#helpless

A reprisal of this magnitude... has never been carried out before. I paced back and forth in my room perplexed and completely depressed, feeling helpless. ↗

— Moshe Sharett

#been #before #carried #completely #depressed

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. ↗

— B. F. Skinner

#early #helpless #individual #society

Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived. ↗

— John le Carré

#power #world-order #food

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

It's going to be a hard time; we can count on that. But with all the misery, what opportunities to show mercy and brotherly love in our land, which has sinned so greatly against love. And patience! For now is the time when the victors, in the blind triumph of their victory, are likely to make mistakes. But that's not our concern, for we shall only be the sufferers, not the agents of suffering. What a power for peace will lie in our own powerlessness if we can only glimpse in it the sign of grace! ↗

— Margot Benary-Isbert

#peace #suffering #war #love

Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing. ↗

— Herodotus

#men

I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#country #dying #economist #famine #felt

Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness. ↗

— B. H. Liddell Hart

#helplessness #hope #hopelessness #induces #issues

I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us. ↗

— James Herriot

#dependent #helpless #i #i wish #like

... and I experienced the bitter helplessness of a taunted old man dying to be whole again. ↗

— Philip Roth

#old-age #wholeness #age