Quotes about strength
page 24

“Quite often, when actors have such a strong charisma in real life, eventually it has to affect the characters they play. For myself I'm not charismatic in that way. I'm not a "performer". Ideally I would stay mute as River. That's the reason why, for a long time, I've said the opposite of what I really thought. In interviews, I've also played characters that I wasn't. I've lied and often contradicted myself to dumbfound people. It's all over now, because I have nothing left to hide. Eventually, I'm quite an ordinary person.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Last interview, Premier, (October 1993)

Life, People, Way, Time

“How do you do it? How do you stay so strong?”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

"I fake it."
Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 22

“Youth is frank, eager, and prone to believe in the good; it looks round, and it sees flowers; it looks up and sees stars; evil appears impossible, because it does not seem to be in ourselves. It remains for after and weary years to teach us, that even the young and the innocent may be led into crime by the strong influence of temptation. Passion first, and interest afterwards, lures the feet of men into dark and crooked paths, which none in earlier and holier hours deemed they could tread. We may have been often deceived, but it is not until we ourselves begin to deceive that we dread deceit.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Literary Remains

Men, Youth, Star, Flowers

“We are brick city. We are like bricks themselves. We are strong. We are resilient. We are enduring.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

[When Cory’s gone, https://www.economist.com/united-states/2013/08/17/when-corys-gone, The Economist, 21 August 2018, August 17, 2013]
2013

“Courage was never designed for show;
It isn't a thing that can come and go;
It's written in victory and defeat
And every trial a man may meet.
It's part of his hours, his days and his years,
Back of his smiles and behind his tears.
Courage is more than a daring deed:
It's the breath of life and a strong man's creed.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Courage, stanza 4, p. 73.

Life, Smile, Courage, Tear

“But she [Virginia Woolf] is impotently distant from an understanding of the proper relations between literature and society, because she has no clear sense of the functions of literature. She sees writers as individual 'artists' working in mysterious privacy - which from time to time society rudely invades. Her writer, indeed, has all the characteristics of traditional 'femininity' - with society as the big strong male who should protect and cherish his literary womenfolk, but does not. She might - for all the application of her complaint to the relations between society and literature - be talking of the relations between husbands and wives.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Laura Riding and Harry Kemp from The Left Heresy in Literature and Life (London: Methuen, 1939)

Literature, Understanding, Sense, Distant

“From this Parliament let some valorous, new, strong, and courageous influence go forth, and let us have here an agreement of all faiths for one good end, for one good thing— really for the glory of God, really for the sake of humanity from all that is low and animal and unworthy and undivine.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

What is Religion? (1893)

God, Faith, Courage, Animals

“We have a strong economy but we don't have the job creation we need. We want more job creation.”

Fredrik Reinfeldt (1965) 32nd Prime Minister of Sweden

[Profile: Fredrik Reinfeldt, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5355938.stm, BBC News, 2006-09-18, 2006-11-23]

“After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson, 'We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?' Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know, our nation's grand story of courage and its simple dream of dignity.”

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

2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)

Dreams, Angels, Courage, Thinking

“Man is by nature a pragmatic materialist, a mechanic, a lover of gadgets and gadgetry; and these are the qualities that characterize the "establishment" which regulates modern society: pragmatism, materialism, mechanization, and gadgetry. Woman, on the other hand, is a practical idealist, a humanitarian with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, an altruist rather than a capitalist.”

Elizabeth Gould Davis book The First Sex

The First Sex, ch. 22 - Woman in the Aquarian Age, Putnam (1971).

Lovers, Nature, Sense

“Guided by His wisdom, strong in His strength, there maybe for you struggle and suffering, the darkness and the storm. "The disciple is not above His Master." There may be weeping that shall endure for a night, but joy shall come in the morning. If the night cometh, so also the morning, "a morning without clouds," the morning of an eternal day.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 108.

Wisdom, Suffering, Joy, Night

“Homer often calls kings “shepherds of the people,” but nature more accurately applies the title to the good, since kings are more often in the position of the sheep than of the shepherd. They are led by strong drink and good looks and by baked meats and savory dishes and the dainties produced by cooks and confectioners, to say nothing of their craving for silver and gold and grander ambitions.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

31.
Every Good Man is Free

People, Drink, Nature, Cooking

“The experience of my five years made me feel that things were futile so I decided that if I bumped down the stone kitchen steps from top to bottom … I would probably be dead at the end. I did not succeed … As I went on in life, I made two other efforts to put an end to things, only to discover it is a very difficult thing to commit suicide. All of these attempts were made before I was fifteen. I tried to smother myself with sand when I was around eleven years old, but sand in one's mouth, nose and eyes is not comfortable and I decided to postpone the happy day… But again the instinct to self-preservation was too strong. Since then I have not been very interested in suicide, though I have always understood the impulse.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter I, Part 1

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Suicide

“Parachuting has taught us to be strong, and only those are needed by our country”

Stanisław Sosabowski (1892–1967) Polish general

Stanisław Sosabowski (1957) Najkrótszą drogą (Through the shortest way) London : Committe of Polish Parachutists.

Country

“Thank you. Thank you very much. President Turner, thanks. Members of the Board of Trustees, Provost Ludden, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, and — most importantly — the Class of 2015. Thank you for your warm welcome, and I appreciate the invitation to be with you. You know, when I mentioned this speech to some pals, they were surprised I was going to give it. I haven't given a commencement address since leaving office. You know, my decision is quite practical. So I got a call from my landlord, Gerald Turner. Rather than raising the rent or threatening to withhold our security deposit. I was relieved to hear President Turner ask if I believed in free speech. I said yeah. He said, 'Perfect. Here’s your chance to give one'. As a proud member of the SMU community, I am honored to be here – truly honored – to deliver the 100th Spring Commencement address. I admire President Turner’s persuasiveness and leadership. He runs a fantastic university. It is dynamic, diverse, and destined for continued excellence. He has assembled a strong administrative team. He is supported by engaged alumni, and he has an outstanding Board of Trustees.”

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

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Spring, Communication, Support, Parent

“This connection, at once semantic and conceptual, between unorthodoxy and sodomy, was firmly established during the late Middle Ages, and has never been severed. It is as strong today as it was six hundred years ago. To be stigmatized as a heretic or bugger in the fourteenth century was to cast out of society. Since the dominant ideology was theological, religious deviance was considered so grave an offense as to render the individual a nonperson. Whatever redeeming qualities he might have had counted for naught. The sin of heresy eclipsed all contradictory, personal characteristics, just as the teachings of God and the Church eclipsed all contradictory empirical observations. The disease called “mental illness”—and its subspecies “homosexuality”—plays the same role today.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 166.

God, Age, Disease, Personality

“"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."
Many clapped.
Some didn't.
A few beasts hissed.
The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed, then she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. She never thought of thanking those who believed, but she would have like to get at the ones who had hissed.”

J. M. Barrie book Peter Pan

Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 13

“All that produces a strong excitation, all that modifies the preliminary state of the thoughts and the feelings, surely also modifies the mental and physical state of the individual, especially if it occurs with confidence, expectation, and concentration of mind. All these phenomena, however extraordinary they are, are only the result of a heightening of the intellectual functions or power, which we all have to an average degree in the ordinary or waking state.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Feeling, Confidence

“You might stop a hurricane,
Might even stop the drivin' rain.
You might have a dozen other guys,
But if you wanna stop me baby - don't even try.
I'm goin' one way - your way.
It's such a strong way - let's make it our way.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Can't Stop This Thing We Started
Song lyrics, Waking Up the Neighbours (1991)

Way, Guy, Baby

“The aggression of the Zionist entity against the nuclear reactor on 7 June 1981 will not stop the course of scientific and technical progress in Iraq. Rather, it is an additional strong stimulus to develop this course, and to provide it with even greater resources and with more effective protection. Despite our loss, this aggression confirms that Iraq really stands on the right path, offering the Arab nation a model and helping its governments to define the right or the best approach. This would open before us, the Arabs, brighter prospects for the future. It confirms what we have always said, that the long conflict between the Arab nation and Zionism will eventually result in our victory. The Arab nation expresses the right and the forward movement of history while the Zionist entity expresses aggression, crime and racialist and expansionist theories which the free peoples have renounced as part of the hated colonial past, and which has to end despite all resources at its disposal and the efforts by imperialism to keep it alive.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Hate, People, History, Effort

“What I want in a woman is protection. Loyalty. Companionship. Loyalty, friendship, companionship, ferociousness. I want her to protect me, and have my back to the bitter end. If I have a fight, I want her to jump in. Even if I'm winning; even if she's ninety pounds. I like strong women—not necessarily a masculine woman—but I like strong women. I like strong, say a woman who runs a C. E. O. corporation. I like a strong woman with confidence—massive confidence—and then I want to dominate her sexually.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

As stated in documentary film, Tyson.
On women

Women, Friendship, Confidence, Fight

“Hope nothing from foreign governments. They will never be really willing to aid you until you have shown that you are strong enough to conquer without them.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

Life and Writings, Young Italy; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 333

Hope

“I'm lucky that I am a very hard person, and strong within my beliefs, so that this hasn't really been a problem to me, y'know I just get cancer, I'll kick the hell outta you.”

Ronnie James Dio (1942–2010) American singer

From "A 39 News Interview in Houston" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTL6EqHqkc

Hell, Problem, Personality

“In greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant who was strong as long as he had contact with the earth. When he was lifted from the earth he lost strength. So it is with engineers. They must not become isolated from the real world…”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

The Rickover Effect (1992)

World

“Rid yourself of secular prejudice. For instance, those with the 'Women's Liberation' mentality believe that the biblical husband-wife relationship is one of a master and a well-trained dog. They couldn't be further from the truth. The Bible does not speak of women as the 'weaker vessel,' which is true physically. However, the biblical order is: as a strong thorny stem upholds the tender, easily bruised, sweet-smelling rose, so should the husband uphold, love, and respect his wife.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Love, Women, Truth, Dogs

“Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 254
Attributed

World, Way, Problem

“I have a strong belief that there is a danger of the public opinion of this country undergoing a reaction from the Cobdenic doctrines of 30 or 40 years ago, and believing that it is our duty to take everything we can, to fight everybody, and to make a quarrel of every dispute. That seems to me a very dangerous doctrine, not merely because it might incite other nations against us—though that is not a consideration to be neglected, for the kind of reputation we are at present enjoying on the Continent of Europe is by no means pleasant, and by no means advantageous; but there is a much more serious danger, and that is lest we should overtax our strength. However strong you may be, whether you are a man or a nation, there is a point beyond which your strength will not go. It is madness; it ends in ruin if you allow yourselves to pass beyond it.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1898/feb/08/the-queens-speech-reported-by-the-lord in the House of Lords (8 February 1898) 1890s

Fight, Madness, Country

“The position of these ‘academics’ in Bengal has, of course, been helped by the fact that the CPI(M) has been in power there for so long. But their sway has not been confined to the teaching and ‘research’ institutions of that state. It is no surprise, therefore, to see the same ‘line’ being poured down the throats of students at the national level. And so strong is the tug of intellectual fashion, so lethal can the controlling mafia be to the career of an academic that often, even though the academic may not quite subscribe to their propositions and ‘theses’, he will end up reciting those propositions. Else his manuscript will not be accepted as a textbook by the NCERT, for instance, it will not be reviewed….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Fashion, Help

“I don't believe the good times are over.
I don't believe the thrill is all gone.
Real love is a man's salvation;
The weak ones fall, the strong carry on.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Straight Into Darkness
Lyrics, Long After Dark (1982)

Love, Time

“A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: First Things, Last Things (1971), Ch. 8 "Thoughts on the Present"

“There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this—to consider chiefly from now onwards those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

By this, we are then told, "he meant Death." (p. 158)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 157–8

Love, Men, Age, Change

“The strong environmental position should not be and cannot be to do nothing, and to put our heads in the sand and pretend that the problem does not exist. It would be nice if Texas had no low-level radioactive waste, or Vermont or Maine or any other State. That would be great. That is not the reality. The environmental challenge now is, given the reality that low-level radioactive waste exists, what is the safest way of disposing of that waste. Leaving the radioactive waste at the site where it was produced, despite the fact that that site may be extremely unsafe in terms of long-term isolation of the waste and was never intended to be a long- term depository of low-level waste, is horrendous environmental policy. What sense is it to say that you have to keep the waste where it is now, even though that might be very environmentally damaging? That does not make any sense at all. No reputable scientist or environmentalist believes that the geology of Vermont or Maine would be a good place for this waste. In the humid climate of Vermont and Maine, it is more likely that groundwater will come in contact with that waste and carry off radioactive elements to the accessible environment. There is widespread scientific evidence to suggest, on the other hand, that locations in Texas, some of which receive less than 12 inches of rainfall a year, a region where the groundwater table is more than 700 feet below the surface, is a far better location for this waste. This is not a political assertion, it is a geological and environmental reality. … From an environmental point of view, I urge strong support for this legislation.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking at the House of Representatives on the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, in 7 October 1997. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/1997/10/7/house-section/article/h8512-1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22all+that+Texas+and+Maine+and+Vermont+are+asking+for+today%5C%22%22%5D%7D&r=1 1990s

Way, Support, Problem, Reality

“…he would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp.”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1885/may/04/supply-vote-of-credit-report in the House of Commons (4 May 1885)

Time

“When Frankie Goes To Hollywood were still going strong, we made a point of being as Spinal Tap as possible. Yes, we had food fights. Yes, items were thrown out of hotel windows. But one childish prank I liked at the time was when we stayed in those really posh hotels where, at night, you could put your shoes out and in the morning they’ve been cleaned. We amused ourselves by roaming the corridors at night and having a crap in each pair of shoes we found. We even made bets: whoever filled the most shoes, won.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

"(untitled)" http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=905 HOLLY JOHNSON : Frankie Goes To Hollywood(untitled) article]at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

Food, Shoe, Time, Fight

“Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the Ten Commandments.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Sixteenth Week.
My Summer in a Garden (1870)

“Lincoln. His commitment to preserving the United States was so strong and so deep that he was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. Would you like to be in his shoes? Just think about that for a moment. Not just Lincoln. There are hundreds of examples in history.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

Shoe, History, Thinking

“Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It's strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn’t failure, what is?”

Gideon Levy (1953) Israeli journalist

This Biography Makes It Clear: The Founder of the Palestinian Popular Front Was Right (April 15, 2018)

Idea, Failure

“What was the secret of Morphy's invincibility? I think it was a combination of a unique natural talent and brilliant erudition. His play was the next, more mature stage in the development of chess. Morphy had a well-developed 'feeling for position', and therefore he can be confidently regarded as the 'first swallow”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

the prototype of the strong 20th century grandmaster."
Garry Kasparov (2003). On My Great Predecessors. Gloucester Publishers plc. Vol. 1, p. 43. ISBN 1857443306.
About

Secret, Feeling, Confidence, Nature

“Nature’s law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Episode from a Practice

Life, Law, Nature

“We read of strong men bowed down with woe, weeping as women weep, turning homewards in the hear-sickness of unavailing search, or with a certainty worse than suspense.”

Josephine Butler (1828–1906) British feminist

1870 https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/lovers.php

Women, Men, Search, Reading

“To see strong acting like this is exhilarating. In a time of flashy directors who slice and dice their films in a dizzy editing rhythm, it is important to remember that films can look and listen and attentively sympathize with their characters. Directors grow great by subtracting, not adding, and Eastwood does nothing for show, everything for effect.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Reviews, Four star reviews Source: Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mystic-river-2003 of Mystic River (8 October 2003)

Time

“The rise of the modern corporation has brought a concentration of economic power which can compete on equal terms with the modern state - economic power versus political power, each strong in its own field. The state seeks in some aspects to regulate the corporation, while the corporation, steadily becoming more powerful, makes every effort to avoid such regulation… The future may see the economic organism, now typified by the corporation, not only on an equal plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as the dominant form of social organization. The law of corporations, accordingly, might well be considered as a potential constitutional law for the new economic state, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of economic statesmanship.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 357 (1967, p. 313)

Law, Business, Effort, Future

“The color gauge theory postulates the existence of eight massless particles, sometimes called gluons, that are the carriers of the strong force just as the photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force.”

Sheldon L. Glashow (1932) American theoretical physicist

Source: The Charm of Physics (1991), p. 151

Color, Gauge

“By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 252.

Love, God, Soul, Forgiveness

“There was Your Humble Narrator Alex coming home from work to a good hot plate of dinner, and there was this ptitsa all welcoming and greeting like loving…. I had this sudden very strong idea that if I walked into the room next to this room where the fire was burning away and my hot dinner laid on the table, there I should find what I really wanted…. For in that other room in a cot was laying gurgling goo goo goo my son…. I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

Love, Home, Idea

““Under it there can be only one faith, one people and one all overriding authority. The State is a religious trust administered solely by His people (the faithful) acting in obedience to the Commander of the Faithful, who was in theory, and very often in practice too, the supreme General of the Army of militant Islam (Janud). There could be no place for non-believers. Even Jews and Christians could not be full citizens of it, though they somewhat approached the Muslims by reason of their being ‘People of the Book’ or believers in the Bible, which the Prophet of Islam accepted as revealed… “As for the Hindus and Zoroastrians, they had no place in such a political system. If their existence was tolerated, it was only to use them as hewers of wood and drawers of water, as tax-payers, ‘Khiraj-guzar’, for the benefit of the dominant sect of the Faithful. They were called Zimmis or people under a contract of protection by the Muslim State on condition of certain services to be rendered by them and certain political and civil disabilities to be borne by them to prevent them from growing strong. The very term Zimmi is an insulting title. It connotes political inferiority and helplessness like the status of a minor proprietor perpetually under a guardian; such protected people could not claim equality with the citizens of the Muslim theocracy.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Jadunath Sarkar, cited in R.C. Majumdar (ed.), The History of the Indian People and Culture, Volume VI, The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay, 1960, pp. 617-18. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

People, Books, Faith, Water

“In the face of those who have no voice, we must, above all, avoid being strong with the weak.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

cf. 1 Cor. 10:23-30, p. 54. Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm"

“Guarded by Bhīṣma, this our force is all too weak; and all too strong that force of theirs, by Bhīma guarded.”

W. Douglas P. Hill (1884–1962) British Indologist

Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 75. (10.)

“Many people feel more complete with a cat in their life, and I would not be surprised if cats felt the same way about us. I know that if I disappeared from the lives of my five cats, they would not be as happy as before. I know, because they wait for me to go on walks along the beach, though they could perfectly well go on their own. When I am with them, they react in such a strong way, gamboling, racing ahead of me, and then flopping down in my path, that it is obvious they derive great pleasure from my company. I find it hard to believe, though, that they could possibly enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs. This is not surprising: we domesticated cats for our benefit. While they get something from it, we probably got the better deal.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 3

Life, Happiness, People, Pleasure

“I don't have a deep desire to know my father. My brother and sister and I got forgotten about by him, and we haven't spoken to him in a ridiculous amount of years. He never contacted us after he and my mother broke up. […] I never felt rejected as a kid. We had a fulfilling life with my mum. She was so strong.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Anastacia refuses to see father http://www.breakingnews.ie/showbiz/anastacia-refuses-to-see-father-165719.html, Breaking News.ie, September 9, 2004. General Quotes

Life, Sister

“Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 15, "Good Falls Sick"

Men, Feeling, Night, Dead

“Not everyone is cut out for the military, but I do believe everyone can and should have the opportunity to participate in a national service endeavor of their choce. Serving in the military can make you a better citizen, employee, and leader. The military provides hands-on experience. It provides leadership training and builds a foundation for a strong work ethic. Corporate America has taken notice and regularly recruits soldiers just as it does Ivy League students.”

Ann E. Dunwoody (1953) U.S. Army, first four-star general in U.S. military history

Source: A Higher Standard (2015), p. 200

Training

“With all of the history of war, and the human race's history unfortunately has been a good deal more war than peace, with nuclear weapons distributed all through the world, and available, and the strong reluctance of any people to accept defeat, I see the possibility in the 1970's of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963

War, People, World, Peace

“Ray Black was in prison, so we weren't able to talk to him. I did some research on the internet and found out that he was in prison because he murdered two children after he raped them. There were also pictures of the dead children, and even though I knew it would only hurt me to look at them, I did. I printed them out and put them in *Stuff That Happened To Me*, right after the picture of Jean-Pierre Haigneré, the french astronaut who had to be carried from his spacecraft after returning form the MIR spacestation, because gravity isn't only what makes us fall, it's what makes our muscles strong.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Children, Hurt, Dead

“Labour should be robust in supporting free and democratic trade unions throughout Europe, in championing a balance of interests in corporate governance and strong civic self-government with a deep partnership between universities, cities and firms. The question is whether being part of the EU hinders this. Britain is already outside the Eurozone and the Schengen agreement. It is gratuitous to remain part of a political union that is so hostile to diversity and democracy and so disposed to the consolidation of big capital that it has become a remorseless machine for the liberalisation of trade and the disintegration of society, in which the demand for liquidity has dissolved solidarity.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The case against remaining in the EU on LabourList.org, 2 June 2016 http://labourlist.org/2016/06/why-should-labour-support-the-european-union-the-case-for-out/

Hostility, Democracy, Question, Support

“They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay
Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay,
To spill thy strong young life for truth to me,
In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous: thou
Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them
Sustain my memory by the proof — if God
Shall give thee grace to prove it — that thy name,
Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears
Rings truth, and means not treason.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Faliero, Act V. Sc. 3.
Marino Faliero (1885)

Life, Men, God, Truth

“The strong appearance of design [in nature] allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

" Design for Living http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/opinion/07behe.html", New York Times, 7 February 2005.

Nature, Appearance

“I have spent the greater part of my life in immediate contemplation of the most grotesque and horrible of the English innovations for the debasement of Ireland. I mean their education system. The English once proposed in their Dublin Parliament a measure for the castration of all Irish priests who refused to quit Ireland. The proposal was so filthy than although it duly passed the House and was transmitted to England with the warm recommendation at the Viceroy. it was not eventually adopted. But the English have actually carried out an even filthier thing. They have planned and established an education system which more wickedly does violence to the elemental human rights of Irish children than would an edict for the general castration of Irish males. The system has aimed at the substitution for men and women of mere Things. It has not been an entire success. There are still a great many thousand men and women in Ireland. But a great many thousand of what, by way of courtesy, we call men and women, are simply Things. Men and women. however depraved, have kindly human allegiances. But these Things have no allegiance. Like other Things. they are For sale. When one uses the term education system as the name of the system of schools. colleges, universities, and whatnot which the English have established in Ireland, one uses it as a convenient label, just as one uses the term government as a convenient label for the system of administration by police which obtains in Ireland instead of a government. There is no education system in Ireland. The English have established the simulacrum of an education system, but its object is the precise contrary of the object of an education system. Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoin_MacNeill Professor Eoin MacNeill] has compared the English education system in Ireland to the systems of slave education which existed in the ancient pagan republics side by side with the systems intended for the education of freemen. To the children of the free were taught all noble and goodly things which would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant; from the children of the slaves all such dangerous knowledge was hidden.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

The Murder Machine

Life, Women, Men, Children

“Art in Britain is in a very healthy state. The artists of my generation and older are at their best — people like Howard Hodgkin and Frank Auerbach. The YBAs are still very strong, and it's exciting to wonder what the next generation will bring.”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Simon O'Hagan "Credo:Peter Blake", http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20051120/ai_n15851377 The Independent on Sunday, 2005-11-20. Accessed from findarticles.com, 2007-01-22 Art

People, Art

“Strange as it sounds, although Man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, Man was in action much the superior of God, whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that Man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; he was pure Act, and as such he could not change. Man alone was, in act, allowed to change direction. What was more curious still, Man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life, he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant his continuous action. If Man had the singular fancy of making himself absurd,— a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence exceedingly strong,— he could be as absurd as he liked; but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures. While Man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be wicked,— a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterlly complained and still complain, he has outrageously abused,— God was Goodness and could be nothing else. […] In one respect, at least, Man's freedom seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was his act and will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think, he is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as Abélard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,— the Valois and Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis of an enlightened Europe.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Life, God, Pleasure, Idea

“We are sorry indeed we could not have defended the island successfully. Now I, Kuribayashi, believe that the enemy will invade Japan proper from this island. … I am very sorry, because I can imagine the scenes of disaster in our empire. However, I comfort myself a little, seeing my officers and men die without regret after struggling in this inch-by-inch battle against an overwhelming enemy with many tanks and being exposed to indescribable bombardments. … I would like now to apologize to my senior and fellow officers for not being strong enough to stop the enemy invasion.”

Tadamichi Kuribayashi (1891–1945) Japanese general

His last radio transmission to the Japanese military headquarters.

Men, Imagination

“If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up indefinitely. […] You know that what you ask is impossible […] I'm capable of nothing with regard to you," he went on, "but just of being infernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only the more strongly.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XVI.

Love, Thinking, Time

“A strong nor'-wester's blowing, Bill!
Hark! don't ye hear it roar now?
Lord help 'em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!”

William Pitt (ship-builder) English ship-builder

The Sailor's Consolation.

Help

“Ukrainian army soldiers are being killed in Donbas. It’s horrible. When I think about this, it makes a very strong impression on me. Because I consider all of them to be ours.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

https://twitter.com/dimsmirnov175/status/971351275152576513 (На Донбассе гибнут военнослужащие украинской армии. Когда я об этом думаю, на меня это производит очень сильное впечатление. Потому что я считаю, что там все наши.) https://twitter.com/dimsmirnov175/status/971351275152576513/video/1 On Ukraine

Thinking

“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Let America Be America Again (1935)

Love, Dreams

“"Never!" What a strong word! A few modern philosophers seem to lend their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts when they assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. We shall attempt to prove that it is without foundation.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Alfred Binet (1909/1975, 105-6), as cited in: B.R. Hergenhahn. An Introduction to the History of Psychology 2009. p. 313
Modern ideas about children, 1909/1975

Intelligence

“The calamities which are coming to this world are unavoidable. Only he who has strong determination to do good acts and who is strongly devoted to God can survive this destruction.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Maha Kranti
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 23 November 1983.

God, World

“Empire is a very stimulating account of globalisation, but it is hopelessly wrong on two central issues. The state has not withered away. Strong states still exist—USA, China, Germany, etc—but the difference with the past is that there is now only one Empire and this is not the nebulous entity imagined by Cultural Studies, but a real, living organism and it has a name; the United States of America.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

Tariq Ali, How Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World. CounterPunch, 8 July 2002.
Empire, About Empire

Imagination, Study, Past

“International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Graves: This was written by Winston Churchill, a highly regarded M. P. in England…so, I need hardly remind you that it will take strong evidence to prove the “Protocols” ‘’’a fake!’’’
Raslovlev: At an old bookshop I got a copy of “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,” by Maurice Joly, 1864.
I examined what I had. It was obvious that the “Protocols of Zion” was copied from it.
Graves: How did you get this?
Raslovlev: I bought this book from a friend, formerly of the Okhrana, our secret agents in France. They ordered the plagiarism!
When the Bolsheviks came in, we left with what we could take out with us.
How much is it worth to you, or your paper, Mr. Graves?
Graves: Hmm…can’t say yet! …Is Geneva really the place of publication??
Raslovlev: I do know that the “Protocols of Zion: was intended to prove to the Tsar that the Revolt in Russia was a Jewish Plot…it was written by an Okhrana agent…a plagiarist, Mathieu Golovinski!
When it was first published in Russia round 1902, its publisher, Dr. Nilus, claimed it to be notes stolen from an 1897 Zionist congress by French agents!
Graves: But that congress was convened by Theodore Herzl to promote a Jewish state. It was not a secret meeting…Dr. Nilus’s claim is a lie!
Raslovlev: Yes, it is indeed! Let me show you…we will compare the “Protocols” with Joly’s Book.
Raslovlev: Set them side by side Graves, and you will see obvious plagiarism of Joly’s “dialogue!”
Graves: I see…be patient while I go through it…yes! Yes! Yes!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 70-73

Men, People, Lie, Secret

“He who holds me by a thread is not strong; the thread is strong.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Quien me tiene de un hilo no es fuerte; lo fuerte es el hilo.
Voces (1943)

“Donald Trump is a fascist. … Not in the sense of an all-purpose bad guy, but in the sense of somebody who sincerely believes that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world. He spent his previous career negotiating with the government on behalf of corporations; now he has switched teams. But it’s the same game.”

Michael Kinsley (1951) American political journalist, commentator television host

Donald Trump is actually a fascist (December 9, 2016)

World, Guy, Game, Sense

“Free speech. Freedom of association. These values are repulsive to the radical Islamic terrorist. They fear them and suppress them whenever and wherever they can. Yet through those very means, we as a society are protective of that terrorist’s rights. This is ironic, but good. Because, as you well know, America has a unique responsibility to set the global standard for liberty and fair conduct. The world looks to us to set high standards for freedom, and we take that leadership role very seriously. Our commitment to leading by example – on issues from human rights to free speech – is strong. Indeed, other countries strike a different balance between security and freedom, both in the activities they punish as crimes, and in the procedures with which they do so. In some instances, our allies have adopted or utilized some counterterrorism tools that we have not adopted in the United States because doing so would abridge the civil liberties protected by our constitution.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

World, Fear, Freedom, Country

“My figures at least are not a bunch of clothes with a head and hands sticking out but more nearly resemble the strong living bodies that most pictures show. And in the latter end of a life so spent in study, you at least can imagine that painting is with me a very serious study. That I have but little patience with the false modesty which is the greatest enemy to all figure painting. I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure. If there is impropriety, then just where does such impropriety begin? Is it wrong to look at a picture of a naked figure or at a statue? English ladies of the last generation thought so and avoided the statue galleries, but do so no longer. Or is it a question of sex? Should men make only the statues of men to be looked at by men, while the statues of women should be made by women to be looked at by women only? Should the he-painters draw the horses and bulls, and the she-painters like Rosa Bonheur the mares and cows? Must the poor old male body in the dissecting room be mutilated before Miss Prudery can dabble in his guts?Such indignities anger me. Can not anyone see into what contemptible inconsistencies such follies all lead? And how dangerous they are? My conscience is clear, and my suffering is past.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter of resignation to Edward Hornor Coates, Chairman of the Committee on Instruction, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1886-02-15).

Life, Women, Men, Beauty

“…evidence-based approach, the U. S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. […] The claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that, which brings us back to the viability of American democracy. For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him…”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

25th anniversary of the International Relations Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 26, 2005
Quotes 2000s, 2005

School, Guy, Democracy, Boy

“Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity—he saw them all as allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, of the botched against the fit.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Democracy

“This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Law of the Yukon http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/781.html (1907)

Law, Despair

“It would be futile to deny that the Nazis built a vast mass of evil on a vast mass of prejudice. It would be equally futile to deny that strong prejudices against the Jews existed among Christians during the centuries before the Shoah. Since, moreover, the childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy, we should not be surprised that these prejudices were, in part, ecclesiastically inculcated.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Jesus, Jews and the Shoah: A Moral Reckoning by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (2003)

Evil, Parting, Childhood

“[In air power] so far from being half as strong again as Germany, so far from making up lee-way, we are already greatly inferior in numbers and falling further and further behind every month. … No doubt it is not popular to say these things, but I am accustomed to abuse and I expect to have a great deal more of it before I have finished. Somebody has to state the truth. There ought to be a few members of the House of Commons who are in a sufficiently independent position to confront both Ministers and electors with unpalatable truths. We do not wish our ancient freedom and the decent tolerant civilisation we have preserved in this island to hang upon a rotten thread.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the City Carlton Club (26 September 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 1268
The 1930s

Truth, Way, Freedom, Housing

“I commend to all the virtues of industry and thrift, which I believe go hand in hand. The labor and thrift of the people make a nation, a community, or a family strong. Work and thrift make the family independent.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

People, Family, Communication

“The love of man and woman is as fire
To warm, to light, but surely to consume
And self-consuming die…
But comrade-love is as a welding blast
Of candid flame and ardent temperature:
Glowing more fervent, it doth bind more fast;
And melting both but makes the union sure.
The dross alone is burnt—till at the last
The steel, if cold, is one and strong and pure.”

James Jeffrey Roche (1847–1908) American journalist

My Comrade, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love, Light

“The establishment and maintenance of sound and fair social conditions; so that there should be no oppression nor injustice, but a square deal for everybody; so that the strong should not be permitted to prey upon the weak; so that the law of helpfulness should prevail, instead of the law of ravine … such sound and fair social conditions would bring to the community in which they were established and maintained, unexampled, and marvelous prosperity; and this prosperity and peace and happiness would promptly advertise themselves and set up an irresistible attraction. Such a society as this would be a magnet that would draw to itself, all the children of men. They would all want to be in it.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: The Nation and the Kingdom (1909), pp. 4-5

Men, Happiness, Children, Peace

“In the recent past, wolves were labeled a flagship species or an umbrella, indicator, or keystone species, depending on what conservation market one was trying to penetrate… A flagship species is an attraction to nearly all society's strata, but wolves are not welcomed by all factions of society. With a few rare exceptions, the rural world opposes wolves, so the animal's flagship role is restricted primarily to urbanites or to local areas. Wolves are certainly a powerful flagship species for the conservation movement, particularly that of affluent societies with strong lobbies in large cities, but a true flagship species should be able to move an entire society toward a goal.
Neither are wolves a good umbrella species (i. e., a species, usually high in the ecological pyramid, whose conservation necessarily fosters that of the rest of the chain) in that they can live well on a variety of food resources and in areas with an impoverished prey base. Wolves are not a keystone species either, in that they are not essential for the presence of many other species (e. g., herbivores flourish in areas devoid of wolves). And wolves are not necessarily indicators of good habitat quality or integrity because they are too generalist to be good indicators of the presence of a pristine trophic chain.
The above labels have been very useful in many circumstance and have contributed significantly to wolf recovery. They may still be useful in the future, but we should be aware that they are shortcuts to "sell a product" rather than good scientific grounds on which to build conservation.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

World, Food, Wolf, Past

“What are the rewards of the tiny, ingrown, biological family opposing its closed circle of affection to a forbidding world of the strong ties between parent and children, ties which an active personal relation from birth until death?… Perhaps these are too heavy prices to pay for a specialization of emotions which might be bought about the other ways, notable through coeducation. And with such a question in our minds its interesting to note that a larger family community, in which there are several adult men and women, seems to ensure the child against the development of the crippling attitudes which have been labelled Oedipus complexes, the Electra complexes, and so on.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 147; Partly cited in: E. Michael Jones (1993) Degenerate Moderns: Modernity As Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior. p. 24-25

Death, Women, Men, Children

“O Canada! Where pines and maples grow.
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western Sea,
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!”

Robert Stanley Weir (1856–1926) Canadian judge and poet

O Canada (1908)

Hope, Sea

“In estimating the amount of dark matter, cosmologists developing the standard model have to make some rather strong assumptions about their observations.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 7, New Cosmological Data, p. 120

“I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.”

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) British writer and philosopher

Letter to Gilbert Imlay (19 August 1794)

Sadness, Peace, Sleep, Time

“I’d gotten involved in the Women’s Movement, and there were a lot of songs on the radio about being weak and being dainty and all those sort of things. All the women in my family, they were strong women. They worked. They lived through the Depression and a world war, and they were just strong women. I certainly didn’t see myself as being dainty.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On her motivation to write a renowned song, "I Am Woman"
Chicago Tribune interview (March 2013)

Women, War, World, Family

“I am convinced that we face a great offensive immediately," "We have lost more than 400 killed and 300 wounded since Nov. 5 and now the Japanese have handed an ultimatum to me. I know we are not strong enough to fight. But we must hold our own, until Death!”

Ma Zhanshan (1885–1950) Chinese politician

[CHINA-JAPAN: Hero Ma, TIME, 23 November 1931, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742656-2,00.html]

Death, Fight

“The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience. 'The will,' says Francis Thompson, 'is the lynch-pin of the faculties.' We stand or fall by its strength or its infirmity. Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue. Parental legislation for the benefit of the weak leaves them as weak as ever… They may go to heaven in leading-strings, but they cannot conquer Apollyon on the way.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "Consolations of the Conservative" from Points of Friction (1920)

Men, Way, Parent, Change

“Is life worth living? Yes, so long
As there is wrong to right,
Wail of the weak against the strong,
Or tyranny to fight;”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Is Life Worth Living? http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/9/3/1/19316/19316.htm (1896)

Life, Fight

“Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor
Only as free as a padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand!”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"The Power and the Glory" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/power-and-the-glory.html from All the News That's Fit to Sing (1964) Lyrics

Love

“.. as I met with Mr. (Dunning there. There is something exclusive of the clear and deep understanding of that gentleman most exceedingly pleasing to me. He seems the only man who talks as Giardini plays, if you know what I mean; he puts no more motion than what goes to the real performance, which constitutes that ease and gentility peculiar to damned clever fellows... He is an amazing compact man in every respect.... and besides this neatness in outward appearance, his storeroom seems cleared of all French ornaments and gingerbread work, everything is simplicity and elegance and in its proper place, no disorder or confusion in the furniture.... Sober sense and great acuteness are marked very strong in his face.... but there is genius (in our sense of the word). (It) shines in all he says. In short, Mr. Jackson of Exeter [his friend], I begin to think there is something in the air of Devonshire that grows clever fellows. I could name four or five of you, superior to the product of any other county in England.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 2 Sept. 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 384 (Appendix A - Letter VII) 1755 - 1769

Understanding, Thinking, Sense, Appearance

“We live in a liberal democracy…. That’s what we created in this country. I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment… It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can’t lose that in this country. We've got to get it back.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Interview with Bill Maher, on Real Time with Bill Maher (5 September 2003) http://www.safesearching.com/billmaher/print/t_hbo_realtime_090503.htm

People, Religion, Democracy, Idea

“Strong joy and grief depend upon the treatment this rudimentary social self receives.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. p. 166

Joy, Dependency

“We may observe, that, notwithstanding the dogmatical, imperious style of all superstition, the conviction of the religionists, in all ages, is more affected than real, and scarcely ever approaches, in any degree, to that solid belief and persuasion, which governs us in the common affairs of life. Men dare not avow, even to their own hearts, the doubts which they entertain on such subjects: They make a merit of implicit faith; and disguise to themselves their real infidelity, by the strongest asseverations and most positive bigotry. But nature is too hard for all their endeavours, and suffers not the obscure, glimmering light, afforded in those shadowy regions, to equal the strong impressions, made by common sense and by experience. The usual course of men's conduct belies their words, and shows, that their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part XII - With regard to doubt or conviction
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Life, Men, Age, Faith

“We cannot have four more years apologizing to [America's] enemies and abandoning our friends. America needs to be strong for the world to be safe, and on the world stage, Donald Trump will lead from strength.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Excerpt from his vice presidential acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention — https://fox59.com/2016/07/21/we-like-mike-full-transcript-of-gov-pences-vp-acceptance-speech/ (July 21, 2016) Trump/Pence 2016 Presidential Campaign

World

“[S]egments of the Right, who denounced phrases like “economic patriotism” when it passed Barack Obama’s lips but nod and cheer when similar phrases come out of the mouths of “nationalists.” They see the state as the key to fostering a new social solidarity because it alone speaks for their new idol — or “strong god” — of the Nation. Passionate nationalists, like passionate socialists, ultimately believe that the State can love you, and if the right people take it over, the divisions that are inevitable in a free society will be knitted together by some government initiative. But that is not love, it is lust. It is a lust for power and victory for your vision over all others.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, The Government Can’t Love You (2018)

Love, God, People, Passion

“Vietnam vet: We haven't heard why you voted against your colleagues' proposals to increase health care funding in 2004, '05, '06, and '07, when we had troops coming back from two wars.
Madow: Instead of the answer the questioner is looking for, McCain now takes credit for the GI bill and takes a political shot at Jim Webb.
McCain: On the issue of the GI bill, I was disappointed that Senator Webb didn't support making it permanent. Senator Graham, other veterans and I will be looking to extend that to all veterans, not just 2001. I hope you'll urge Senator Webb to agree with that.
McCain: I received every award from every major veterans' organization in America. The reason is I have a perfect voting record from organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and all the other veterans service organizations because of my support of them.
Vietnam vet: You do not have a perfect voting record by the DIV and the VFW. That's where these votes [of yours against increasing vet health care] are recorded. The votes were proposals by your colleagues in the Senate to increase health care funding of the VA in 2003, '04, '05, and '06 for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you voted against those proposals. I can give you specific Senate votes, the numbers of those Senate votes right now.
McCain: I thank you, and I'll examine your version of what my voting record is, but again, I've been endorsed in every election by all of the veterans' organizations that do that. I've been supported by them, and I've received their highest rewards, from all of those organizations, so I guess they don't know something you know.
Rieckoff: [McCain's] voting record is not very strong. The Disabled American Veterans gave him a 20% rating out of 100. Our organization, the IAVA, gave him a D rating in the last voting session. He does not have a perfect voting record from the VFW. He's consistently voted against increased funding of the VA, and he's been a major opponent of the new GI bill.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans for America and author of Chasing Ghosts, on Countdown, discussing a town hall exchange between McCain and another Vietnam vet; 9 July 2008; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8 IAVA ratings: McCain: D; Obama: B+ http://www.iava.org/full-ratings-list; DAV: McCain: 20%; Obama: 80%; the AL and VFW don't perform such voting record ratings http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_mccain_have_a_perfect_voting_record.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8 2000s, 2008

War, Health, Hope, Disappointment

“The Greeks, who were apparently strong on visual aids, originated the term stigma to refer to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor — a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places. Later, in Christian times, two layers of metaphor were added to the term : the first referred to bodily signs of holy grace that took the form of eruptive blossoms on the skin; the second, a medical allusion to this religious allusion, referred to bodily signs of physical disorder. Today the term is widely used in something like the original literal sense, but is applied more to the disgrace itself than to the bodily evidence of it. Furthermore, shifts have occurred in the kinds of disgrace that arouse concern. Students, however, have made little effort to describe the structural preconditions of stigma, or even to provide a definition of the concept itself. It seems necessary, therefore, to try at the beginning to sketch in some very general assumptions and definitions.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Source: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 1-2 Lead paragraph

Sense, Effort, Time, Personality

“To see the Convulsions, Agonies and Tortures of a poor Fellow-Creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify Luxury, and scratch callous and rank Organs, must require a rocky Heart, and a great Degree of Cruelty and Ferocity. I cannot find any great Difference on the Foot of natural Reason and Equity only, between feeding on human Flesh, and feeding on brute animal Flesh, except Custom and Example. I believe some rational Creatures would suffer less in being fairly butcher'd, than a strong Ox, or red Deer; and in natural Morality and Justice, the Degrees of Pain here, make the essential Difference; for as to other Differences, they are relative only, and can be of no Weight with an infinitely perfect Being.”

George Cheyne (physician) (1671–1743) British doctor

Did not Use and Example weaken this Terror, and make the Difference, Reason alone could never do it. An Essay on Regimen (London: C. Rivington, 1740), pp. 70 https://books.google.it/books?id=ezswAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA70-71.

Pain, Justice, Nature, Suffering

Quotes about strength page 24

Quotes about strength
page 24