A Quote by Hannah Arendt
To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.
Related Quotes
When a paradox is widely believed, it is no longer recognized as a paradox.
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
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.
A genius may perhaps be a century ahead of his age and hence stands there as a paradox, but in the end, the race will assimilate what was once a paradox, so it is no longer paradoxical.
I don't think I'm a witty person. To me, a witty person is a funny person who is also a smart person. My friend David Rakoff, who died a few years ago, he was a witty person. Fran Lebowitz is a witty person. I don't think there are that many witty people around, so you tend to notice them when they do come around. I don't consider myself to be that.
I call it financial impotence, this notion of not having enough money, because it has the same characteristics as sexual impotence. And men will never talk about sexual impotence, no matter how close you are to someone, but financial impotence is an even greater barrier. And, I broke that omerta. I had people walk up to me in the grocery store - Several people, coming up to me and saying, "Gosh. Let me tell you my story." People are so pent up with their sense of financial impotence, that they're dying to get it out!
It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity
I am interested in the paradox between identity and uniformity, in the power and vulnerability of each individual and each group. It is in this paradox that I try to visualize by concentrating on poses, attitudes, gestures, and gazes.
Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.
The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.
Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.
Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
The language of Mexicans springs from abysmal extremes of power and impotence, domination and resentment.
When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.
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