Powerless Quotes - Page 16

• Sophistication knows the score, but is powerless to change it.

  Mason Cooley

  Change, Score, Sophistication

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• Powerless rage can work miracles.

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Miracle, Rage

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• we must be as satisfied to be powerless, idle and still before God, and dried up and barren when He permits it, as to be full of life, enjoying His presence with ease and devotion. The whole matter of our union with God consists in being content either way.

  Jane Frances de Chantal

  God, Enjoy Life, Ease

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• I'm not saying we have power over everything in our lives - if that were true, my hair would look so, so different - but I am saying that there's no circumstance in which we are completely powerless.

  Martha Beck

  Inspirational, Hair, Different

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• The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

  Jerome Frank

  Civilization, Quality, Tests

  Jerome Frank (1977). “A man's reach: the philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Blood, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, p.299, Library of Alexandria

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• If you're a queen, you're powerless, so I'd probably demote myself and go shopping.

  Helena Bonham Carter

  Inspirational, Queens, Shopping

  "Munching apples with Helena Bonham Carter". Interview with John Hind, www.theguardian.com. March 17, 2012.

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• People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

  Don DeLillo

  Power, People, Literature

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.84, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state.

  Thom Yorke

  Believe, Years, Grew Up

  "Thom Yorke’s View from the Stage". Interview with Judy Bond, www.lionsroar.com. November 1, 1998.

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• Information flow is what the Internet is about. Information sharing is power. If you don't share your ideas, smart people can't do anything about them, and you'll remain anonymous and powerless.

  Vinton Cerf

  Smart, Information Flow, Information Sharing

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• Redd laughed. "The lovely thing about being here," she said, gesturing at the maze, "is that I'm able to immagine your imagination powerless. Ah, if only that were the case on the outside. But enough chitchat. If you're going to die--which you are--I'm sure you'd like to get it over with." --The Looking Glass Wars

  Frank Beddor

  War, Glasses, Imagination

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• No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Animal, Men

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• Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which psychoanalysis is powerless to bestow.

  Sebastian Horsley

  Fashion, Clothes, Giving

  "The agony and the ecstasy" by Jessica Berens, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2002.

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• The tango is the man and woman in search of each other. It is the search for an embrace, a way to be together, when the man feels that he is a male and the woman feels that she is female, without machismo. She likes to be led; he likes to lead. Disagreements may occur later or they may not. When that moment comes, it is important to have positive and productive dialogue, fifty-fifty. The music arouses and torments, the dance is the coupling of two people defenseless against the world and powerless to change things.

  Juan Carlos Copes

  Dance, Men, Two

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• If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now.

  Chan Khong

  Peace, Morning, Ubuntu

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• So many young people feel powerless. We live in a world where it feels like it's so big and yet so small, and that your contribution really doesn't matter.

  Lorraine Toussaint

  People, World, Matter

  Source: collider.com

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• Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquillity that religion is powerless to bestow.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Drinking, Giving, Feelings

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• Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does.

  Jimmy Carter

  Children, Doubt, Doe

  Carter, Jimmy (1979). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1978”, p.836, Best Books on

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• We live charmed lives if we are living in the center of God's will. All the attacks that Satan can hurl against us are not only powerless to harm us, but are turned into blessing on the way.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Blessing, Way, Satan

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• Even if only 2 percent of those assigned to perform military service should announce their refusal to fight, governments would be powerless, they would not dare send such a large number of people to jail.

  Albert Einstein

  Military, Fighting, Government

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.57, St. Martin's Press

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• As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

  Gore Vidal

  Class, Majority, Problem

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.45, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

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• Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

  Derrick Jensen

  Mean, Agency, Longing

  Derrick Jensen (2011). “Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization”, p.295, Seven Stories Press

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