All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. Noam Chomsky
Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter. Arnold Schwarzenegger
There is, in world affairs, a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly. Dwight David Eisenhower
Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war. Basil Liddell Hart
The politicians don’t just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both. James Dale Davidson
If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. Frank Herbert