Quotes about strength
page 2

“If you are not capable of cruelty, then you are absolutely a victim of anyone who is. For those who are exceedingly agreeable, there is a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster within them, which is what gives them strength of character and self-respect, because it is impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth. And if you grow teeth, you realize that you're somewhat dangerous, or seriously dangerous. Then you might be more willing to demand that you treat yourself with respect and that other people do the same thing. That doesn't mean that being cruel is better than not being cruel. What it means is that being able to be cruel, and then not being cruel, is better than not being able to be cruel, because in the first case you're nothing but weak and naive, and in the second case you're dangerous but you have it under control. If you're competent at fighting, it actually decreases the probability that you're going to have to fight, because when someone pushes you you'll be able to respond with confidence, and with any luck a reasonable show of confidence, which is a show of dominance, will be enough to make the bully back off.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLc_MC7NQek&t=0s "2017 Personality 04/05: Heroic and Shamanic Initiations"

People, Confidence, Fight, Parting

“I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)

People, Way, Feeling, Nature

“No doubt: I was in front of a madman. The awareness that the existence of our people was in the hands of an insane person, unable to dominate the situation […] weighed on me with all its strength.”

Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966) German general

About Adolf Hitler.

People, Personality

“In Randori we teach the pupil to act on the fundamental principles of Judo, no matter how physically inferior his opponent may seem to him, and even if by sheer strength he can easily overcome him”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

"Judo: The Japanese Art of Self Defense", as translated in A Complete Guide to Judo : It's Story and Practice (1958) by Robert W. Smith http://www.judoinfo.com/kano2.htm Context: In Randori we teach the pupil to act on the fundamental principles of Judo, no matter how physically inferior his opponent may seem to him, and even if by sheer strength he can easily overcome him; because if he acts contrary to principle his opponent will never be convinced of defeat, no matter what brute strength he may have used.

“To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)
Context: To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled time, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard and fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we still embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.

Age, World

“I will be harsh and stern against the aggressor, but I will be a pillar of strength for the weak.”

Umar (585–644) Second Caliph of Rashidun Caliphate and a companion of Muhammad

As quoted in Al Farooq, Umar (1944) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Ch. 5, p. 124
Context: I will be harsh and stern against the aggressor, but I will be a pillar of strength for the weak.
I will not calm down until I will put one cheek of a tyrant on the ground and the other under my feet, and for the poor and weak, I will put my cheek on the ground.

“One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty.”

George Orwell book England Your England

The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Part I: England Your England
"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Context: One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.

World, Loyalty

“To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people's views. It is to be open, not closed.”

Barbra Streisand (1942) American singer, actress, writer, film producer, and director

Playboy interview (1977), as quoted in No Glass Slipper : Surviving and Conquering Painful Life Experiences (2006), p. 32
Context: To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people's views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it's also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do — bad or good.

People

“I think success is when you are confronted with utter defeat of your world, your intimacy, your ideas, your public picture, your heritage, your previous achievements. When in one moment it looks like there is one, and nothing that helps you. When almost every look is also a look of doubt, when you yourself put everything under the question mark. When all the illusions about yourself fall, illusions about your surroundings, about people, about faith and religion, about flags, about objects of love and how much are you in love…and then, in that moment of personal and private holocaust, of that ocean of pain looking like all inner strength faded away, and there is no right for excuses about your existence. When at that moment you rise and keep moving forward, you start and you lead a creative and productive life. Yes, I think that is objective strength and power.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

Faith, Religion, Pain, Success

“Cause sometimes you feel tired, feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Till I Collapse"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Motivation, Bad luck, Feeling, Search

“During the examinations, the students are not tested for their mental and physical strengths before entering the exams hall, or class.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Dear first borns, especially daughters. God is your strength. That is all. You understand this tweet.”

Nicki Minaj (1982) Trinidadian-born American singer, rapper and actress

Source: Queen Radio Episode 14 December 2020

God, Understanding, Daughters

“Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women… merely adored.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

Women, Men

“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse for impossibility, for it thinks all things are lawful for itself and all things are possible”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Love, Law, Feeling, Thinking

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.”

Ruby Dee (1922–2014) American actress

For women, Hope, Positive, Beauty

“The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: The Burning Secret and other stories

Love, Disappointment, History, Heart

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 15: Hetch Hetchy Valley 1910s Variant: Everybody needs beauty... places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.

Beauty, Soul, Nature

“How can you pull down strongholds of Satan if you don't even have the strength to turn off your TV?”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Laughter, Light

“Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the universal laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rock-like. But because it is so deep we need both patience and perseverance when digging for it.”

Paul Brunton (1898–1981) British philosopher

Source: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

Law, Universe, Heart, Patience

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.”

James P. Carse American academic

Source: Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

Strong

“It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Way

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Italian author and poet

Way, Reading, Perseverance, Night

“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

For Team

“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Courageous, Powerful, Appearance, Time

“I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“I seek strength, not to be greater than other, but to fight my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Fight

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Love, Smile

“It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

World, Beauty

“The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

Books, Courage, Hurt

“The weakness of men is the facade of strength; the strength of women is the facade of weakness.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 13.

Women, Men

“Our passion is our strength”

Green Day

Passion

“I’ll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Flying

“Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Moving On, Tear

“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

“… I draw on the work of Piaget (1968) in identifying conflict as the harbinger of growth and also on the work of Erikson (1964) who, in charting development through crisis, demonstrates how a heightened vulnerability signals the emergence of a potential strength, creating a dangerous opportunity for growth, "a turning point for better or worse" (p. 139).”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Drawing

“I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Pain

“Give me strength, not to be better than my enemies, but to defeat my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself. Give me strength for a straight back and clear eyes, so when life fades, as the setting sun, my spirit may come to you without shame.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Life, Sun

“There can be no faith without doubt. No strength without temptation. (Rafael)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

Faith

“Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Sir Robert Chiltern, Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Courage, Thinking

“Our strength comes from that magic, from the earth and the sky, from the fire and the water. Fly high, swim deep, give back to the earth what she gives you…”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Water, Flying

“I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Source: The Selected Letters, Vol. 1: 1920-1945

“Every weakness contains within itself a strength.”

Shūsaku Endō (1923–1996) author from Japan

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

“Magic is the art of thinking, not strength or language.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

Art, Thinking

“I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Source: Lettres à Génica Athanasiou

Pain, Angels, Hell, Understanding

“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Motivational, Beauty, Positive, Good Morning

“Have strength in yourself always. think and remember not just what you should do, but also what you want to do. (Ageha, Basara, Vol. 13)”

Yumi Tamura Manga artist

Source: Basara, Vol. 13

Thinking

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Section VIII: “Monopoly, or Opportunity?”, p. 117 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA177&dq=%22man+who+is+swimming%22 1910s, The New Freedom (1913)

“The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other.”

Mario Puzo (1920–1999) American Novelist

Family, Family, Loyalty

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Courageous, For Men, Smile

“Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.”

Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) French surgeon and biologist

Men, Disease, Effort

“Strength enough to build a home,
Time enough to hold a child,
Love enough to break a heart”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Love, Home, Time, Heart

“Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, … It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

The Story Teller ISBN: 978-1-4767-2783-7 (2013)
Source: The Storyteller

“Sometimes when things get hard, we tend to set our sights on what's hard, that difficult thing that keeps us upset, and we turn our back on our strengths.”

Walter Dean Myers book Scorpions

Source: Scorpions

“Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Pain

“A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness.”

Barbara Ehrenreich book Nickel and Dimed

Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

“Weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”

Anna Freud (1895–1982) Austrian-British psychoanalyst & essayist

Confidence, Time

“What if a puppet could cut its own strings, and in that act of defiance and strength of will become truly alive? Become is own puppetmaster?”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

“They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

“Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Death, Friendship, Pleasure, Age

“Tedium is the lack of a mithology. To whom has no beliefs, even doubt is impossible, even skepticism has no strength to suspect.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O tédio é a falta de uma mitologia. A quem não tem crenças, até a dúvida é impossível, até o cepticismo não tem força para desconfiar.

“Every man needs his Siren to check his courage and strength when he hears her song in his travels through the unknown.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Siren http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/siren-7/ From the poems written in English

Travel, Courage

“In selecting human assistants such superficialities as education, as physical strength, even antecedent morality, are not as important as the inner attitudes, proclivities, character, which after all determine the man or woman.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 176; cited in Münsterberg (113; 52)

Education

“It is not my purpose here to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Health, Question, Parting

“An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation. Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life —the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Life, Men, People, Youth

“It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 187.

Men

“We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Life, War, World, Peace

“Thus the British lost the very able and adaptable commander David Stirling of the desert group SAS which had caused us more damage than any other British unit of equal strength.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Ch XVIII : Back to Tunisia, p. 393.
The Rommel Papers (1953)

“I am only about half alive—a large part of my strength is consumed in sitting up or walking. My nervous system is a shattered wreck, and I am absolutely bored & listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me. However—so many things do interest me, & interest me intensely, in science, history, philosophy, & literature; that I have never actually desired to die, or entertained any suicidal designs, as might be expected of one with so little kinship to the ordinary features of life.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Alfred Galpin (27 May 1918), published in Letters to Alfred Galpin edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 18
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, History, Literature, Suicide

“If we are faithful to GOD in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life.”

James Hudson Taylor A Retrospect

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Retrospect. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, n.d., 20).

Life, God, Faith, Help

“Strength without agility is a mere mass.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A força sem a destreza é uma simples massa.

“In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames. He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passim, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Youth, Lovers, Affliction

“I had the endurance but not the brute strength that must be coupled with it. No woman has this combination. That's why I say none of my sex will ever accomplish that particular stunt.”

Annette Kellerman (1886–1975) Australian swimmer, vaudeville star, film actress and writer

Of swimming the English Channel; "Into Fame and Fortune", in The American Magazine, Vol. 83 (1917), p. 34

Sex

“There's an angel that's watching right over you
All your trials have not been in vain
Won't you lift your head up to the starry night
Finding strength in the things that remain.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

A New Kind of Man
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)

Angels, Night

“(Sports) provides a wonderful opportunity for initiating acquaintance. Regardless of the degree of our civilization, people still thrill to physical combat and admire the man who excels. He who is of proven merit in the field of major sports has shown to all that he is possessed of strength, vigor, stamina, and courage. The great majority of people want to know such a man…How well I have taken advantage of the football reputation it was my good fortune to gain is for others to judge, but I personally am very thankful for the whole experience and the fun and friends it has brought me.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Journal entry (February 22, 1942)

People, Courage, Sport, Football

“The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Commenting on After the Fall (1964) in The Saturday Evening Post (1 February 1964)

Knowledge, Tree

“For democracy is more than just elections. True democracy, real prosperity, lasting security -- these are neither simply given, nor imposed from the outside. They must be earned and built from within. They must be earned and built from within. And in that age-old contest of ideas -- between freedom and authoritarianism, between liberty and oppression, between solidarity and intolerance -- Poland’s progress shows the enduring strength of the ideals that we cherish as a free people. Here we see the strength of democracy: Citizens raising their voices, free from fear. Here we see political parties competing in open and honest elections. Here we see an independent judiciary working to uphold the rule of law. Here in Poland we see a vibrant press and a growing civil society that holds leaders accountable -- because governments exist to lift up their people, not to hold them down.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)

People, Age, Fear, Law

“Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Comme tous les gens qui ne sont pas amoureux, il s'imaginait qu'on choisit la personne qu'on aime après mille délibérations et d'après des qualités et convenances diverses.
Pt. II, Ch. 1
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. IV: Cities of the Plain (1921-1922)

Love, Imagination, Personality

“For when every judgement is the act of hym that judgeth, it behoveth that every man performe hys worke and purpose, not by any forayne or straunge power or facultie, but by his owne proper power, and strength.”

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Tr. George Colville (1556); source https://books.google.com/books?id=649EAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA129 The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book V

“The homogenizing of European man … requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength … strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Sec. 898 (Notebook W II 1. Fall 1887, KGW VIII, 2.88-90, KSA 12.424-6)
The Will to Power (1888)

Life, Strong

“If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness than does reflection, it gives more strength to execute it.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 170-171.

Passion

“In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn’t do well. They’d get bad openings. You cannot compare the playing strength, you can only talk about natural ability. Memorization is enormously powerful. Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca, and especially against the players of the previous century, like Morphy and Steinitz. Maybe they would still be able to outplay the young kid of today. Or maybe not, because nowadays when you get the opening advantage not only do you get the opening advantage, you know how to play, they have so many examples of what to do from this position. It is really deadly, and that is why I don’t like chess any more.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, October 16 2006 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_35_3.MP3 2000s

Nature, Dependency, Dead

“Russia will in due time become a power almost as great as the old Roman Empire. She can become mistress of all Asia, except British India, whenever she chooses to take it; and when enlightened arrangements shall have made her revenue proportioned to her territory, and railways shall have abridged distances her command of men will become enormous, her pecuniary means gigantic, and her power of transporting armies over great distances most formidable. Germany ought to be strong in order to resist Russian aggression, and a strong Prussia is essential to German strength.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Lord John Russell (13 September 1865), quoted in E. Ashley (ed.), The Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston 1846-1865 (London, 1876), pp. 270-1
1860s

Men, Strong, Time

“If there is a faith which can move mountains, then it is a faith in one’s own strength.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Wenn es einen Glauben gibt, der Berge versetzen kann, so ist es der Glaube an die eigene Kraft.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 22.

Faith, Mountain

“Freedom exalts power; and, as is always the collateral effect of increasing strength, tends to induce a spirit of liberality. Coercion stifles power, and engenders all selfish desires, and all the mean artifices of weakness. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a portion of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Beauty, Freedom, Selfishness

“My work in the future must be devoted entirely to pure mathematics in its abstract meaning. I shall apply all my strength to bring more light into the tremendous obscurity which one unquestionably finds in analysis. It lacks so completely all plan and system that it is peculiar that so many have studied it. The worst of it is, it has never been treated stringently. There are very few theorems in advanced analysis which have been demonstrated in a logically tenable manner. Everywhere one finds this miserable way of concluding from the special to the general, and it is extremely peculiar that such a procedure has led to do few of the so-called paradoxes. It is really interesting to seek the cause.
In analysis, one is largely occupied by functions which can be expressed as powers. As soon as other powers enter—this, however, is not often the case—then it does not work any more and a number of connected, incorrect theorems arise from false conclusions. I have examined several of them, and been so fortunate as to make this clear. …I have had to be extremely cautious, for the presumed theorems without strict proof… had taken such a stronghold in me, that I was continually in danger of using them without detailed verification.”

Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) Norwegian mathematician

Letter to Christoffer Hansteen (1826) as quoted by Øystein Ore, Niels Henrik Abel: Mathematician Extraordinary (1957) & in part by Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972) citing Œuvres, 2, 263-65

Way, Mathematics, Study, Light

“Against us is the law
With its immensity of strength and power
Against us is the law!
Police know how to make a man
A guilty or an innocent
Against us is the power of police!
The shameless lies that men have told
Will ever more be paid in gold
Against us is the power of the gold!
Against us is racial hatred
And the simple fact that we are poor

My father dear, I am a prisoner
Don't be ashamed to tell my crime
The crime of love and brotherhood
And only silence is shame”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Two"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Love, Men, Law, Silence

“According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Life, Money, Disease, Law

“The strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

#974
The Furrow (1986)

“Though strength be lacking, yet the will is to be praised.”
Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.

Ovid book Epistulae ex Ponto

III, iv, 79
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)

“First offer to God whatever you eat. One must not eat unoffered food. As your food is, so will be your blood. From pure food you get pure blood, pure mind, and strength. Pure mind begets ecstatic love”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

prema-bhakti
Women Saints of East and West

Love, God, Food

““ASAN service” brought novelties into the relationship between citizens and civil servants. It gave us even more strength in the struggle against corruption. It showed that it is possible to fight corruption and win.”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

During opening ceremony of "ASAN Kommunal" Center No 1 (28 December 2016) http://en.apa.az/azerbaijan-politics/domestic-news/ilham-aliyev-asan-service-brought-novelty-into-citizen-civil-servant-relationship.html Anti-corruption policy

Fight