Impotence Quotes

The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.

Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong – it can end everything.

We live by action—by acting on desire. Those of us who don’t know how to want—whether geniuses or beggars—are related by impotence.

My characters have nothing. I’m working with impotence, ignorance… that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable – something by definition incompatible with art.

Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

A [Jewish] woman could not divorce her husband, but she could petition for divorce, and the religious courts could force him to grant the divorce on grounds of impotence, denial of conjugal rights, or unreasonable restriction of her freedom-for example, preventing her from attending funerals or wedding parties.

Often men’s impulses to coerce and degrade women seem to express not a confident assumption of dominance but a desire to retaliate for feelings of rejection, humiliation, and impotence: as many men see it, they need women sexually more than women need them, an intolerable balance of power.

The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.

Those who today still feel a sense of impotence can do something: they can support Amnesty International. They can help it to stand up for freedom and justice.

Despair is a cop-out, the ultimate abdication of all responsibility, in which people feel justified in their feelings of impotence. But if, on the other hand, you feel that your work in the world does make a difference and that you do have the power to change things, the nay-sayers will turn a deaf ear.

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

Our particular problem in America at this point in history is the widespread loss of the sense of individual significance, a loss which is sensed inwardly as impotence.

Somehow the fact of enormous privilege and freedom carries with it a sense of impotence, which is a strange, but striking, phenomenon. The fact is, we can do just about anything. There is no difficulty, wherever you are, in finding groups that are working hard on things that concern you.

Science promised man power. But, as so often happens when people are seduced by promises of power, the price is servitude and impotence. Power is nothing if it is not the power to choose.

O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

Wishes run over in loquacious impotence, will presses on with laconic energy.

There’s a little book I’m thinking of writing – “Swan Song” is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.

Look at countries like China, they are determined to dominate all clean technology areas, putting lots of money into wind, solar, electric vehicles and battery storage. America’s political impotence, caused by their terrible partisanship, will see them left behind.

The impotence of God is infinite.

Servile doubt argues an impotence of mind, that says we fear because we dare not meet misfortunes.

Whether a watercolor is inferior to an oil [painting], or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence.

In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

The early 1960s, when I started my graduate studies at UC Berkeley, were a period of experimental supremacy and theoretical impotence.

To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you’re impotent. She can’t wait to disprove it.

The whole idea of worship being associated with music, it gives you an impotence to make art that is true, that is honest and that opens the human heart to God and to reality.

Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything.

To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

The hood-winked husband shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous husband equals betrayed husband. And there are women who look upon jealousy as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.

Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women.

Religious tolerance has developed more as a consequence of the impotence of religions to impose their dogmas on each other than as a consequence of spiritual humility in the quest for understanding first and last things.

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

Impotence is one of the major hazards of cigarette smoking.

Never underestimate the ability of political leaders to misread history on a monumental scale. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have both served to hasten western decline: they have both failed to achieve their objectives and in the process demonstrated an underlying western impotence.

Security was the demand which set in motion labour movements in history; trade unions, friendly societies, consumer cooperatives were all about compensating for the impotence of individual resistance.

Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.

Ireland need fresh impotence.

Therefore Lord God, you are more truly omnipotent, because you have no power through impotence and nothing can be against you.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?” “Yes, sir, it has.” “Then why do you do it?” “To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.

Israel claims it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against any threat to its existence. The Arab world in return feels that this is an imbalanced system; there is a sense of humiliation and impotence.

The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence.

If one writes or reads novels from the point of view of psychology, it is very inconsistent and petty to want to shy away from even the slowest and most detailed analysis of the most unnatural lusts, gruesome tortures, shocking infamy, and disgusting sensual or spiritual impotence.

It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity

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.

I’ve only myself to blame for it, my impotence most of all and my weakness. If I do any good work now it will be only by chance.

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift.

In science, as in love, a concentration on technique is likely to lead to impotence.

Thus, statesmanlike, I’ll saucily impose,
And safe from action, valiantly advise;
Sheltered in impotence, urge you to blows,
And being good for nothing else, be wise.

Men are terrified of their sexuality. They’re all afraid of impotence.

What we do every time we pray is to confess our impotence and God’s sovereignty.

To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

Living at a beach, near a river mouth, taught him the impotence of impatience at events moving at nature’s pace.

I got into online trading. It was alarmingly easy to do. I went through the whole cycle of emotions, from supreme self-confidence to total impotence. I broke even in the end.

Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e… In other words, the utopian enterprise.

Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence.

My view is rather than just rage at your impotence you find the best way of achieving as much as you can within whatever constraints there are. It’s not the world I would have created but you do what you can within it.

at least if you were ignorant you could do wat you wanted. you had no idea wat had been acheived in the past. you were free instead of chewed at by bleeding impotence, dissolved away like a pearl in acid

As long as you don’t make waves, ripples, life seems easy. But that’s condemning yourself to impotence and death before you are dead.

To think of abstraction as an end in itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led into a cul-de-sac and can only lead to exhaustion and impotence.

I’m just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.

Violence is a symptom of impotence.

Do not first announce action, and then, when you are unable to take action, withdraw, because you will only find yourself in the same position as now, plus a public and humiliating confession of impotence.

There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.