Strength quotes (page 75) | Quotes of famous people

“I always pray before fighting. I pray in the corner, in the hotel room – maybe two hours before I go to the arena. It takes me far – I see a big difference when you pray and go into a fight; you have more strength and also you know God’s helping you.”

Amir Khan (boxer) (1986) British boxer

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVM9mW7gglI&feature=channel (Aik Din Geo Kay Sath), GEO News. (September 2009)

“The science of human nature belongs to people who are not afraid to live independent lives. They alone have the flexible access to experience which can bring human wisdom and strength into being, and once these assets exist, they will send forth their influence with an authority that cannot be resisted, unmindful of artificial man made boundaries, reaching anywhere in the world.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

A Renegade Psychiatrist's Story

“The strength of an organization lies in precise coordination of its parts, in strict correspondence of various mutually connected functions. This coordination is maintained through constant growth in tektological variety, but not without bounds:... there comes a moment when the parts of the whole become too differentiated in their organization and their resistance to the surrounding environment weakens. This leads sooner or later to disorganization.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Source: Tektology. The Universal Organizational Science, 1922, p. 248, as cited in: George Gorelik, " Reemergence of Bogdanov's Tektology in Soviet Studies of Organization http://monoskop.org/images/0/00/Gorelik_George_1975_Reemergence_of_Bogdanovs_Tektology_in_Soviet_Studies_of_Organization.pdf." Academy of Management Journal 18.2 (1975): 345-357.

“We bow our heads in respect for those Soviet women who displayed exceptional courage in the severe time of war. Never before but during the days of the war the grandeur of spirit and the invincible will of our Soviet women, their selfless dedication, loyalty and affection to their Homeland, their boundless persistence in work and their heroism on the front manifested themselves with such strength.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in V karǐni zdiǐsnenoǐ mriǐ (1979) by IE IU Kastelli, p. 54

“Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.
That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 25 (p. 67)

“In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero’s shoulders and the heroine’s balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

"Captain Future, Block That Kick!", The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) p. 72

“If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it. "Stand for something, or you will fall for nothing."
And if cynics ridicule freedom, ridicule community… if "hard nosed realists" say that profit is the only ideal… just ignore them, and use copyleft all the same.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

“Social Democracy must remain for itself, must seek for and generate its power within itself. Every power outside of ourselves on which we seek to lean is for us only weakness. In the consciousness of our strength, in our faith in the world-conquering mission of socialism lies the secret of our extraordinary, almost miraculous success.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“Your teen may be weaker, but he is not without the ability to do himself and others a lot of harm by showing you that you can't control him at school or anywhere else when he is out of your sight…. [W]hen he is on his own, your only control over him is the strength of your relationship.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Unhappy Teenagers A Way for Parents and Teachers to Reach Them (2002), p.9

“Yet the very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. But I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

Generation of Greatness (1957)
Context: I believe there are two opposing theories of history, and you have to make your choice. Either you believe that this kind of individual greatness does exist and can be nurtured and developed, that such great individuals can be part of a cooperative community while they continue to be their happy, flourishing, contributing selves — or else you believe that there is some mystical, cyclical, overriding, predetermined, cultural law — a historic determinism.
The great contribution of science is to say that this second theory is nonsense. The great contribution of science is to demonstrate that a person can regard the world as chaos, but can find in himself a method of perceiving, within that chaos, small arrangements of order, that out of himself, and out of the order that previous scientists have generated, he can make things that are exciting and thrilling to make, that are deeply spiritual contributions to himself and to his friends. The scientist comes to the world and says, "I do not understand the divine source, but I know, in a way that I don't understand, that out of chaos I can make order, out of loneliness I can make friendship, out of ugliness I can make beauty."
I believe that men are born this way — that all men are born this way. I know that each of the undergraduates with whom I talked shares this belief. Each of these men felt secretly — it was his very special secret and his deepest secret — that he could be great.
But not many undergraduates come through our present educational system retaining this hope. Our young people, for the most part — unless they are geniuses — after a very short time in college give up any hope of being individually great. They plan, instead, to be good. They plan to be effective, They plan to do their job. They plan to take their healthy place in the community. We might say that today it takes a genius to come out great, and a great man, a merely great man, cannot survive. It has become our habit, therefore, to think that the age of greatness has passed, that the age of the great man is gone, that this is the day of group research, that this is the day of community progress. Yet the very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. But I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.

“It is our purpose in our intercourse with foreign powers to rely not on the strength of our fleets and our armies but on the justice of our cause. For these reasons our country has not wished to maintain huge military forces. It has been convinced that it could better serve itself and better serve humanity by using its resources for other purposes.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

“The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view; the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Past and Future"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“God’s signs are not always the ones we look for, yet the private prayers of people, whether in our homes or in this place, are known, heard, and understood. There are prayers that help us last through the day, or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey. And there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Opening address to the National Day of Prayer in Suva, 15 May 2005 (excerpts) http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_4607.shtml

“Capitalism may hold the working class subjection by the strength of its might and power, but capitalism will never do it with the willing consent and acquiescence of that working class. Always and under all circumstance, will there be found fresh voices, growing not only in volume, but in numbers, raised to protest against this enslavement, and the rigour of the oppression will determine always the vigour of the protest.”

Arthur MacManus (1889–1927) British trade unionist

The Vendetta https://www.marxists.org/archive/mcmanus, Communist Party of Great Britain, (March 21, 1921)

“My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could be for his life, and and for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength — and his weakness, too. — His strength — for he was by nature eloquent — and his weakness — for he was hourly a dupe to it; and provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one — (bating the case of a systematic misfortune)— he had all he wanted.— A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune was as five”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.
Book V, Ch. 3.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)