Quotes about strength
page 8

J. M. Barrie photo
Stuart Wheeler photo

“I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women, or a particular number, on a board. Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage. Chess, bridge, poker - women come absolutely nowhere. I think that just has to be borne in mind.”

Stuart Wheeler (1935) British businessman and politician

As quoted in The Independent, Thursday 15 August 2013 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ukip-faces-renewed-accusations-of-sexism-as-stuart-wheeler-claims-women-are-not-as-competitive-as-men-8763570.html
See Victoria Coren for a reply.

Sri Aurobindo photo

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

John Cheever photo

“Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil not the strength to choose between the two.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1956 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark photo

“Often it is the case that it takes ‘just a little’ to help and support people, so they can help themselves. I have met adults and children, men and women, whose living conditions are difficult for us to imagine, but every time I come away inspired by their strength and will to improve their lives and provide a better life for their children.”

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark (1972) Crown Princess of Denmark

Speech at the opening of Danida’s 50th anniversary exhibition in Bella Center; quoted on royal website http://kongehuset.dk/Menu/materiale/taler/speech-by-hrh-the-crown-princess-at-the-launch-of-danidas-50th-anniversary-exhibition-in (16 March 2012)

Karel Čapek photo
Michael Foot photo
Francis Parkman photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)
Variant: Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.

William Morley Punshon photo
Oswald Spengler photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo
Robert Fludd photo
China Miéville photo

“To know Jesus Christ for ourselves is to make Him a consolation, delight, strength, righteousness, companion, and end.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 246.

Baruch Spinoza photo

“But love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, and a joy which is free from all sorrow. This is something greatly to be desired and to be sought with all our strength.”
Sed amor erga rem aeternam et infinitam sola laetitia pascit animum, ipsaque omnis tristitiae est expers; quod valde est desiderandum totisque viribus quaerendum.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

I, 10; translation by W. Hale White (Revised by Amelia Hutchison Stirling)
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)

José Rizal photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Nyanaponika Thera photo
Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet photo

“Some instances of strength of memory are very surprising.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Coleman v. Wathen (1793), 5 T. R. 245.

Orison Swett Marden photo
Hayley Jensen photo

“Mark: I constantly admire your strength but I don't know - I heard pitching problems.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 7

Susan Cooper photo
Poul Anderson photo

“Q: Does the creation of Design admit constraint?
Design depends largely on constraints.
Q: What constraints?
The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the Design problem: the ability of the Designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints. Constraints of price, of size, of strength, of balance, of surface, of time, and so forth. Each problem has its own peculiar list.”

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

Another part of the interview: Also cited at: Mark Wunsch. "[http://markwunsch.com/blog/2008/09/27/design-q-a-with-charles-eames.html A software engineer and technologist: Design Q&A with Charles Eames". at markwunsch.com/blog, 2008/09/27
Design Q & A with Charles Eames, 1972

Calvin Coolidge photo
Tiffany Brar photo
Kurt Student photo
James Thomson (B.V.) photo
Constantine P. Cavafy photo
Jane Roberts photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre photo

“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living on vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by for his virtues, Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces with many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquillity of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Vœux d'un solitaire, pour servir de suite aux "Études de la nature", as quoted in The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 175 https://books.google.it/books?id=o9ugCcZ13BMC&pg=PA175)

Wilt Chamberlain photo
Herbert Hoover photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Eliot A. Cohen photo

“Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment.”

Eliot A. Cohen (1956) American neoconservative military historian

Source: [Eliot A., Cohen, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19940101faessay8554/eliot-a-cohen/the-mystique-of-u-s-air-power.html, The Mystique of U.S. Air Power, Foreign Affairs, January/February 1994, 2007-06-07]

Felix Frankfurter photo

“The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Dennis v. United States, 241 U.S. 494, 556 (1951).
Judicial opinions

Elie Wiesel photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“Old Christmas Songs. I feel something like a longing for a lost homeland.
We are giving gifts to each other. A beautiful, old New Testament from Hertha Holk is my greatest joy. I thank her for being my solace and my strength.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Alte Weihnachtslieder. Ich habe etwas wie Sehnsucht nach einem verlorenen Vaterland.
Wir beschenken uns. Ein schönes, altes Jesustestament von Hertha Holk ist meine größte Freude. Ich danke ihr, dass sie mein Trost und meine Stärke ist.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Barry Boehm photo
Charles Lyell photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Malala Yousafzai photo
Sandra Fluke photo
John Constable photo
Clement Attlee photo

“In regard to…action in the South Atlantic, we all desire to join in the tribute paid to the gallantry of our sailors. It is one of the almost inevitable conditions of sea warfare that so much of the fighting is done between adversaries of very different strengths, and the way in which our ships, despite their smaller gun-power, tackled and stuck to this very powerful enemy vessel and forced her to take refuge, is worthy of the highest traditions of the British Navy.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1939/dec/14/the-war#S5CV0355P0_19391214_HOC_265 in the House of Commons (14 December 1939) after the Battle of the River Plate where the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee was forced to harbour by the Royal Navy
Leader of the Opposition

John Ruskin photo

“Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

The Two Paths, (1859).

Anton Chekhov photo
Ann E. Dunwoody photo
William Wordsworth photo
Joseph Strutt photo
George Steiner photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Their own strength has betrayed them. They have…pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads.”

Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 13 : They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads

Thomas Carlyle photo
Ellen Page photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
Paulo Freire photo

“The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1, on the oppressors

Moshe Dayan photo
Curtis Mayfield photo
Richard Nixon photo

“Isn't it better to talk about the relative merits of washing machines than the relative strength of rockets? Isn't this the kind of competition you want?”

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

Remarks to Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev during the Kitchen Debate (24 July 1959)
1950s

Sukarno photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
James A. Garfield photo

“Comrades of the 'Boys in Blue' and fellow-citizens of New York. I cannot look upon this great assemblage and these old veterans that have marched past us, and listen to the words of welcome from our comrade who has just spoken, without remembering how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it. [Applause. ] This is New York; and yonder, toward the Battery, more than a hundred years ago, a young student of Columbia College was arguing the ideas of the American Revolution and American union against the un-American loyalty to monarchy, of his college president and professors. By and by, he went into the patriot army, was placed on the staff of Washington, [cheers] to fight the battles of his country, [cheers] and while in camp, before he was twenty-one years old, upon a drum-head he wrote a letter which contained every germ of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause. ] That student, soldier, statesman, and great leader of thought, Alexander Hamilton, of New York, made this Republic glorious by his thinking, and left his lasting impress upon this the foremost State of the Union. [Applause. ] And here on this island, the scene of his early triumphs, we gather tonight, soldiers of the new war, representing the same ideas of union, having added strength and glory to the monument reared by the heroes of the Revolution.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

John Dryden photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Vita Sackville-West photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Benjamin Watson photo
Dag Hammarskjöld photo

“Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

"1925-1930" http://books.google.com/books?id=Zvi195aKdvMC&q=%22Life+only+demands+from+you+the+strength+you+possess+Only+one+feat+is+possible+not+to+have+run+away%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage
Markings (1964)

Anthony Bourdain photo
Ernst Kaltenbrunner photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Kurt Lewin photo

“A conflict is to be characterized psychologically as a situation in which oppositely directed, simultaneously acting forces of approximately equal strength work upon the individual.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 122.

Robert Patrick (playwright) photo

“For people like us it is necessary to be a bit stronger, more self-critical, more observant than the usual run. Whether we happen to come already enhanced with these qualities, as some have claimed, or whether our situation invests them in us, we have traditionally - and we do have a long and proud tradition - been a little finer, a little firmer, more sensitive and flexible than others… There will be times when only your own spine can support you, moments when only your own wit can inspire you, days when nothing but exacting self-control can raise you from bed, nights when nothing but your word can impel you into society. But of all these disciplines, there is nothing you must hold to more sternly than to be kind and sympathetic. The easiest armor to put on is always cruelty. That armor will, indeed, see you through everything. Vicious condescension toward those without your strength can make you feel momentarily superior. But that easy armor must be forgone. Don't ever curdle that creamy brow with lines of easy disdain, or curl those lips with a popular sneer. Of all the models available, the one of gentleman in our late war is most succinct: Face what you have to face with humor, dignity, and style; protect yourself with knightly grace; have contempt for your own weakness and never encourage it in others; but never, Ralph, never for an instant permit yourself to feel anything other than pity and deepest sympathy for unfortunate comrades who have, after all, fallen in the same battle.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

One of Those People
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Samuel Johnson photo

“Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.”

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 13; variant with modernized spelling: Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

Pearl S.  Buck photo
Michael Moorcock photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Deendayal Upadhyaya photo

“The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 24
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Kit Carson photo
William Wordsworth photo

“The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 3.
She Was a Phantom of Delight http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww259.html (1804)

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“England’s genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Solution http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20586&c=323, l. 35-42
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Sarah Grimké photo
Sting photo

“Dissent is a legitimate and essential right in any democracy and modern politicians must accept this fact with tolerance. A sense of proportion — and a sense of humour — is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.”

Sting (1951) English musician

Joining with Amnesty International in condemning the Russian authorities’ treatment of Pussy Riot, a Russian punk rock protest band. "Sting condemns Russia's treatment of Pussy Riot musicians ahead of Moscow concert" Amnesty International (25 July 2012) http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/sting-condemns-russias-treatment-pussy-riot-musicians-ahead-moscow-concert-2012-07-25

Martha Raye photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Budd Hopkins photo

“Credentials have been a problem for a long time in my work. Originality has been my strength, and credentials and academia have not been.”

Budd Hopkins (1931–2011) American UFO researcher, painter and sculptor

Hopkins, Budd. "The Hopkins Image Recognition Test (HIRT) for Children." In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press. p. 134.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Conscious of a strength which removes us from either fear or truculence, satisfied with dominions and resources which free us from lust of territory or empire, we see that our highest interest will be promoted by the prosperity and progress of our neighbors. We recognize that what has been accomplished here has largely been due to the capacity of our people for efficient cooperation. We shall continue prosperous at home and helpful abroad, about as we shall maintain and continually adapt to changing conditions the system under which we have come thus far. I mean our Federal system, distributing powers and responsibilities between the States and the National Government. For that is the greatest American contribution to the organization of government over great populations and wide areas. It is the essence of practical administration for a nation placed as ours is. It has become so commonplace to us, and a pattern by so many other peoples, that we do not always realize how great an innovation it was when first formulated, or how great the practical problems which its operation involves. Because of my conviction that some of these problems are at this time in need of deeper consideration, I shall take this occasion to try to turn the public mind in that direction.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

George W. Bush photo