“There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman’s despair.”
Source: Purple Hibiscus (2003)
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 97
Nigerian writer 1977Related quotes
“If the child was helpless, was the grown up person, man or woman, in a much better position?”
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IV, "Laissez - Faire", p. 46.
35
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Virlomi.
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)
Source: My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man
Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Context: The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.
What is Patriotism? (1908)
Context: We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism.
Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?, written by Bryan Adams, Mutt Lange, and Michael Kamen
Song lyrics, 18 til I Die (1996)