Powerlessness Quotes - Page 4

• ... there's a large core of powerlessness which is balanced against the unwritten contract that says that if you behave, you'll be okay. No wonder people pay so much attention to knowing the rules, to knowing the right people, to not making waves, to never making errors -- to not risking, trying, innovating.

  Judith M Bardwick

  Knowing, Errors, People

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• A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person

  Haruki Murakami

  States, Persons, Aomame

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84: Books 1 and 2”, p.146, Random House

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• I hope that other women can benefit from my experience. Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action... It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options. Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

  Angelina Jolie

  Strong, Cancer, Heart

  "My Medical Choice" by Angelina Jolie, www.nytimes.com. May 14, 2013.

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• ...Jews must learn to say without excuse, without equivocation: despite our history and our powerlessness in the past, despite allthe injustices that we have endured--today, now, the Palestinians are the victims of oppression, and their oppressors are the Israelis.

  Irena Klepfisz

  Past, Today, Injustice

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• You saw me vacillating between error and truth, loving them equally because unable to distinguish the one from the other; the hour marked out by God for my enlightenment has come: He has shown me the powerlessness of reason, and the necessity of faith.

  Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

  Errors, Enlightenment, Saws

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• What we really need to understand here is that it`s all about power. This is where the surge is coming from for Bernie Sanders. In some ways, it`s a very different - it`s a different surge, but it`s coming out of the same sort of sense of fundamental powerlessness and anger and frustration for Donald Trump.

  Robert Reich

  Frustration, Different, Needs

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• The entrepreneurial life is one of challenge, work, dedication, perseverance, exhilaration, agony, accomplishment, failure, sacrifice, control, powerlessness…but ultimately, extraordinary satisfaction.

  David S. Rose

  Perseverance, Sacrifice, Dedication

  "Dieter F. Uchtdorf's address at the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". Interview with Martin Zwilling, www.forbes.com. May 9, 2011.

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• We must now surrender to the obligation to understand and to care. We must surrender ourselves to becoming conscious, thinking members of the human race. We must put down the temptation to powerlessness and surrender to the questions of the moment.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Knowledge, Thinking, Race

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• Sexism is discounting the female experience of powerlessness; the new sexism is discounting the male experience of powerlessness.

  Warren Farrell

  Males, Female, Sexism

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

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• Complaining is never powerful because at the root of a complaint is powerlessness

  Dennis Prager

  Powerful, Roots, Complaining

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• Girls learn to love and have sexual feelings in a position of low status, and the eroticization of powerlessness is a normal part of the construction of femininity.

  Sheila Jeffreys

  Girl, Feelings, Normal

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• Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.

  Arundhati Roy

  Gratitude, Thinking, Giving

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”, p.136, Penguin Books India

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• We can decrease abuse and murder when we get that for both sexes, abuse does not derive from power, but powerlessness.

  Warren Farrell

  Sex, Abuse, Doe

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• Our love for children is so immediate in part because we feel their powerlessness immediately; conversely, part of the way we deny our love for men is by denying men's powerlessness. Too often we have confused love for men with respect for them, especially for their power to take care of us - which is really just love for ourselves.

  Warren Farrell

  Children, Confused, Men

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

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• Poverty is not only about income poverty, it is about the deprivation of economic and social rights, insecurity, discrimination, exclusion and powerlessness. That is why human rights must not be ignored but given even greater prominence in times of economic crisis.

  Irene Khan

  Rights, Insecurity, Income

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• To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.

  William James

  Effort, Spirit, Impossible

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.336, Simon and Schuster

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• All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

  Erica Jong

  Believe, Comforting, Might

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.281, Open Road Media

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• For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Men, Years, Feelings

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.437, A&C Black

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• Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.

  Peter Singer

  Needs, Poverty, States

  Peter Singer (2010). “The Life You Can Save: How to play your part in ending world poverty”, p.6, Pan Macmillan

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• their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.

  Mark Helprin

  Animal, Wind, Imagination

  Mark Helprin (1989). “Winter's Tale”, Pocket Books

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• If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Rhonda Byrne

  Believe, People, Separation

  Rhonda Byrne (2011). “The Secret”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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• Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness

  Adrienne Rich

  Ignorance, Keys, Biology

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.134, W. W. Norton & Company

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• You know, 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein said everything had changed since the atom was split, except the way we think. We have to think anew.

  Studs Terkel

  Thinking, Atoms, Splits

  "Voice of America". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. March 1, 2002.

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• Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

  David Foster Wallace

  Meaningful, Kissing, Dope

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• The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.

  Ralph Nader

  Years, People, Democracy

  Ralph Nader (2000). “The Ralph Nader Reader”, p.9, Seven Stories Press

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