Impotence Quotes - Page 2

• In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Differences, Heaven

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.54, Harvard University Press

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• It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Money, Sick, Wealth

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• at least if you were ignorant you could do wat you wanted. you had no idea wat had been acheived in the past. you were free instead of chewed at by bleeding impotence, dissolved away like a pearl in acid

  Janet Fitch

  Past, Ideas, Ignorant

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• Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Revenge, Men, Desire

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

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• A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

  Aldous Huxley

  Solitude, Purpose, Excess

  Peter Edgerly Firchow, Aldous Huxley (1984). “The end of Utopia: a study of Aldous Huxley's Brave new world”, Bucknell Univ Pr

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• [Man] is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things—property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobile are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know—that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.

  John Steinbeck

  Art, Jobs, Animal

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.89, Penguin

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• If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

  Albert Camus

  Regret, Significant, Myth Of Sisyphus

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.18, Vintage

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• Nearly always, so as to live at peace with ourselves, we disguise our own impotence and weakness as calculation and policy; it is our way of placating that half of our being which is in a sense a spectator of the other.

  Benjamin Constant

  Weakness, Half, Way

  Benjamin Constant (2006). “Adolphe”, p.49, Penguin UK

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• Violence is an expression of impotence.

  Hannah Arendt

  Expression, Violence

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• Look at countries like China, they are determined to dominate all clean technology areas, putting lots of money into wind, solar, electric vehicles and battery storage. America's political impotence, caused by their terrible partisanship, will see them left behind.

  Malcolm Turnbull

  Country, Technology, Wind

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

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• No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Strength, Men, Sloth

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• As long as you don't make waves, ripples, life seems easy. But that's condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead.

  Jeanne Moreau

  Long, Wave, Easy

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• We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic.

  John Stossel

  Thinking, Errors, People

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• It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

  Eric Hoffer

  Spring, Winning, Power

  "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms". Book by Eric Hoffer. Section 42, 1955.

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• To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.

  Honore de Balzac

  Money, Gold, Add

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• Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?" "Yes, sir, it has." "Then why do you do it?" "To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.

  Joseph Heller

  Trying, Pursuit, Subconscious

  Joseph Heller, Robert M. Scotto (1973). “Joseph Heller's Catch-22: A Critical Edition”

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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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• Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

  Audre Lorde

  Communication, Ignorance, Names

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.130, Crossing Press

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• As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Spiritual, Atheist, Evil

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo”, p.33, Vintage

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• I'm just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.

  John Green

  Voice, Glory, Neediness

  John Green, David Levithan (2010). “Will Grayson, Will Grayson”, p.100, Penguin

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• I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

  John Fowles

  Effort, Green, Cynicism

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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• The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

  Ayn Rand

  Intellectual, Liberty, Argument

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.56, Penguin

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• We live in the shadow of crime with the unspoken understanding that we are victims.. of fear, of violence, of social impotence. A man has risen to show us that the power is, ans always has been, in our hands. We are under siege. He's showing us that we can resist.

  Frank Miller

  Men, Hands, Understanding

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• We live by action—by acting on desire. Those of us who don't know how to want—whether geniuses or beggars—are related by impotence.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Desire, Acting, Genius

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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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