#powerless

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ↗

— Paulo Freire

#conflict #hands #means #neutral #powerful

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

— Don DeLillo

#make #open #people #powerless #theater

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both. ↗

— Vaclav Havel

#because #between #both #determined #divided

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#justice #powerless #tyrannical #without

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse. ↗

— Ralph Nader

#cycle #deep #democracy #drop #elections

A man is truly free, even here in this embodied state, if he knows that God is the true agent and he by himself is powerless to do anything. ↗

— Ramakrishna

#anything #embodied #even #free #god

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

#been #between #dissolve #distinction #eternal

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist. ↗

— Lysander Spooner

#authorized #been #case #certain #constitution

It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world. We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice. The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole. The world -- if it could -- will thank you for it. And if it does not... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#act #action #actions #acts #choice

Full moon is falling through the sky. Cranes fly through clouds. Wolves howl. I cannot find rest Because I am powerless To amend a broken world. Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is. ↗

— Guy Gavriel Kay

#duty #foresight #future #powerlessness #imagination