas Cahill

  Mother, Children, Our World

  Thomas Cahill (2010). “The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels”, p.252, Anchor

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• It is an anomaly that we can split the atom, but we are nearly powerless to persuade each other to embrace justice.

  Gerry Spence

  Justice, Atoms, Anomalies

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• I don't want any special powers. I'm powerless. I wouldn't want to see into the future, I wouldn't want to know what anyone was thinking, ever! And I don't want to relive my past.

  Nikki Reed

  Past, Thinking, Special

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection - children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren't nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Gun, Empowerment

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strength, Strong, Self

  Mahatma Gandhi (1969). “Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi”

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• I think a woman is powerless if she cannot freely claim the right to her reproductive capacity. Society can talk about anything it likes, except a woman's reproductive existence.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Thinking, Likes, Claims

  "'Our Sassy Black Friend' Jamaica Kincaid". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. January/February 2013.

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• And when you realize that you form the events of your life in the same way, you will learn to take hold of your entire consciousness in whatever aspect it shows itself in this life. Through all of this you must realize that you are not powerless. Remember, also, that this life is a dimension of experience and reality even if it is, in contrast, a dream in a higher level of reality in which you have your larger consciousness.

  Seth

  Dream, Reality, Levels

  Jane Roberts, Seth (1972). “Seth speaks: the eternal validity of the soul”, Bookthrift Co

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• A powerless church has nothing for the devil to counterfeit.

  Bill Johnson

  Church, Devil, Counterfeit

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• Christianity is fundamentally convalescence.. .God is not only the doctor who prescribes, He is the nurse who lifts up our powerless head and puts the spoon in our mouth...And He is the medicine.

  John Piper

  Doctors, Medicine, Nurse

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• Public radio has always been so powerless.

  Bob Edwards

  Radio, Public Radio

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• The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.

  Carol Shields

  Moving, Voice, Scolding

  Carol Shields (2008). “The Stone Diaries: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.8, Penguin

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• No matter how frustrated you may feel, there is always a way out. In every situation that arises, we choose to be powerful or powerless. It may not always feel like it, but it is a choice. And there are consequences for these choices in terms of the results we get, and the subsequent increase or decrease in our power and influence. If we choose powerlessness, it is often because we doubt there is any other option.

  Blaine Lee Pardoe

  Powerful, Choices, Frustrated

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• 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.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Power, Majority, Minorities

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

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