Helpless Quotes - Page 18

• There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor skills, blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue - the mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting, because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can’t control it.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Loss, Men, Skills

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• Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination.

  Arthur Koestler

  Cutting, Reality, Imagination

  "A Challenge to 'Knights in Rusty Armor". The New York Times, February 14, 1943.

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• A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Book, Men, Years

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Character, Russia, People

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" by Wilhelm Reich, (Preface to the Third Edition), August 1942.

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• Both men and women are conceived as merely capable of response to a situation that their society has already defined for them as sexual, and so the Arapesh feel that it is necessary to chaperon betrothed couples who are too young... with their definition of sex as a response to an external situation rather than as spontaneous desire, both men and women are regarded as helpless in the face of seduction. Parents warn their sons even more than they warn their daughters against permitting themselves to get into situations in which someone can make love to them.

  Margaret Mead

  Daughter, Sex, Couple

  "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies". Book by Margaret Mead, 1935.

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• It is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper.

  Plutarch

  Winning, Men, Coward

  Plutarch (2012). “Parallel Lives - Complete”, p.354, Simon and Schuster

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• Deceiving world, that with alluring toysHast made my life the subject of thy scorn,And scornest now to lend thy fading joys,T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn;How well are they that die ere they be born,And never see thy sleights, which few men shunTill unawares they helpless are undone!

  Robert Greene

  Men, Joy, Fading

  Robert Greene (1977). “The poetry of Robert Greene”

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• Naked girls with the heads of Marx and Malraux prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights, tried to give them a little joie de vivre but maybe it didn't take, their constant bickering and smallness, it's like a stroke of lightning, the world reminds you of its power, tracheotomies right and left, I am spinning, my pretty child, don't scratch, pick up your feet, the long nights, spent most of my time listening, this is a test of the system, this is only a test.

  Donald Barthelme

  Girl, Children, Night

  Donald Barthelme (1981). “Sixty stories”, Putnam Adult

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• Though you are weak and frail, though you are poor and helpless, God does not despise you; but would glorify your being with His own, and raise you to fellowship with Himself.

  George C. Lorimer

  Doe, Fellowship, Poor

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 247), 1895.

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• Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human component of the state, seeing its citizens only as a faceless, mindless -- and helpless -- mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its very life-blood.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Government, Blood, Tyrants

  Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). “Freedom from fear: and other writings”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Humans are born, small, weak and helpless. That's why we have family. And the elders of the family are the honoured guardians of our country's history. Unfortunately, in America, we, you know, lock those elders away out of view in nursing homes and go about our little lives. It's a great national shame and an irredeemable tragedy. Oh well.

  Christopher Titus

  Country, Home, Nursing

  "Grandma Titus". "Titus" (TV Series), www.imdb.com. 2002.

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• Humans are born, weak and helpless. We're cursed with natural predators called parents. That's why the grandma was created. To protect us. Oh sure, she's old and frail. But she can kick your dad's ass.

  Christopher Titus

  Dad, Grandma, Parent

  "Titus", www.imdb.com. 2000-2002.

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• Intellectuals resist faith longer because they can: where ordinary people are helpless before the light, intellectuals are clever enough to spin webs of darkness around their minds and hide in them. That's why only Ph.D.s believe any of the 100 most absurd ideas in the world such as Absolute Relativism, or the Objective Truth of Subjectivism, of the Meaningfulness of Meaninglessness and the Meaninglessness of Meaning, which is the best definition of Deconstructionism I know.

  Peter Kreeft

  Clever, Believe, Light

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• We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Needs, Firsts

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.248, Shambhala Publications

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• If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs ...[they] are an obligation put on us, a responsibility we have no right to neglect, nor to violate by cruelty.

  James Herriot

  Loyalty, Gratitude, Children

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• It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I fought most strongly: feelings that made me experience myself as shabby, petty, mean, helpless, humiliated, demanding, resentful or confused, and above all, sad and lonely. It was precisely through these experiences, which I had shunned for so long, that I became certain that I now understood something about my life, stemming from the core of my being, something that I could not have learned from any book.

  Alice Miller

  Beautiful, Lonely, Confused

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• They call war an art, but it isn't. It largely consists in outwitting people, robbing widows and orphans, and inflicting suffering on the helpless for one's own ends - and that's not art: that's business.

  Kenneth Roberts

  Art, War, Widows And Orphans

  Kenneth Roberts (1947). “Lydia Bailey”

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• All people are born creative. And there's nobody who's helpless, nobody.

  Barbara Marx Hubbard

  People, Creative, Born

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

  Laurence Sterne

  Fire, Ignorant, Matter

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• for man, woman, and child the tender, irregular, sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. ... nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked foot.

  Alice Meynell

  Children, Eye, Men

  Alice Meynell (2013). “The Essential Alice Meynell Collection”, p.452, eBookIt.com

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• A refugee is as helpless as a new born child - but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories!

  Phyllis Bottome

  Children, Memories, Born

  Phyllis Bottome (1954). “The Secret Stair”

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• Almighty Power, by whose most wise command, helpless, forlorn, uncertain, here I stand, take this faint glimmer of thyself away, or break into my soul with perfect day!

  John Arbuthnot

  Wise, Prayer, Perfect Days

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• From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.

  Margaret Halsey

  Oxford, Mind, Visitors

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

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• Americans did not acquire their fear neurosis as the result of a traumatic experience - war devasting their country, pestilence sweeping the land, famine wiping out helpless millions. Americans had to be taught to hate and fear an unseen enemy. The teachers were men in official positions, in government, men whom Americans normally trust without question.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Country, Teacher, Fear

  Martha Gellhorn (2015). “The View From The Ground”, p.154, Granta Books

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• God gave us the gift of life. It is the most precious gift ever. To be unarmed is to be helpless to protect that gift; that is outright irresponsible.

  Ted Nugent

  Precious Gifts, Protect, Gifts Of Life

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