Quotes about strength
page 13

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Yusuf Qaradawi photo

“(God) gives the weak a weapon for self-defense that the strong, despite his military and nuclear arsenals, can do nothing against. There are clerics who condemn this and even say that these are suicide operations that are not allowed in Islam.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi in Favor of Suicide Operations http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/45.htm April 2004.
Martyrdom operations

Georg Brandes photo
George W. Bush photo
Amir Khan (boxer) photo
Robert Stanley Weir photo
Maxime Bernier photo

“Trudeau keeps pushing his “diversity is our strength” slogan. Yes, Canada is a huge and diverse country. This diversity is part of us and should be celebrated. But where do we draw the line?
Ethnic, religious, linguistic, sexual and other minorities were unjustly repressed in the past. We’ve done a lot to redress those injustices and give everyone equal rights. Canada is today one of the countries where people have the most freedom to express their identity.
But why should we promote ever more diversity? If anything and everything is Canadian, does being Canadian mean something? Shouldn’t we emphasize our cultural traditions, what we have built and have in common, what makes us different from other cultures and societies?
Having people live among us who reject basic Western values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and openness doesn’t make us strong. People who refuse to integrate into our society and want to live apart in their ghetto don’t make our society strong.
Trudeau’s extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity will divide us into little tribes that have less and less in common, apart from their dependence on government in Ottawa. These tribes become political clienteles to be bought with taxpayers $ and special privileges.
Cultural balkanisation brings distrust, social conflict, and potentially violence, as we are seeing everywhere. It’s time we reverse this trend before the situation gets worse. More diversity will not be our strength, it will destroy what has made us such a great country.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

12 August 2018 on Twitter https://twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1028800406535716864

Tammy Smith photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

[Trump finally says Obama born in U.S., blames Clinton for controversy, USA Today, 16 September 2016, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/09/16/donald-trump-barack-obama-hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign-birtherism/90471868/]
Conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship were not started by Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign according to PolitiFact.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-claim-hillary-clinton-/, and Trump continued to question Obama's citizenship for years after he released his long-form birth certificate in 2011 http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-he-finished-obama-b/.
2010s, 2016, September

Louis Brandeis photo
David Gerrold photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Petra Němcová photo

“I became quite green - I have a very strong connection to nature. I read that if we fish the way we fish, in 2048 there will be no more fish left, which is pretty soon. So it's a statement.”

Petra Němcová (1979) Czech fashion model

Explaining why she became vegan, spotted helping out at an OCRF Benefit, as quoted in "Petra Nemcova Goes Vegan For The Fish", in Celebrity-Gossip.net (31 July 2007) http://www.celebrity-gossip.net/celebrities/hollywood/petra-nemcova-goes-vegan-for-the-fish-201498#blog.

Colleen Fitzpatrick photo
Ziad Jarrah photo
Bill Downs photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Jayant Narlikar photo

“A black hole is the ultimate manifestation of a region of strong gravity. The pull of gravity in a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape from it and time stands still.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Source: Jayant Narlikar Black Holes http://books.google.com/books?id=8qi55iSSeiwC, National Book Trust, India, 1 January 2006

Seneca the Younger photo

“Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles? Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one of these men says as he begins his march, " The general has dealt hardly with me," but "He has judged well of me."”
Quare deus optimum quemque aut mala valetudine aut luctu aut aliis incommodis adficit? quia in castris quoque periculosa fortissimis imperantur: dux lectissimos mittit qui nocturnis hostes adgrediantur insidiis aut explorent iter aut praesidium loco deiciant. Nemo eorum qui exeunt dicit 'male de me imperator mervit', sed 'bene iudicavit'.

De Providentia (On Providence), 4.8, translated by Aubrey Stewart
Moral Essays

James Anthony Froude photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Glen Cook photo
Jim Butcher photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Verghese Kurien photo
Sarah Palin photo

“Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2006-10-22
Where they stand
Anchorage Daily News
http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/510378.html
2008-10-23
2008-09-01
http://web.archive.org/web/20080901211016/http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/510378.html
Posed question: Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?
2006

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”

Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
Götz von Berlichingen, Act I (1773)

Andrew Scheer photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“I had no specific belief except that our cause was just, was very strong and it was winning more and more support.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on ideology, Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa (11 February 1994). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
1990s

Mao Zedong photo

“A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel -- an unwillingness to share weal and woe with the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain. This is very bad. One way of overcoming it is to streamline our organizations in the course of our campaign to increase production and practice economy, and to transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number will return to productive work. We must see to it that all our cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that ours is a large socialist country but an economically backward and poor one, and that this is a very big contradiction. To make China prosperous and strong needs several decades of hard struggle, which means, among other things, pursuing the policy of building up our country through diligence and thrift, that is, practicing strict economy and fighting waste.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 在我们的许多工作人员中间,现在滋长着一种不愿意和群众同甘苦,喜欢计较个人名利的危险倾向,这是很不好的。我们在增产节约运动中要求精简机关,下放干部,使相当大的一批干部回到生产中去,就是克服这种危险倾向的一个方法。要使全体干部和全体人民经常想到我国是一个社会主义的大国,但又是一个经济落后的穷国,这是一个很大的矛盾。要使我国富强起来,需要几十年艰苦奋斗的时间,其中包括执行厉行节约、反对浪费这样一个勤俭建国的方针。

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Samantha Power photo
Anne Lynch Botta photo
George W. Bush photo

“What we're trying to do with this reinforcement of our troops is to provide enough space so that the Iraqi government can meet certain benchmarks or certain requirements for a unity government to survive and for the country to be strong.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Meeting with Cabinet http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070205-2.html (February 7, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Thomas Carlyle photo

“A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of noble-mindedness, of genius.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Adam Smith photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“I love Gloria Estefan, though -- she is cool. It's always just been about the music with her and they've been really good fun pop songs and really great ballads. And she's still going strong. She's quite classy and true to her Latin roots.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comments by Welsh singer Charlotte Church, BBC online news (September 26, 2005)
2007, 2008

Nicholas Sparks photo
Richard Nixon photo

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York. He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on. My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years.
What has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Conversation with secretary Rose Mary Woods on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/3_VIETNAM.mp3 on tapes recorded February-March 1973; as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times (10 December 2010); with sound recording http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/4_BLACKS.mp3.
1970s

Alija Izetbegović photo
Kim Jong-il photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Gabrielle Giffords photo

“It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I got to see firsthand the sacrifices that Israelis make in the name of security because of the dangerous state of affairs there. I will always be a strong supporter of Israel.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

Of her first visit to Jerusalem Israel National News 1/8/2011 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141607#.UWvtlaLvuvU

Madison Grant photo
Lewis Pugh photo
George Will photo

“There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy, Simon & Schuster (c. 1992), Chapter 2, p. 167 : ISBN 0029347130
1990s

François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.”

Nul ne mérite d’être loué de bonté, s’il n’a pas la force d’être méchant: toute autre bonté n’est le plus souvent qu’une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté.
Maxim 237.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Edmund Blunden photo
André Maurois photo

“A true woman loves a strong man because she knows his weaknesses. She protects as much as she is protected.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

E. T. A. Hoffmann photo

“The magic of music is so strong, getting stronger, it should break any shackle of another art.”

E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) German Romantic author

Beethovens Instrumentalmusik

Amir Taheri photo
Aisha photo

“Whenever Allah’s Messenger saw the rain, he used to say, O Allah! Let it be a strong fruitful rain.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Bukhari hadith 142

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Ptahhotep photo
Derren Brown photo
François Mitterrand photo
Edwin Abbott Abbott photo

“I was now under a strong temptation to rush blindly at my Visitor and to precipitate him into Space, or out of Flatland, anywhere, so that I could get rid of him…”

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 16. How the Stranger Vainly Endeavoured to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland

Bill Gates photo

“Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

On his use of YouTube to watch videos. "Bill Gates on ...the Competition" in The Wall Street Journal (19 June 2006); also quoted in "Bill Gates' piracy confession" http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2803 at ComputerWorld.com
2000s

John F. Kennedy photo
Matt Dillon photo

“I like to try different things. A good strong character and a good story are the key things for me when I'm considering a script. But I don't want to do the same kinds of things over and over. I like to challenge myself and do projects that dare to push the limits.”

Matt Dillon (1964) American actor

Dennis King (January 12, 1990) "Matt Dillon - This Era's James Dean - 'Drugstore Cowboy' Star Takes Critics' Award, Speculation About Oscar Nomination in Stride", Tulsa World, p. C1.

Ralph Chaplin photo
John Bright photo
Robert Aumann photo

“The strong equilibrium point f just described is one of "unrelenting ferocity" against offenders. It exhibits a zeal for meting out justice that is entirely oblivious to the sometimes dire consequences to oneself or to the other faitheful——i. e., those who have not deviated.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

"Acceptable Points in General Cooperative n-Person Games," in Contributions to the Theory of Games IV, Annals of Mathematics Study 40, edited by A. W. Tucker and R. D. Luce, Princeton University Press, 1959, pp. 287-324.

Benjamin Franklin photo

“strong>The good particular men may do separately, in relieving the sick, is small, compared with what they may do collectively.</strong”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Appeal for the Hospital The Pennsylvania Gazette (8 August 1751).
1760s

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“I began graduate work in the philosophy of sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 where I came under the influence of the “grand old man” of the department, the eminent philosopher E. A. Singer, Jr. Because of the informality of the department he created I began to collaborate with two younger members of the faculty, both of whom were former students of Singer, Thomas A. Cown and C. West Churchman.
Three aspects of Singer's philosophy had a particularly strong influence on me. First, that the practice of philosophy, its application, was necessary for the development of philosophy itself. Second, that effective work on “real” problems required an interdisciplinary approach. Third, that the social area needed more work than any of the other domains of science and that this was the most difficult.
We developed a concept of a research group that would enable us to practice philosophy in the social domain by dealing with real problems. The organization we designed was called “The Institute of Experimental Method.””

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

With the participation of a number of other graduate students in philosophy and a few other members of the faculty we started this institute on a completely informal basis.
Preface, cited in Gharajedaghi, Jamshid. Systems thinking: Managing chaos and complexity: A platform for designing business architecture http://booksite.elsevier.com/samplechapters/9780123859150/Front_Matter.pdf. Elsevier, 2011. p. xii
Towards a Systems Theory of Organization, 1985

Anil Kumble photo

“He is a thorough gentleman, very strong manners.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By EAS Prasanna.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

Frances Kellor photo
Ayumi Hamasaki photo
Michael Foot photo
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Shelly Kagan photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo

“Today we preach that science is not science unless it is quantitative. We substitute correlations for causal studies, and physical equations for organic reasoning. Measurements and equations are supposed to sharpen thinking, but, in my observation, they more often tend to make the thinking noncausal and fuzzy. They tend to become the object of scientific manipulation instead of auxiliary tests of crucial inferences.
Many - perhaps most - of the great issues of science are qualitative, not quantitative, even in physics and chemistry. Equations and measurements are useful when and only when they are related to proof; but proof or disproof comes first and is in fact strongest when it is absolutely convincing without any quantitative measurement.
Or to say it another way, you can catch phenomena in a logical box or in a mathematical box. The logical box is coarse but strong. The mathematical box is fine-grained but flimsy. The mathematical box is a beautiful way of wrapping up a problem, but it will not hold the phenomena unless they have been caught in a logical box to begin with.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

John R. Platt (1964) " Science, Strong Inference -- Proper Scientific Method (The New Baconians) http://256.com/gray/docs/strong_inference.html. In: Science Magazine 16 October 1964, Volume 146, Number 3642. Cited in: Gerald Weinberg (1975) Introduction to General Systems Thinking. p. 1, and in multiple other sources.

Marcel Duchamp photo
Hiram Price photo

“The Republican Party is strong enough to dare to do right and cannot afford to shirk a duty. The colored men North and South were loyal to the Government in the days of its greatest peril. There was not a rebel or a traitor to be found among them. They ask the privilege of citizenship now that slavery has been forever banished from our country. Why should the great freedom-loving State of Iowa longer deny them this right? No one reason can be given that has not been used to bolster up slavery for the last hundred years. The war that has just closed has swept that relic of barbarism from our land; let the Republican Party have the courage to do justice…I have no fear of the result in a contest of this kind. We shall carry the election and have the satisfaction of wiping out the last vestige of the black code that has long been a disgrace to our State.”

Hiram Price (1814–1901) American politician

As quoted in History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century https://books.google.com/books?id=gTdAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22With+proper+safeguards+to+the+purity+of+the+ballot+box,+the+elective+franchise+should+be+based+upon+loyalty+to+the+Constitution+and+the+Union+recognizing+and+affirming+the+equality+of+all+men+before+the+law%22&source=bl&ots=z_M1ul7IWl&sig=8CNmDX4D9Q3cLBaZ1hxR_MgATZE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI7_W07L7UAhVMcT4KHT1uDXAQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22With%20proper%20safeguards%20to%20the%20purity%20of%20the%20ballot%20box%2C%20the%20elective%20franchise%20should%20be%20based%20upon%20loyalty%20to%20the%20Constitution%20and%20the%20Union%20recognizing%20and%20affirming%20the%20equality%20of%20all%20men%20before%20the%20law%22&f=false (1903), by Benjamin F. Gue, Volume III, Chapter 1

Núria Añó photo
Pino Caruso photo

“People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.
Eating an animal with gusto is premeditated lust murder, and digesting it is concealment of corpse.”

Pino Caruso (1934–2019) Italian actor

La gente mangia carne e pensa: "Diventerò forte come un bue".
Dimenticando che il bue mangia erba.
Mangiarsi con gusto un animale è assassinio premeditato a scopo di libidine. Digerirlo, occultamento di cadavere.
Il diluvio universale: acqua passata https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=9WIhAQAAIAAJ (Palermo: Novecento, 1993), p. 179.

Charles Sumner photo

“With me, sir, there is no alternative. Painfully convinced of the unutterable wrongs and woes of slavery; profoundly believing that, according to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the fathers, it can find no place under our National Government — that it is in every respect sectional, and in no respect national — that it is always and everywhere the creature and dependent of the States, and never anywhere the creature or dependent of the Nation, and that the Nation can never, by legislative or other act, impart to it any support, under the Constitution of the United States; with these convictions, I could not allow this session to reach its close, without making or seizing an- opportunity to declare myself openly against the usurpation, injustice, and cruelty, of the late enactment by Congress for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Full well I know, sir, the difficulties of this discussion, arising from prejudices of opinion and from adverse conclusions, strong and sincere as my own. Full well I know that I am in a small minority, with few here to whom I may look for sympathy or support. Full well I know that I must utter things unwelcome to many in this body, which I cannot do without pain. Full well I know that the institution of slavery in our country, which I now proceed to consider, is as sensitive as it is powerful — possessing a power to shake the whole land with a sensitiveness that shrinks and trembles at the touch. But, while these things may properly prompt me to caution and reserve, they cannot change my duty, or my determination to perform it. For this I willingly forget myself, and all personal consequences. The favor and good-will of my fellow-citizens, of my brethren of the Senate, sir, — grateful to me as it justly is — I am ready, if required, to sacrifice. All that I am or may be, I freely offer to this cause.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852).

Alan Sugar photo
Phil Brooks photo

“I tried. I tried so hard to empathize with all of your weaknesses. I implored every single one of you to just say "no," and all my empathy got was for you to love Jeff Hardy that much more than you already did. But this will not deter me. I will stay the course; I still believe in teaching you people the difference between right and wrong. (Audience chants "Hardy!") Oh, obviously it's gonna be challenging, listening to you people, and by the looks of some of you, it's gonna be a big challenge. But just like any other challenge that's come down the pipe in my lifetime, I'm gonna meet that challenge head on like a man, just like I did last week. Let's take a look. (Recap of Punk's assault on Hardy) See, now I know why you people love Jeff Hardy so much. It's because you are all just like him; and, in turn, Jeff Hardy is just like all of you. The reality is, none of you have the strength to be straight-edge. (Audience resumes chant) You gravitate towards Jeff because it's the easy way out: it's easier to weak like Jeff, because you sure can't be strong like me. Oh, you can boo all you want. I know why you boo, you know why you boo. It's because I tell the truth. And the truth sometimes hurts, doesn't it? For instance, what does it say on your prescription bottle of pills? "Take one every four hours"? Well, don't tell me you people don't gobble four, six, eight at a time like they were Pez. That is drug abuse—I don't do that. I also don't smoke, and those who do are stupid. You gotta be stupid to not listen to the Surgeon General, especially when he prints the warning label on the package of smokes. You gotta be a fool. And we can talk about those funny cigarettes, and you obviously know what I'm talking about because you cheer, and that's utterly sad. That's pathetic. I…I can't even wrap my head around you people cheering, 'cause when you smoke those funny cigarettes, not only is that hazardous to your health, it's also illegal. So those who have taken a puff, not only are you poisoning yourself, you're also breaking the law, so the vast majority of everybody here in this arena is a criminal. I am not a criminal—I never have been, and I never will be. Now let's talk about alcohol. I've saved the best poison for last, see because this is a gateway drug. Don't tell me not a single one of you here has ever said, "I'm gonna go out for one drink," and one leads to two, and two drinks leads to three, and then it's a double of this, and a shot of that, and then your head winds up in the toilet, night in and night out. Congratulations, that is alcoholism. And in my book, if you even take one drink, you're an alcoholic. So I understand why you people love Jeff Hardy so much, I understand why Jeff loves you—it's because you're all weak. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, you deserve better. This entire world deserves better. What you need is a leader. You need a strong leader who's gonna stand up in the face of adversity and just say "no."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

You need a strong leader that's gonna carry the banner of the World Heavyweight Championship with honor, with pride, respect, dignity, integrity, and class. What you people need is a straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion. You need CM Punk.
August 7, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Calvin Coolidge photo
Learned Hand photo

“A wise man once said, "Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break it through."”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"The Preservation of Personality" commencement address at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (2 June 1927); also in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 32.
Extra-judicial writings

Winston S. Churchill photo