“The sure sign of a weak man who ascends to glory is that he can't tolerate having strong men around him.”

—  Clive James

Source: Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006), p. 126

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The sure sign of a weak man who ascends to glory is that he can't tolerate having strong men around him." by Clive James?
Clive James photo
Clive James151
Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator an… 1939–2019

Related quotes

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

As quoted in Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2001) edited by Margaret Gee, p. 71.

H.L. Mencken photo

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."”

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

418
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Marilyn Monroe photo

“A strong man doesn't have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn't match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

“a man would know the women he was meant to be with because she made him weak. Till he claimed her and she made him strong.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: If You Deceive

Elbert Hubbard photo

“It is the weak man who urges compromise—never the strong man.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 52

Abraham Lincoln photo

“You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“… no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.”

Pearl Cleage (1948) American novelist

Source: Just Wanna Testify

William Howard Taft photo

“One of the marvelous things about him is that he is strong enough to force the men who dislike him the most to stand by him. By far he is the strongest man before the people to-day except Roosevelt. I think his greatest fault is his failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done. This is a great weakness in any man. I think it was one of the strongest things about Roosevelt. He never tried to minimize what other people did and often exaggerated it.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

On Charles Evans Hughes, in November 1909, as quoted in Taft and Roosevelt : The intimate letters of Archie Butt (1930) by Archibald Willingham Butt, p. 224; this has sometimes been paraphrased: "Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man."

Hendrik Verwoerd photo

“We must have the courage of men and be strong. But the will to resistance of a volk/people is linked to the kind of leadership which he chooses for himself. If he has the will to resistance, he searches for strong leadership and not weak leadership. If you want to be victorious, you have to be prepared to follow leaders who are not prepared to cave in.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

Verwoerd in 1963, as quoted and translated by J. J. Venter in H.F. Verwoerd: Foundational aspects of his thought, Koers 64(4) 1999: 415–442

George William Curtis photo

“With the sure sagacity of a leader of men, Washington at once selected, for the highest and most responsible stations, the three chief Americans who represented the three forces in the nation which alone could command success in the institution of the government. Hamilton was the head, Jefferson was the heart, and John Jay was the conscience. Washington's just and serene ascendancy was the lambent flame in which these beneficent powers were fused, and nothing less than that ascendancy could have ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm that burst around him.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

As quoted in Manual Of Patriotism : For Use in the Public Schools of the State of New York (1900) By Charles Rufus Skinner, p. 261.

Related topics