Quotes about Powerlessness
Every hand will go limp, and every knee will turn to water.
— Ezekiel 7:17
So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision. No strength remained in me; my face grew deathly pale, and I was powerless.
— Daniel 10:8
When we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus
— Corrie Ten Boom
Dr. Eric Cassell, an internist at Cornell University, concluded about his patients, "If I had to pick the aspect of illness that is most destructive to the sick, I would choose the loss of control.
— Philip Yancey
Martin Luther spent two hours a day in prayer. John Wesley spent two hours a day in prayer. According to a recent poll taken on both sides of the Atlantic, the average church leader, pastor, priest, evangelist, teacher today spends four minutes a day in prayer and you wonder why the church is powerless.
— RT Kendall
I was fighting with Thoby on the lawn. We were pommelling each other with our fists. Just as I raised my fist to hit him, I felt: why hurt another person? I dropped my hand instantly, and stood there, and let him beat me. I remember the feeling. It was a feeling of hopeless sadness. It was as if I became aware of something terrible; and of my own powerlessness. I slunk off alone, feeling horribly depressed.
— Virginia Woolf
If we want to be able to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on living, we have to get over the irrational feeling that every misfortune is our fault, the direct result of our mistakes or misbehavior. We are really not that powerful. Not everything that happens in the world is our doin
— Harold S. Kushner
Facing our grief is essential to combatting and overcoming our despair and powerlessness. The elders taught her that grief is not something to avoid or to be afraid of. And that if we come together and share our sadness, it can be healing." "I absolutely agree," Jane said. "It's really important for us to confront our grief and get over our feelings of helplessness and hopelessness—our very survival
— Jane Goodall
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
When people are kept in abject poverty and illiteracy while others grow rich and "develop their personalities" at the former's expense we speak of oppression; when structures and persons that perpetuate powerlessness are replaced by structures that allow people to stand on their own feet and have their own voice, we speak of liberation.2 Both
— Miroslav Volf
Lucy was frightened, frightened near to death. Her voice choked, she could not breath, her limbs went numb. This is not happening, she said to herself as the men forced her down; it is just a dream, a nightmare. While the men, for their part, drank up her fear, revelled in it, did all they could to hurt her, to menace her, to heighten her terror. Call your dogs! they said to her. Go on, call your dogs! No dogs? Then let us show you dogs!
— JM Coetzee
Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.