144 Quotes About Helplessness

My head started thumping, a silent voice screaming inside. I was useless, encapsulated by a swarm of notions—notions jostling for precedence; notions forming a mental blockade...

Immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . there is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and suffering: Walking into pain in the hope of bringing change moves a person from helplessness and despair to empowered activism

Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo - charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose caprices they were helpless to govern, yet without which the conduct of daily life came to a standstill. Faith that the computer would switch on one more time and do as it was asked had more a religious than a rational cast. When the screen went black, the gods were angry.

Everything I do in its essence is about helplessness. That's the story I want to tell all the time. It's the story I wanted to live - somebody who appears to be, or is, weak becoming stronger.

Isn’t life a collection of weird quizzes with no answers to half the questions?

They are called stuckerpillers because they get stuck together. They depend so much on each other even when they become unhappy living together. They can’t leave each other because they’ve become one. They lose their own identity and then they get confused. They become helpless. When one stuckerpiller wants to go in one direction and the other stuckerpiller wants to go in the opposite direction, they end up pulling against each other, never really getting anywhere.

He was agitated for some reason that he could not name. (page 35)

There is one secret men keep from each other every day: I can’t be there for you. When a broken man looks in the eyes of a brother and confesses his tragedies, all a person, no matter how good, can reply is say, “I’m sorry to hear that.” But you thought there was something they could do because you drank together, officed together, laughed together, and joked about death together, but when death comes, you will be terrified to learn how helpless we are.

He couldn’t talk soul at the market norCould he scream mad for help at the office,So he wrote it down and meant every word. The only time we get to be honest,Until you loved it like it were fiction.