76 Weakness Quotes

If there are sound reasons or bases for the points you demand, then there is no need for violence. On the other hand, when there is no sound reason that concessions should be made to you but mainly your own desire, then reason cannot work and you have to rely on force. Thus using force is not a sign of strength but rather a sign of weakness.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

Let's not beat around the bush; I love life - that's my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.

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

The enemy is like a woman, weak in face of opposition, but correspondingly strong when not opposed. In a quarrel with a man, it is natural for a woman to lose heart and run away when he faces up to her; on the other hand, if the man begins to be afraid and to give ground, her rage, vindictiveness and fury overflow and know no limit.

Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.

Neither have they hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away.

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin - to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

Life does not forgive weakness. (17th February 1945)

Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak. (330)

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. St. Vincent De Paul cautioned his disciples to deport themselves so that the poor 'will forgive them the bread you give them.'

Stubborness is the strength of the weak.

There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

Strength is Life, Weakness is death

'The same thing that makes you live can kill you in the end.' - 'From Hank to Hendrix'

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.

I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher. -Ender's Game

Unlike Mussolini [Hitler] spurned the 'proletariat' and its Marxism, which was as bad as Christianity in his eyes, for it, too, was the faith of the downtrodden and the weak. In Vienna perhaps, certainly later in Munich, Hitler picked up, with a smattering of Nietzsche, the opposite religion of the strong.

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!' Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?'

The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise.

Kaltenbrunner had great personal weaknesses; above all he drank, which in itself was enough to damn him in the eyes of Heydrich, who of course exploited this weakness in his usual effective way.

A very clever man though perhaps not a very strong character.

'I well understand your doing this,' said the notary. 'A man of science can't be expected to burden himself with the practical details of existence.' Charles felt soothed by these oily words: they flattered his weakness, making it look like preoccupation with lofty things.

He is a good fellow, but he always appears as if he will fall apart any minute. Sometimes, I have a hard time when he bores me in his remarks in court. That he did the Fuhrer's will and followed instructions is correct. He did more or less as I advised him during his defense, but he has no ability to spar with the prosecution. If I had been foreign minister I would be able to defend my actions, no matter what they had on me. But Ribbentrop is so weak and indecisive.

I found a delivery in my flaw.

Is it not clear that with all this we are bound to feel ill at ease in an age that likes to claim the distinction of being the most humane, the mildest, and the most righteous age that the sun has ever seen? It is bad enough that precisely when we hear these beautiful words we have the ugliest suspicions. What we find in them is merely an expression - and a masquerade - of a profound weakening, of weariness, of old age, of declining energies. What can it matter to us what tinsel the sick may use to cover up their weakness? Let them parade it as their virtue; after all, there is no doubt that weakness makes one mild, oh so mild, so righteous, so inoffensive, so 'humane'!

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence - here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for 'laws.'

I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

Before my eyes he wilted like a wet sock.

I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, blown and flared by passion's storm, and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could be for his life, and and for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength - and his weakness, too. - His strength - for he was by nature eloquent - and his weakness - for he was hourly a dupe to it; and provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one - (bating the case of a systematic misfortune)- he had all he wanted.- A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune was as five - my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.