A Quote by Jane Smiley

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

Jane Smiley

Quote Topics

Childhood Condition Fundamental Powerlessness

Quote Author

Jane Smiley
American - Novelist
Born: September 26, 1949

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.

Henri Nouwen

Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.

Peter Singer

The mess of the human condition is that fundamental trust has not yet been realized. The true value of profound spiritual experience lies in the discovery of that fundamental trust.

Andrew Cohen

The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.

Russell Baker

Lack of self-worth is the fundamental source of all emotional pain. A feeling of insecurity, unworthiness and lack of valueis the core experience of powerlessness.

Gary Zukav

Common sense is the fundamental factor in all spiritual disciplines. No rule is an eternal rule. Rules change from place to place, time to time and from one condition to another condition.

Sivananda

Freedom is the fundamental condition for any growth.

Erich Fromm

An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.

Thomas Jefferson

Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order.

Norman Davies

What we really need to understand here is that it`s all about power. This is where the surge is coming from for Bernie Sanders. In some ways, it`s a very different - it`s a different surge, but it`s coming out of the same sort of sense of fundamental powerlessness and anger and frustration for Donald Trump.

Robert Reich

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

We see the world through the lens of all our experiences; that is a fundamental part of the human condition.

Madeleine M. Kunin

In order to eat, you have to be hungry. In order to learn, you have to be ignorant. Ignorance is a condition of learning. Pain is a condition of health. Passion is a condition of thought. Death is a condition of life.

Robert Anton Wilson

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

Frank McCourt

Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.