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Why cannot we correct the baneful passions, without weakening the good?
Sep 17, 2025
It can be dangerous to weaken the strong in our attempts to strengthen the weak.
No man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his sermon.
If your character is not strengthening, your future is weakening.
If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.
The most incredible thing is that so much happens outside of the will. You can't will anything. Not even solitude is an act of will. You simply endure it. You must hold on until the very end, without weakening. You can do nothing else. But you must not believe that because you accept being nothing, you are anyone special.
The Supreme Court nominations [example]. I mean, the fact that Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans, was able to just stop a nomination almost a year before the next election and really not pay a political price for it, that's a sign that the incentives for politicians in this town to be so sharply partisan have gotten so outta hand that we're weakening ourselves.
The NSA was actually concerned back in the time of the crypto-wars with improving American security. Nowadays, we see that their priority is weakening our security, just so they have a better chance of keeping an eye on us.
The Islamic world is suffering not only because of external oppression but also because of the loss of its own dignity, of its own heritage, of its own practice of Islam, of its weakening of its own ethics, and many things which are internal to Islam not just external.
Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life.
This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments.
The U.S. embargo imposed on Nicaragua, rather than weakening the Sandinistas, actually maintained them in power.
Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
That which offends you only weakens you. Being offended creates the same destructive energy that offended you in the first place- so transcend your ego and stay in peace.
The deliberate weakening of the labour movement by the machinations of market fundamentalists, gaining momentum during the periods when Margaret Thatcher led the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan governed in the United States, contributed to the decline of human rights.
You cannot strengthen one by weakening another; and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the leg of a giant.
I love my nation, I cannot see you degraded, weakened any more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your sake and for truth's to cry, "Hold!" and to raise my voice against this degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticism and be strong.
Halloween will be a slam-dunk for merchants despite the weakening consumer spending trends.
Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them.
The NRA is weakening but the opposing forces are stronger. A member of Congress has and still does pay a price for voting against the NRA. But now a member pays a price for voting with the NRA, too. In many districts, the price is higher when a member votes with the NRA than against the NRA. The public is outraged.
Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Stories arent often deadly, but they can be virulent: spreading fast, weakening resistance, wreaking havoc.
Stockholders are used to a certain kind of global capitalism. This version is very hard on the environment and very hard on people below a certain fiscal level. It is a calculated, systematic weakening of people. Many labour, a few benefit. Try talking about cleaning up the place with these people. The hostility is incredible.
If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and if we really want peace, then patriotism is a leftover from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and taught, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule. If Christianity is the truth, and if we wish to live in peace, then we must not only have no sympathy for the power of our country, but must even rejoice in its weakening and contribute to it.
Disarmament should be conducive to the enhancement of every country's general security instead of becoming the instrument and means for a few countries to strengthen their military superiority by weakening or restricting other countries.
I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much." "But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly. I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?"
Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad.
The web of hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies.
I see the future of China as growth. I think that historically China has often gone through periods of consolidation, and then periods of sort of weakening central authority. They undoubtedly face tremendous challenges.
When you're happy, your immune system is at its strongest point. And when you think negatively, or when you hate, or allow yourself to grow emotionally out of control, you are weakening your immune system.
It is so true that in liquid modernity freedom was, so to speak, let off the leash, and for a quite a number of years the freedom of choice was "in principle" unlimited. One result was the weakening of inter-human bonds, particularly inherited bonds, and the counterfactual assumption that individuals must and can fend for themselves.
In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending.
Socialism is simply a re-assertion of that tribal ethics whose gradual weakening had made an approach to the Great Society possible.
After long centuries, agrarian civilization is weakening. Is sufficient attention being devoted to the arrangement and improvement of the life of the country people, whose inferior and at times miserable economic situation provokes the flight to the unhappy crowded conditions of the city outskirts, where neither employment nor housing awaits them?
Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.
A Russian should rejoice if Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, Armenia, should be separated, freed from Russia; so with an Englishman in regard to Ireland, India and other possessions; and each should help to do this, because the greater the state, the more wrong and cruel is its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. Therefore, if we really wish to be what we profess to be, we must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening, and help this forward with all our might.
Although we are all the same in not wanting problems and wanting a peaceful life, we tend to create a lot of problems for ourselves. Encountering those problems, anger develops and overwhelms our mind, which leads to violence. A good way to counter this and to work for a more peaceful world is to develop concern for others. Then our anger, jealousy and other destructive emotions will naturally weaken and diminish.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
Releasing guilt is like removing a huge weight from your shoulders. Guilt is released through the empowering thought of love and respect for yourself. Let go of standards of perfection and refuse to use up the precious currency of your life, the now, with thoughts that continue to frustrate and weaken you. Instead, vow to be better than you used to be, which is the true test of nobility.
All along the line, physically, mentally, morally, alcohol is a weakening and deadening force.
This means that the search for a formula of European cooperation in connection with the League of Nations, far from weakening the authority of this latter must and can only tend to strengthen it, for it is closely connected with its aims.
As long as we are focusing on the breath we do not feed our mental, emotional, and physical patterns. By returning to the breath again and again we start to dissolve their power. We develop a space between experience and our identification with it, thereby weakening the process that creates habits in the first place.
Facts do not find their way into the world in which our beliefs reside; they did not produce our beliefs, they do not destroy them; they may inflict on them the most constant refutations without weakening them, and an avalanche of afflictions or ailments succeeding one another without interruption in a family will not make it doubt the goodness of its God or the talent of its doctor.
You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright, but we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you'll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you. We'll so weaken your economy until you'll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.
Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.
From the Balkans to Africa, from Asia to the Middle East, we have witnessed the weakening or absence of effective governance leading to the ravaging of human rights and the abandonment of longstanding humanitarian principles. We need competent and responsible states to meet the needs of "we the peoples" for whom the UN was created. And the world's peoples will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights, the three pillars of the UN, are advanced together with equal vigour.
It's just silly to look at the incredibly steep decline in the mainline and the clear institutional weakening of Catholicism in the 1960s and 70s and pretend that something really big didn't change then. It did change. There really was a significant institutional decline.