Powerlessness Quotes - Page 3

• The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Powerful, Guides, Maxims

  Elizabeth Janeway (1981). “Powers of the weak”, William Morrow & Co

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• Everything is chance, or nothing is chance. If I believed the first, I would be unable to live on, but I am not yet fully convinced of the second.

  Etty Hillesum

  Destiny, Luck, Would Be

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.62, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Comfort, West

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.85, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The people of Earth are emerging from an amnesiac-like state of collective shock, which has blocked the influx of spiritual knowledge into the human gene pool. And while it is quite obvious to many that “You create your reality”, the vast majority of humans still need to be awakened from the unconsciously controlled trance of powerlessness that they voluntarily took on.

  Barbara Marciniak

  Spiritual, Reality, People

  Barbara Marciniak (2010). “Path of Empowerment: New Pleiadian Wisdom for a World in Chaos”, p.22, New World Library

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• It angers me that sick people have to wait for everything and everybody - doctors, nurses, callbacks, lab results, prescriptions, medications, technicians, treatment rooms. If illness is the embodiment of powerlessness, which, believe me, is true, then waiting is its temporal incarnation.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Believe, Doctors, Nurse

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (2013). “How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick”, p.16, PublicAffairs

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• As Joanna Macy reminds us, "Information by itself can increase resistance [to engagement], deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness." Stories about particular individuals and specific situations usually have the opposite effect. By giving unwieldy problems a human face, they also bring them down to a human-and thus manageable-scale.

  Paul Rogat Loeb

  Opposites, Giving, Environmental

  Paul Rogat Loeb (2010). “Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times”, p.127, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Theres simply anger over the accountability that Yelp brings and also this feeling of powerlessness because so much power is now being put in the hands of the consumer. But the important thing that gets lost with some of these business owners who are very upset with us is its the whole picture that counts.

  Jeremy Stoppelman

  Hands, Accountability, Upset

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• The idea that money brings power and independence is an illusion. What money usually brings is the need for more money - and there is a shabby and pathetic powerlessness that comes with that need. The inability to risk new lives, new work, new styles of thought and experience, is more often than not tied to the bourgeois fear of reducing one's material standard of living. That is, indeed, to be owned by possessions, to be governed by a sense of property rather than by a sense of self.

  Vivian Gornick

  Money, Self, Ideas

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• A child who's been injured by a parent waits her whole life for some acknowledgment of the wrong that's been done, some validation from him that her pain is real, that he's sorry and will make amends. The child will wait forever, unable to move forward, unable to forgive, without someone to acknowledge the past. In that powerlessness comes a terrible rage.

  Lisa Unger

  Children, Sorry, Pain

  Lisa Unger (2010). “Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger: Beautiful Lies, Sliver of Truth, Black Out, Die for You”, p.747, Crown

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• The crisis of the church is not at its deepest level a crisis of authority, or a crisis of dogmatic theology. It is a crisis of powerlessness in which our sole recourse is to call on the help and inward power of the Holy Spirit.

  James K. Baxter

  Christian, Church, Inward

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• Doubt is most often the source of our powerlessness. To doubt is to be faithless, to be without hope or belief. When we doubt, our self-talk sounds like this: 'I don't think I can. I don't think I will.'... To doubt is to have faith in the worst possible outcome. It is to believe in the perverseness of the universe, that even if I do well, something I don't know about will get in the way, sabotage me, or get me in the end.

  Blaine Lee Pardoe

  Motivational, Believe, Thinking

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• At this time of crisis we cannot be concerned solely with ourselves, withdrawing into loneliness, discouragement and a sense of powerlessness in the face of problems. Please do not withdraw into yourselves! This is a danger: we shut ourselves up in the parish, with our friends, within the movement, with the like-minded... but do you know what happens? When the Church becomes closed, she becomes an ailing Church, she falls ill! That is a danger. . . .A Church closed in on herself is the same, a sick Church.

  Pope Francis

  Loneliness, Fall, Sick

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• The Lord, before His Incarnation, let mankind experience all the bitterness of sin, all their powerlessness to eradicate it; and when all longed for a Deliverer, then He appeared, the most wise, all-powerful Physician and Helper. When men hungered and thirsted after righteousness, as it grew weaker, then the everlasting righteousness came.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Wise, Powerful

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• it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

  Jane Jacobs

  Fighting, People, Succeed

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• You can make the best of it and be content, or you can complain, it makes no difference. What does it matter that human beings judge the things that exist?

  Franz Grillparzer

  Differences, Judging, Doe

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• New York has a tremendous number of people but the quality of its politics is unspeakable. By contrast, in a smaller township, I find there's a great deal of social awareness, less of a sense of powerlessness, less of a polarization of economic life.

  Murray Bookchin

  New York, Numbers, People

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• "Ocean" is more about ... powerlessness and hopelessness. When we're very small we can't actually do anything - we have no say in what happens, we have no money or resources, we sometimes have no idea what's going on.

  Neil Gaiman

  Ocean, Ideas, Sometimes

  "Neil Gaiman interview: The year of living crazily". Interview with David Barnett, www.independent.co.uk. June 9, 2013.

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• We call upon people everywhere to work for peace, to forget the quiet comfort of their homes, to leave behind their fears and feeling of powerlessness, their privileges and possessions, and join us as active participants and co-workers for peace.

  Petra Kelly

  Home, People, Feelings

  Petra Karin Kelly (1984). “Fighting for Hope”, p.74, South End Press

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• I was always face to face with total futility and powerlessness.

  Vanessa Veselka

  Futility

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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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• he very word "patient" implies passivity and powerlessness. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you-patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me.

  Andrew Saul

  Teacher, Doctors, Voters

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• The part of you that is unhampered by illusion-the illusion of time, the illusion of powerlessness, the illusion of impossibility-i s waiting for you to slow down and open up so that it can speak to your consciousness. In some unguarded moment, you will hear its wildly improbable words and know that they are guiding you home.

  Martha Beck

  Home, Waiting, Down And

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• I don't want to say that having power is overrated, but powerlessness can give rise to a different kind of authority, and that's the kind of authority that writes books.

  Matthew Specktor

  Book, Writing, Giving

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth.  Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary.

  Brennan Manning

  Powerful, Sight, Nerd

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• Man is constantly being assured that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. ... If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Odds, Organization

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