Powerless Quotes - Page 14

For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.

Plato

Light, Mind, Oracles

Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.175, Booklassic

6 Copy quote

Show source
To lose one's health renders science null, are inglorious, strength unavailing, wealth useless, and eloquence powerless.

Herophilos

Health, Null, Useless

6 Copy quote
In a culture that gives men irresponsible power and women powerless responsibility, the advancement of civilization cannot be a serious goal.

Mary Blakely

Responsibility, Men, Civilization

Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote

Show source
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.

Gerard De Nerval

Lying, Unimportant Things, Evil

22 Copy quote
Powerless rage can work miracles.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Miracle, Rage

7 Copy quote
However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.

Mary Blakely

Mother, Children, Responsibility

4 Copy quote
There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man standing alongside the road, shouts, «Where are you going?» and the first man replies, «I don't know! Ask the horse!» This is also our story. We are riding a horse, and we don't know where we are going and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless.

Nhat Hanh

Horse, Men, Circles

Thich Nhat Hanh (2015). “The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation”, p.24, Harmony

26 Copy quote

Show source
The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.

Mason Cooley

Power, People, Waiting

5 Copy quote
the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

Hannah Arendt

Government, Tyrants, Political

30 Copy quote
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

49 Copy quote
There are six myths about old age: 1. That it's a disease, a disaster. 2. That we are mindless. 3. That we are sexless. 4. That we are useless. 5. That we are powerless. 6. That we are all alike.

Maggie Kuhn

Age, Useless, Disease

19 Copy quote
Ghetto humor is the social twin of fantasy; together they sustain the powerless, who accomplish miracles through illusion.

Sheila Ballantyne

Humor, Ghetto, Miracle

Sheila Ballantyne (1983). “Norma Jean, the termite queen”, Viking Pr

4 Copy quote

Show source
Economically, legally, and politically powerless throughout much of western history, women have been linked to nature and the unknowable through metaphors of the body while the masculine has signified culture and mental activity.

Whitney Chadwick

Art, Culture, Body

4 Copy quote
Ultraconservatism is, to me, so illogical. Everywhere you go, conservatives want to cut, cut, cut, cut - cut money for powerless people. So, that's the biggest problem I have with them.

Alec Baldwin

Cutting, People, Want

"Alec Baldwin's 'Last Interview': I Was Born to Spit on Rupert Murdoch". Interview with Marisa Guthrie, www.hollywoodreporter.com. April 10, 2013.

4 Copy quote

Show source
I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff... and that's my responsibility. I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult.

Ashley Judd

Children, Home, Character

24 Copy quote
May the arm of the first member of Congress, who proposes a national religion, drop powerless from his shoulder; his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth and all the people say amen.

Anne Royall

People, Mouths, May

4 Copy quote
If people of one''s own side have good conduct, it adds power to oneself. The misconduct on the contrary render one powerless. The enemy taks advantage of it. A skilled statesman never allows enemy to win over.

Chanakya

Winning, People, Political

11 Copy quote
Labor is at its best when we are the party of ideas and action - ideas that empower the powerless and actions that build a better Australia for the long term.

Bill Shorten

Party, Ideas, Australia

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

6 Copy quote

Show source
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity.

Bill W.

Believe, Alcohol, Sanity

Alcoholics Anonymous (1939). The first two of the "Twelve Steps" that form the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to combat alcoholism.

31 Copy quote

Show source
In Community of Caring, we believe the quality of caring we give to our parents, to our brothers and sisters, to our families, to our friends and neighbors, and to the poor and the powerless endows a life, a community with respect, hope and happiness.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Brother, Believe, Caring

96 Copy quote
Life is easier in black and white. It's the ambiguity of a world defined in grays that has stripped me of my confidence and left me powerless.

Amy Plum

Black And White, World, Life Is

6 Copy quote
You're always feeling powerless in life. If you're in an abusive relationship or working for what we call a psychotic boss sometimes the only option is to leave because you're emotions get so entangled with these manipulative people that staying there you're just helpless because they're good at passive aggressive games and you're not, so you have to leave.

Robert Greene

Games, People, Boss

Source: bigthink.com

38 Copy quote

Show source
That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.

William James

Independent, Mean, Reality

William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.27, 谷月社

4 Copy quote

Show source
People who have had power, when they become powerless, are really tragic.... We just allow ourselves to be conditioned by a society so we become as important as we're supposed to be.

Maggie Kuhn

Power, People, Important

6 Copy quote
The 'survival of the fittest' is beneficently inevitable; the capitalist is powerless against labor, unless the State . . . steps in, and helps him catch and fleece his victims. The old plea of despotism, that liberty is unsafe, reappears now in the mistaken notion that competition is hostile to labor.

Ezra Heywood

Competition, Survival, Liberty

Ezra Hervey Heywood (1985). “The Collected Works of Ezra H. Heywood”

9 Copy quote

Show source