Quotes about weakness
page 9

“It is preeminently the province of government to protect the weak. The average citizen does not lead the life of independence that was his in former days under a less complex order of society. When a family tilled the soil and produced its own support it was independent. It may be infinitely better off now, but it is evident it needs a protection which before was not required.”

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

1920s, Law and Order (1920)

Life, Family, Support

“I had always thought about a lullaby album. But when Noelle came along, my little Colombian bulldog, she really gave me a plethora of ideas. I remembered when I was little in Texas and I was the only Hispanic in my class. Because the first book was about feelings, how Noelle's weaknesses turned into her strengths. That you have to keep your identity.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Reuters (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Books, Feeling, Idea

“Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

Men, Strong

“Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.”

Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American writer

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 161.

Pain, Hope, Sense, Light

“The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something. He is going to do something. If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak individual.”

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

Post-re-election interview with Garnett D. Horner, The Washington Star-News (9 November 1972), p. 1.
1970s

Family, Dependency

“Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597), XXIX: "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates."

People, Courage, Wolf

“The best critical consideration of the inherent weakness of a federation of states in which the law of the federation has to be enforced on the states who are its members is contained in the Federalist Papers.”

Kenneth N. Waltz book Man, the State, and War

Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter VI, The Third Image, p. 186

Law

“The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Liberty.

“Jesus Christ has not come to establish social justice any more than he has come to establish the power of the state or the reign of money or art. Jesus Christ has come to save men, and all that matters is that men may come to know him. We are adept at finding reasons—good theological, political, or practical reasons, for camouflaging this. But the real reason is that we let ourselves be impressed and dominated by the forces of the world, by the press, by public opinion, by the political game, by appeals to justice, liberty, peace, the poverty of the third world, and the Christian civilization of the west, all of which play on our inclinations and weaknesses. Modern protestants are in the main prepared to be all things to all men, like St. Paul, but unfortunately this is not in order that they may save some but in order that they may be like all men.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 254

Men, Money, World, Peace

“A resolve to do whatever proper thing it takes separates the weak from the strong. The strong are determined to do whatever possible and proper thing to get to their goal.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Strong

“Montezuma had a weak and vacillating nature. He never knew what to do next. [Footnote: He had the courage of his convictions, but he had no convictions. ]”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Montezuma

Courage, Nature

“I often think to myself that it's not I but someone else who is P. M. and is the recipient of those continuous marks of respect and affection from the general public who called in Downing Street or at the station to take off their hats and cheer. And then I go back to the House of Commons and listen to the unending stream of abuse of the P. M., his faithlessness, his weakness, his wickedness, his innate sympathy with Fascism and his obstinate hatred of the working classes.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Hilda Chamberlain (28 May 1939), quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy. 1933-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 293.
Prime Minister

Thinking, Housing

“I have finally realized how rarely you will find a flawless woman, one who is simply perfect. No doubt there are many who seem quite promising, write a flowing hand, give you back a perfectly acceptable poem, and all in all do credit enough to the rank they have to uphold, but you know, if you insist on any particular quality, you seldom find one who will do. Each one is all too pleased with her own accomplishments, runs others down, and so on. While a girl is under the eye of her adoring parents and living a sheltered life bright with future promise, it seems men have only to hear of some little talent of hers to be attracted. As long as she is pretty and innocent, and young enough to have nothing else on her mind, she may well put her heart into learning a pastime that she has seen others enjoy, and in fact she may become quite good at it. And when those who know her disguise her weaknesses and advertise whatever passable qualities she may have so as to present them in the best light, how could anyone think ill of her, having no reason to suspect her of being other than she seems? But when you look further to see whether it is all true, I am sure you can only end up disappointed.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Spoken by Tō no Chūjō in Ch. 2: The Broom Tree (trans. Royall Tyler)
Tale of Genji

Life, Men, Disappointment, Girl

“You have spoken much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my country. I have heard that kind of speech ever since I came out of jail, but I hear it with embarrassment, with something of pain. For I know my weakness, I am a prey to my own faults and backslidings. I was not blind to them before and when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew them that I the man was a man of weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to me in force and character, - very many were that, — but in the promise of that intellectual ability on which I prided myself.”

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

The Uttarpara Address (1909)

Men, Pain, Courage, Strong

“My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths; that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action; that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.”

Harlan Ellison book The Harlan Ellison Hornbook

The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, (9 August 1973)

Life, Death, Strong, Time

“weak are defeated by the strong in the world of Nature. A reed by the north wind, for instance. And silence by the forest.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

109
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

World, Nature, Strong, Silence

“Now, what we need is clever people that are not afraid of thinking deep, of getting their hands dirty, and of tackling great problems. If you feel like giving it a try and you meet some headwind howling that "everything is understood", that "understanding is not our job", or that it is "impossible" or "too difficult", if some colleagues tell you that "physics does not deal with whys", that "understanding is just being Newtonian" or that "Thou shall not philosophize", if they throw invented norms to you, or if weaknesses and career prospects enter the discussion when the debate gets all heated up… you can always answer "Shut up and let me think!"”

Pablo Echenique Robba

—and get back to work. " Shut up and let me think! Or why you should work on the foundations of quantum mechanics as much as you please http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.5619" (2013)

People, Feeling, Understanding, Problem

“The weak must be bold cautiously.”

Robert Jordan A Crown of Swords

Siuan Sanche
A Crown of Swords (15 May 1996)

“It was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Passion

“Self-interest distinguishes most men at this time, with attendant weaknesses. Yet, in all countries, there are those who have outgrown these self-centred attitudes and there are many who are more interested in civic and the national good than in themselves. A few, a very few in relation to the mass of men, are internationally minded and preoccupied with the welfare of humanity, as a whole.”

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

Source: Problems Of Humanity (1944), p. 13

Men, Time, Country

“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 1, § 17
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Truth, Error, Appearance, Falseness

“I could heartily wish that you and all others concerned in this sad loss, were more taken up in minding the happy exchange that she hath made, than with your present loss. She hath exchanged earth for heaven, a wilderness for a paradise, a prison for a palace, a house made with hands for one eternal in the heavens (2 Cor 5:1-2). She hath exchanged imperfection for perfection, sighing for singing, mourning for rejoicing, prayers for praises, the society of sinful mortals for the company of God, Christ, angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, Heb 12:22-24; an imperfect transient enjoyment of God for a more clear, full, perfect, and permanent enjoyment of God. She hath exchanged pain for ease, sickness for health, a bed of weakness for a bed of spices, a complete blessedness. She hath exchanged her brass for silver, her counters for gold, and her earthly contentments for heavenly enjoyments.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A String of Pearls

Men, God, Pain, Happiness

“We all have a weakness for beauty.”

Albert Camus book The First Man

The First Man (1960; published in 1994)

Beauty

“Believe not each accusing tongue,
As most weak persons do;
But still believe that story wrong,
Which ought not to be true!”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

Reported in Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Carcanet: a Literary Album, Containing Select Passages from the Most Distinguished English Writers (1828), p. 132.

Personality

“I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common, ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn't me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

Boy, Forgetting

“I felt less alone when I didn’t know you yet: I was waiting for the other. I thought only of his strength and never of my weakness. And now here you are, Orestes, it was you. I look at you and I see that we are two orphans.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Electra to her brother Orestes, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Waiting

“Beyond the war years the grim and tortured struggle of Negroes to win their own freedom is an epic of battle against frightful odds. If we have failed to do enough, it was not the will for freedom that was weak, but the forces against us which were too strong.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

War, Freedom, Strong

“The whole history of the world shows that the Indian intellect is second to none. This must be proved by the performance of a task beyond the power of others, the seizing of the first place in the intellectual advance of the world. Is there any inherent weakness that would make it impossible for us to do this? Are the countrymen of Bhaskaracharya and Shankaracharya inferior to the countrymen of Newton and Darwin? We trust not. It is for us, by the power of our thought, to break down the iron walls of opposition that confront us, and to seize and enjoy the intellectual sovereignty of the world.”

Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and a disciple of Swami Vivekananda

[The Spiritual Daughter Of Swami Vivekananda, http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0945/2/11, 21 June 2012]

World, History

“A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), pp. 51-52

God, Pleasure, Fear, Nature

“We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

" Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future https://books.google.com/books?id=fG_oAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA87", by Gregor Strasser - (1926 June 15)

Money, Wealth

“Kings, like children, tend to be opportunistic. Generosity only spoils them. They equate affability with weakness and hasten to exploit it.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 12, section 2 (p. 122)

Children

“I don't want a weak heart that can't cry
or the strength not to cry.
I'll search for a shooting
Star to cast my wishes on, but
Daybreak will come too soon
And I won't be able to find one.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Hanabi
Lyrics, Rainbow

Search, Star, Heart, Cry

“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

D 5
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. I, Part III, Ch. 2 General Aspects of the Special-Creation-Hypothesis
Principles of Biology (1864)

Strong, Time, Past

“The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak. It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them, since they whose greatness is due to their position find it difficult to love those whom inner power makes great.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

Love, Men

“My left hand is my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone. It is also a listening hand. It listens for basic weaknesses or flaws in the stone; for the possibility or imminence of fractures.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

"Barbara Hepworth: A Pictorial Autobiography, Bath, 1971, (extended edition published 1978 and subsequently reprinted in 1985 and 1993) p. 79
1961 - 1975

Thinking

“A lifetime career goal for me has always been wanting to lift up little girls. I feel like society has contempt for girls and little girl things. When athletes are performing badly their coaches call them ladies, or when somebody is being weak they say they're crying like a little girl, that's contempt. When somebody's trying to describe something as stupid or lame they say it's for little girls or only a little girl would like that, or when something is pink or full of rainbows and hearts people jump to the immediate conclusion that it's dumb, and if adult men are liking that sort of thing there's something wrong with them, because there's something contemptuous and unworthy about girl things and being a girl.”

Lauren Faust (1974) American animator and writer

Men, People, Stupidity, Feeling

“Greene takes it for granted, and here the great majority of physicists agree with him, that the division of physics into separate theories for large and small objects is unacceptable. … Greene believes that there is an urgent need to find a theory of quantum gravity that applies to large and small objects alike. … As a conservative, I do not agree that a division of physics into separate theories for large and small is unacceptable. … The essence of any theory of quantum gravity is that there exists a particle called the graviton … I looked at various possible ways of detecting gravitons and did not find a single one that worked. Because of the extreme weakness of the gravitational interaction, any putative detector of gravitons has to be extremely massive. If the detector has normal density, most of it is too far from the source of gravitons to be effective, and if it is compressed to a high density around the source it collapses into a black hole. There seems to be a conspiracy of nature to prevent the detector from working.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Way, Nature

“A statute of 1344 shows some weakness; but the statute of 1391 is memorable, not merely as being the Mortmain Code of three centuries, but as extending the rule of mortmain to all bodies, religious and secular alike, having perpetual succession. For this extension marks the definite recognition by English Law of the corporation, or, as it is sometimes called, the 'fictitious person' - the legal personality which is not restricted to the limits of individual life. The gradual evolution of this institution is one of the most fascinating chapters in legal history…”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter VIII, Methods Of Alienation, p. 106

Life, Law, History, Success

“The principle of enslaving human beings because they are inferior, is this. If a man is a cripple, trip him up. If he is old and weak, and bowed with the weight of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back. If idiotic, take advantage of him, and if a child, deceive him. This, sir, this is the doctrine of Democrats and the doctrine of devils as well, and there is no place in the universe outside the five points of hell and |the Democratic Party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=%22The+principle+of+enslaving+human+beings+because+they+are+inferior%22&source=bl&ots=YA6W9JoaPr&sig=aO15r4OJEVD8bQUIjM34u42GjXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM9vuXwsrLAhWJeD4KHWvpAUcQ6AEIHjAB#v=onepage&q=%22The%20principle%20of%20enslaving%20human%20beings%20because%20they%20are%20inferior%22&f=false (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 193 1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

Hell, Universe

“Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. I know this well…Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War (1994), Ch. 7.

Dependency

“Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Faith, Hope, Freedom, Strong

“3036. As he that doth not eat when he should, may have no Stomach when he is weak, but presently vomits up his Food again; so if thou studiest not the Art of Patience, and preparest not thy mind before-hand, and takest not in Grounds of Consolation, till thou art in Troubles, and hast need of great Comfort, thou wilt find thy Soul very impatient of Remedies, and 'twill be irksome to thee but even to read such Things as should quiet thee.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Food, Art, Soul, Reading

“Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact—which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

After the McLean v. Arkansas creationism trial, as quoted in Review of the National Center for Science Education Vol. 24, No. 6 (November–December 2004) http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol24/620_then_a_miracle_occurs_12_30_1899.asp

Truth, Art, Question, Thinking

“Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (2 February 1816)
1810s

Soul, Thinking, Sincerity

“It is not that I feel less weak, but Thou
Wilt be my strength. It is not that I see
Less sin, but more of pardoning love in Thee,
And all-sufficient grace. Enough! And now
All fluttering thought is stilled; I only rest,
And feel that Thou art near, and know that I am blest.”

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 447.

Love, Art, Feeling

“At the ULB, Brout and I initiated a research group in fundamental interactions, that is, in the search for the general laws of nature. Joined by brilliant students, many of them becoming world renowned physicists, our group contributed to the many fields at the frontier of the challenges facing contemporary physics. While the mechanism discovered in 1964 was developed all over the world to encode the nature of weak interactions in a "Standard Model," our group contributed to the understanding of strong interactions and quark confinement, general relativity and cosmology. There we introduced the idea of a primordial exponential expansion of the universe, later called inflation, which we related to the origin of the universe itself, a scenario, which I still think may possibly be conceptually the correct one. During these developments, our group extended our contacts with other Belgian universities and got involved in many international collaborations.
With our group and many other collaborators I analysed fractal structures, supergravity, string theory, infinite Kac-Moody algebras and more generally all tentative approaches to what I consider as the most important problem in fundamental interactions: the solution to the conflict between the classical Einsteinian theory of gravitation, namely general relativity, and the framework of our present understanding of the world, quantum theory.”

François Englert (1932) Belgian theoretical physicist

excerpt[François Englert - Biographical, Nobel Prize in Physics (nobelprize.org), 2013, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/englert-bio.html]

World, Law, Search, Idea

“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)

Secret, World, Faith, Democracy

“There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 274.

God, Soul

“God never makes us sensible of our weakness except to give us of His strength.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 283.

God

“Regardless of how secure a communication line is and how unbreakable a cryptographic algorithm seems to be, the weak links are often the endpoints - the sender (before encryption) and the recipient (after decryption) - unless they are code talkers using a language more obscure than Navajo.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Communication

“It is an odd mode of diminishing one's own weakness to ask a friend to lend us the equal force of his.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That Two Heads are Better than One".
Sketches from Life (1846)

“The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and Communists are attempting and with good success to implement a further dismemberment of Germany. I think that if I resigned as I threatened to do yesterday, it would simply discredit me to no purpose... This august lady [Fifteenth Army]... has the job of reviewing the strategy and tactics of the war to see how the former conformed to the unit plans and how the tactics changed. Were it not for the fact that it will be, so far as I am concerned, a kick up stairs, I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe.
Later when people wake up to what is going on here, I can admit why I took the job.
Am I weak and a coward? Am I putting my posthumous reputation above my present honor? God how I wish I knew…
P. S. No one gives a damn how well Bavaria is run. All they are interested in now is how well it is ruined.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Letter to Beatrice (29 September 1945), published in The Patton Papers (1996), edited by Martin Blumenson Vol. 2 , p. 786 https://books.google.com/books?id=XGP_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA786

God, War, People, Thinking

“I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence, Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Words I Never Said"
Albums, Lasers (2011)

Fear, Thinking, Silence

“He’s so slow, so unimaginative, so lifeless. Like zinc white. I see it’s a sort of tyranny he has over me. He forces me to be changeable, to act. To show off. The hateful tyranny of weak people.”

John Fowles book The Collector

The Collector (1963)

Hate, People

“One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”

Margot Asquith (1864–1945) Anglo-Scottish socialite, author and wit

The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963) p. 63. (1920).

Life, Strong

“Isn't it extraordinary that the Prime Minister of our country can't even urge his Party to back his own position. Weak! Weak! Weak!”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Ministers Questions, 30 January 1997.
1990s

Country

“Bandwagoning is a strategy for the weak.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 5, Strategies for Survival, p. 163

“It is the moral factor which decides the fate of nations: man's spirit can prove greater than the power of leviathan. A nation is swiftly overcome if its spirit is weak; but with unyielding determination it can vanquish powers that appear to be utterly invincible.”

Gwynfor Evans (1912–2005) Welsh politician

Land of My Fathers, 1974. (Translation from Welsh original text)

Fate, Appearance

“The giraffe's neck supposedly supplies a crucial example for preferring natural selection over Lamarckism as a cause of evolution. But Darwin himself (however wrongly by later judgement) did not deny the Lamarckian principle of inheritance for characters acquired by use or lost by disuse. He regarded the Lamarckian mechanism as weak, infrequent, and entirely subsidiary to natural selection, but he accepted the validity of evolution by use and disuse. Darwin does speculate about the adaptive advantage of giraffe's necks, but he cites both natural selection and Lamarckism as probable causes of elongation.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 312
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Nature

“Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind;
Therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of free-thinkers.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

On the purpose of writing Les Carácteres, Preface to La Bruyere's "Characters," p. v
Les Caractères (1688)

God, Knowledge, Passion

“Thus signifieth He where He saith: I am Ground of thy beseeching. And thus in this blessed word, with the Shewing, I saw a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 42

“It was always something of a puzzle to observers of Australia to explain the high standing of working men and the prevalence of their values in the culture. The easy answer was to say the middle-class was numerically weak. But in a capitalist society their values should be predominant whatever their numbers. So was it that they lacked the will to rule? I have suggested here that convict origins help to explain this puzzle. The bourgeoisie, sharing the shame of the nation, looked for respectability through White Australia and military prowess, and the forms these took had a strong proletarian cast; the working man was elevated by one and was the most notable embodiment of the other.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

"An Oddity from the Start" https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2008/july/1277335186/john-hirst/oddity-start, The Monthly, July 2008.

Men, Strong, Help

“Systems with unknown behavioral properties require the implementation of iterations which are intrinsic to the design process but which are normally hidden from view. Certainly when a solution to a well-understood problem is synthesized, weak designs are mentally rejected by a competent designer in a matter of moments. On larger or more complicated efforts, alternative designs must be explicitly and iteratively implemented. The designers perhaps out of vanity, often are at pains to hide the many versions which were abandoned and if absolute failure occurs, of course one hears nothing. Thus the topic of design iteration is rarely discussed. Perhaps we should not be surprised to see this phenomenon with software, for it is a rare author indeed who publicizes the amount of editing or the number of drafts he took to produce a manuscript.”

Fernando J. Corbató (1926–2019) American computer scientist

"A Managerial View of the Multics System Development" http://www.multicians.org/managerial.html, Conference on Research Directions in Software Technology, Providence, Rhode Island, October 10-12, 1977 published in Research Directions in Software Technology (1978), P. Wegner (ed.), MIT Press, ISBN 0262230968, pp. 139-158. Also reprinted in Tutorial: Software Management, Donald J. Reifer (ed.), IEEE Computer Society Press, (1979, 1981, 1986)

Pain, Behavior, Failure, Problem

“What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

G 7
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Nature, Knowledge

“Hatred is the anger of the weak.”

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) French novelist

La haine, c'est la colère des faibles!
Lettres de mon Moulin (1869; repr. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1882) p. 19; John P. Macgregor (trans.) Letters from My Mill (New York: Taplinger, 1967) p. 18.

Anger

“I am not thinking of those shining precepts which are the registered property of every school; that is to say — learn as much by writing as by reading; be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause of the weakness of the good; never be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton; judge talent at its best and character at its worst; suspect power more than vice, and study problems in preference to periods.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Many of these precepts which he quotes here have been quoted as originating with Lord Acton.
The Study of History (1895)

Men, Books, School, Idea

“The great genius of this church is work. Everybody works. You do not grow unless you work. Faith, testimony of the truth is just like the muscle of my arm. If you use it, it grows strong. If you put it in a sling, it grows weak and flabby. We put people to work. We expect great things of them, and the marvelous and wonderful thing is they come through.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Speaking to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, June 12, 2002.

People, Truth, Faith, Strong

“In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied, universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing the whole character of man’s existence. By this time every human being throughout the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where American capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the aether reverberated with echoes of New York’s pleasures and the religious fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This, perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give of her very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of these crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people’s baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America herself, were irrevocably corrupted.
For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped to emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had served science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of the stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also created a new and brilliant architecture. And their genius for organization worked upon a scale that was scarcely conceivable, let alone practicable, to other peoples. In fact their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up. One who looks back across the aeons to this remote people can see their fate already woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 1, “Europe and America” (p. 33)

Fate, People, Pleasure, Youth

“(God) gives the weak a weapon for self-defense that the strong, despite his military and nuclear arsenals, can do nothing against. There are clerics who condemn this and even say that these are suicide operations that are not allowed in Islam.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi in Favor of Suicide Operations http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/45.htm April 2004. Martyrdom operations

God, Suicide, Strong

“He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give style to one’s character. This art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law. Only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others. For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. They absorb poison from everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. Such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their hearts ever burn with envy of those who have become well [harmonious] and can therefore enjoy life.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 26

Life, People, Law, Art

“It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupieth it.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Death
Essays (1625)

Love, Death, Fear, Revenge

“The compassion of Christ inclines Him to save sinners, —
the power of Christ enables Him to save sinners, — and the
promise of Christ binds Him to save sinners.
A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my Strength and Righteousness,
My Saviour and my All.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 82.

Christ

“Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations…This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives…We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this hate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech on the 25th Anniversary of the Announcement of the National Socialist Party's Program http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-speech-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-announcement-of-the-national-socialist-party-s-program-february-1945 (February 24, 1945) 1940s

Men, God, Hate, People

“Now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language — except for the purpose of repeating it in the presence of their Mothers and Nurses — and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the present time as compared with the more robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 12. Of the Doctrine of our Priests

Truth, Age, Fear, Mathematics

“There is no human quality more attractive than the courage of the weak.”

Gene Wolfe book Home Fires

Home Fires (2011), Reflection 1
Fiction

Courage

“The United States was losing interest in preserving European security, but at the same time it was hostile to European aspirations to take on the task themselves. Europeans complained about American perfidy, and Americans complained about European weakness and ingratitude.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 43

Hostility, Time

“… Why is the muon, some dumb particle, 200 times heavier than the electron? Why is the proton about 2,000 times heavier than the electron? Why is the electric charge of the electron what it is? Why are there six quarks in nature? Why not seven or eleven or five? There are many, many "why" questions. Also a number of 'how' questions. What is the mechanism that causes the weak interactions to be weak and the electromagnetic interactions not weak?”

Sheldon L. Glashow (1932) American theoretical physicist

The Elegant Universe, NOVA Interview (2003)

Question, Nature, Time

“The woman raised her languid head,
And said, "My child was weak
He knew no one amid the dead
His daily food to seek!
My husband was a hunter good
As ever arrows bore :
I know my child will now have food,
Therefore I weep no more.
I sit and think upon the past,
And sing my mournful strain :
I know that we shall meet at last,
And never part again."”

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

The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Huron's Child'— Herder.
Translations, From the German

Food, Thinking, Singing, Past

“What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.”

Michael Swanwick (1950) American science fiction author

Source: In the Drift (1985), Chapter 4, “Mutagen Fair” (p. 130)

Men, People, World, Law

“Nothing whatever is to be gained by driving the timorous and weak by lies or compulsion into pain which they will resent and responsibility which they will evade. Everything is to be gained by training a woman in knowledge, courage, and physical strength, and leaving it then to her own instinct and her mind to tell her that to create new human beings is worth the discomfort and the suffering she must necessarily undergo. Those in whom the courage to create survives when choice is free and all the facts are known are those best fitted to bring children into the world, and breed in them eagerness and intrepidity. The others will only pass on fear and distaste for life from which individuals and the community suffer far too much already.”

Dora Russell book Hypatia

Hypatia (1925), Ch. 4

Life, Pain, Children, World

“In her head, Elizabeth called what she did ‘The Game.’ The rules were simple: to pretend to be whatever someone else needed until they gave you whatever you needed. After that, there were no rules. The Game was fair, at least to Elizabeth’s way of thinking. Anyone could play it. In fact, she was sure most people were playing it; they just didn’t like to admit it. Sure, there were a few losers and idiots, suckers who, for whatever reason, didn’t mind getting played. And some people were so weak that they played poorly, basically inviting anyone to take advantage of them.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 41

People, Way, Game, Thinking

“Harry Dresden: The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 27, final lines of the book

Children, Books, World, Hell

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750 Leader of the Opposition

People, Truth, History, Communication

“Don't let anyone tell you that our country is weak. We're not. Don't let anyone tell you we don't have what it takes. We do. And most of all, don't believe anyone who says: “I alone can fix it.””

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Country

“Never in the history of the world have there been so many migrants. And almost all of them are migrating from regions where nationality is weak or non-existent to the established nation states of the West. They are not migrating because they have discovered some previously dormant feeling of love or loyalty towards the nations in whose territory they seek a home. On the contrary, few of them identify their loyalties in national terms and almost none of them in terms of the nation where they settle. They are migrating in search of citizenship which is the principal gift of national jurisdictions, and the origin of the peace, law, stability and prosperity that still prevail in the West.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Love, World, Peace, Law

“The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they’ve been at other times.”

Angus Wilson (1913–1991) british author

Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series (New York: Viking Press, [1958] 1959) p. 261.

People, World, Time

“All the average feds care about is dressing up in black uniforms and having mustaches and starring at people… I know your mustache is cool! You got little gold-framed glasses! You scare me so bad! Ugh… you scum! Scum! … What's driving me crazy is that photo right there, zoom in on that, it's one of those cops with a black uniform with a mustache. You know that guy is a coward! You know he's a piece of garbage! You know he's weak! Oh! … Oh, you got a mustache, I'll just worship you. Oh, you got a mustache, it's okay! Ugh, your demonic little mustaches!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Demonic Mustache Rant!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ktiWWYxq8, February 2012. 2012

People, Guy, Photo, Star

“I do have a residual belief that, if at all possible, you should try not to mock the weak”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9692766/Inside-the-Private-world-of-Ian-Hislop.html, 29 November 2012.

“Let us learn how the love of Christ, received into the heart, triumphs gradually but surely over all sin, transforms character, turning even its weakness into strength, and so, from the depths of transgression and the very gates of hell, raises men to God.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

Love, Men, God, Hell

“Tyrannosaurus rex did not have 6-to-8-inch serrated teeth and an arc of D-cross-sectioned teeth set in a massive, powerful skull just to consume rotting carcasses! These were killing tools. In sharp contrast are the weak beaks and feet of vultures and condors- the only true living scavengers.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 33
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

“The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?
Not the strongest; not the cleverest —
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.
"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival."”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

Darwinism:
That survivors survive.
Source: The Book of The Damned (1919), Ch. 3, part 1 at resologist.net

Stupidity, Way

“[Haile Selassie] was 80 years old and a very weak man. We tried our best to save him but we could not keep him.”

Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia

As quoted in "Mengistu defends 'Red Terror'", in BBC News (28 December 1999) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/581098.stm

“I thank Our Lord that He let me find nothing but bitterness in human affections. I should have been caught easily, and had my wings clipped…Our Lord knew that I was far too weak to face temptation; He knew that I would certainly have burnt myself in the bewildering light of earthly things, and so He did not let it shine in my eyes. Where stronger souls find joy but remain detached because they are faithful, I found only misery.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Quoted in The Hidden Face, Ida Gorres , p. 91
Story of a Soul (1897)

Faith, Soul, Light, Joy

“If someone were to expound that godliness is to belong to childhood in the temporal sense and thus dwindle and die with the years as childhood does, is to be a happy frame of mind that cannot be preserved but only recollected; if someone were to expound that repentance as a weakness of old age accompanies the decline of one’s powers, when the senses are dulled, when sleep no longer strengthens but increases lethargy-this would be ungodliness and foolishness.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 12
1840s

Happiness, Age, Sense, Sleep

“There is a somewhat analogous situation with regard to the heterosexual seduction procedure in our Politically Correct times: the two sets, the set of PC behaviour and the set of seduction, do not actually intersect anywhere; that is, there is no seduction which is not in a way an "incorrect" intrusion or harassment — at some point, one has to expose oneself and "make a pass." So does this mean that every seduction is incorrect harassment through and through? No, and that is the catch: when you make a pass, you expose yourself to the Other (the potential partner), and she decides retroactively, by her reaction, whether what you have just done was harassment or a successful act of seduction — and there is no way to tell in advance what her reaction will be. This is why assertive women often despise "weak" men — because they fear to expose themselves, to take the necessary risk. And perhaps this is even more true in our PC times: are not PC prohibitions rules which, in one way or another, are to be violated in the seduction process? Is not the seducer’s art to accomplish this violation properly — so that afterwards, by its acceptance, its harassing aspect will be retroactively cancelled?”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

The Fragile Absolute: or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? (London: Verso, 2000, ), p. 111.

Women, Men, Fear, Art

“Most people suspend their judgment till somebody else has expressed his own and then they repeat it. Common parlance alludes to this weakness in the frequently heard phrase: PEOPLE DO NOT THINK.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 139

People, Thinking

“I've been taking a closer look at these graduates. They are actually taller, stronger, smarter than we were, smart enough maybe to take our mistakes as their messages, to make our weaknesses their lessons, and to make our example — good and not so good — part of their education.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Address at Iona College (1984)

Education, Parting

“Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring.”

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

(1834-1, page 303) The Future. Re-used in Ethel Churchill (or The Two Brides) Vol. I, Chapter 31
The Monthly Magazine

Life, Fear, Hope, Suffering

“Don't believe all the absurdity that skeptics say about bats not being birds, other untruths such as the Bible saying that the world is flat, and the mockery of Israel's judicial system. Every one of these weak arguments has rational explanations for those who are prepared to soften their hearts and listen.”

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

Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution (2009)

World, Bird, Heart

Quotes about weakness page 9

Quotes about weakness
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