“Broken things are powerful.”
Things about to break are stronger still.
The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.
"Courage After Sixty"
Poems
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Eugene McCarthy 16
American politician 1916–2005Related quotes
“This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people”
Source: The Unquiet
“Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned.”
Sacred Scroll, p. 75
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)
Context: Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned. If no individual or institution possesses the authority to act without of everybody else in the room, then nobody is at fault if anything goes wrong.
“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
Source: Cry, The Beloved Country
Letter from Abigail to John Adams, Braintree, May, 7, 1776.
Context: I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken — and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.
“Or maybe it's just that beautiful things are so easily broken by the world.”
Source: City of Fallen Angels
“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”