Power is the gem of necessity. Without observing power, identity remains undiscovered.

Let me tell you something, kid, said Mrs. H of Boston and Beacon Hill. Magic is just a word for what's left to the powerless once everyone else has eaten their fill.

When you have no real power, go public -- really public. The public is where the real power is.

it's that sense of powerlessness that destroyed my soul. i cannot be as good as i would like to be.nor as bad as i think i need to be.i think you have the same doubts that your goodness was not rewarded

Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest— forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.

I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance.

At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.