Strength is the ability to produce or withstand great force; to be determined or unyielding.

Quotes

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. ~ Maya Angelou

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength — and strength alone. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

What strength!! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world. ~ Street Fighter

• When strength is yoked with justice, where is a mightier pair than they?
  • Aeschylus, Fragments, l, 298.

• Resistance can breed resilience.
  • Hilton Als on Alice Neel, The New Yorker, 2021

• The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
  • Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, ch. 29 (1969).

• Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
  • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 19.

• Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.
  • J. M. Barrie, Little Minister, p. 143

• Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher (1858), ed. Edna Dean Proctor, p. 52

• Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress (January 9, 1958). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958, p. 5.

• The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength — and strength alone.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower speech at an English Speaking Union Dinner (3 July 1951). It is currently on display on the wall of Eisenhower Hall at the USMA at West Point in New York. Eisenhower Memorial Commission

• 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.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, in "The Nobel Evening Address" in The Dalai Lama : A Policy of Kindness (1990), p. 115

• Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, as quoted in Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2001) edited by Margaret Gee, p. 71

• The strong are sometimes wrong but the weak are never free.
  • Heaven 17, 'Come live with me' (song lyrics).

• The strong rules and the weak are their slaves - and no one is stronger than me.
  • Infamous (video game) character Cole MacGrath.

• For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book, "The Law of the Jungle", st. 2 (1895).

• But strong in your good cause.
  Oh, ye are strong, If ye would know your strength !
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Catruccio Castrucani (1841 posthumous) Act I scene 1

• When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success; and when we have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of knowing anything; nor on the other side, question everything, and declaim all knowledge, because some things are not to be understood.
  • John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Introduction, sec. 6 (1689).

• Wonder Woman: I'm not weak - I'm too strong. The bracelets bound my strength to good purposes - Now I'm completely uncontrolled! I'm free to destroy like a man!
  • William Moulton Marston, Sensation Comics #19 (The Unbound Amazon), (July 1943).

• Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
  • Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 86 (1851)

• If you take something like Cthulhu in Lovecraft, for example, it is completely incomprehensible and beyond all human categorization. But in the game Call of Cthulu, you see Cthulhu's “strength,” “dexterity,” and so on, carefully expressed numerically.
  • China Miéville, in Joan Gordon Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville, Science Fiction Studies, #91, Volume 30, Part 3, (November 2003)

• To ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a will to dominate, a will to subjugate, a will to become master, a thirst for enemies and obstacles and triumphant celebrations, is just as absurd as to ask weakness to express itself as strength.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, "First Essay," section 13 (1887).

• His strength is my strength, and my strength is his strength.
  • Hymn to Ra, Papyrus of Ani (c. 1250 BCE), Book of the Dead, translated by Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge

• Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d'autrui.
  • We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales (1655), no. 19 (1678). There are several English translations, including that above from his Selected Maxims and Reflections, trans. Edward M. Stack, p. 26 (1956).

• O, it is excellent
  To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
  To use it like a giant.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, sc. 2 (1603).

• What strength!! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world.
  • Street Fighter, (1987)

• The strength of my god completes my own.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection IX at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010) The Sage, the Weak, and the Magnificent, p. 94.

• My strength is as the strength of ten,
  Because my heart is pure.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Sir Galahad, st. 1 (1842).

• When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.
  • Donald Trump, interview with Playboy, March 1990; quoted in the New York Daily News (Bury Trump in a Landslide, published October 20, 2016)

• It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
  • Wendell Willkie, speech accepting nomination as Republican candidate for president, Elwood, Indiana (August 17, 1940), Willkie, This Is Wendell Willkie (1940), p. 273–74.

External links