“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Walking on Water (1980)

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Madeleine L'Engle 223

American writer 1918–2007

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love & Compassion

“When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

“By starving our children of men, we have made them more vulnerable to the very abuse we are trying to prevent.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

page 97.
Father and Child Reunion (2001)

“While we were growing up, the biggest insult for us was when dark emigrant forces called our homeland an unnatural, artificial creation. When we grew up, the biggest insult for us was when we realised that was true.”

Đorđe Balašević (1953) Serbian songwriter

("Tri posleratna druga", page 106).

“Women and children are vulnerable to brutal violence and some have lost everything... We cannot ignore what is happening to the Syrian people.”

Justine Greening (1969) British politician

Syria conflict: UK pledges extra £100m https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25743571 BBC News (15 January 2014)
2014

“The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Context: I've always believed that there is no subject that is taboo for the writer. It is how it is written that makes a book acceptable, as a work of art, or unacceptable and pornographic. There are many books circulating today, for the teen-ager as well as the grown up, which would not have been printed in the fifties. It is still amazing to me that A Wrinkle In Time was considered too difficult for children. My children were seven, ten, and twelve while I was writing it, and they understood it. The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.

“If most of us were wind up-toys, could we trust the few of us that weren't to wind us up when necessary? I think not. We would be a separate oppressed minority. Even if we were in the majority, it would still be that way. The ones that weren't wind-up toys would have the upper hand, and we would have to look out for each other, because they wouldn't.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"Wind-Up Toys"
Lyrics, Real Men (1991)

“The people who have power over you are weak too. They shit and bleed and worry that their children don’t love them anymore. They’re embarrassed by the stupid things they did when they were young that everyone else has forgotten. And so they’re vulnerable. We all define ourselves by the people around us, because that’s the kind of monkey we are. We can’t transcend it. So when they watch you, they hand you the power to change what they are too.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Prologue (p. 5)

“Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can — and surely will at times — fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 415

“We are facing an existential crisis… it will have a massive impact on our lives in the future, but also now, especially in vulnerable communities. And I think that we should wake up, and we should also try to wake the adults up, because they are the ones who — their generation is the ones who are mostly responsible for this crisis, and we need to hold them accountable.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

We Are Striking to Disrupt the System... https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/11/greta_thunberg_swedish_activist_climate_crisis, DemocracyNow (11 September 2019)
2019

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

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Madeleine L'Engle 223

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