#weakness

Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted. ↗

— Isaiah Berlin

#liberty #paradox #power #rights #weakness

God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful and powerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is the revelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole way of seeing the world is turned upside down… all values are transformed… God refuses to play games of power and prestige on human terms. ↗

— Richard Hays

#god #power #suffering #weakness #death

It is strange how love is a source for power––can spur the desire to fight to the death, or to fight back from something that seems like death for long enough to write a coherent note––but also of weakness. ↗

— Beth Fantaskey

#power #weakness #death

All wickedness comes from weakness. The child is wicked only because he is weak. Make him strong; he will be good. He who could do everything would never do harm. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#education

Fathers, your are the head and strength of the family unit. If you are not in place, there is a weakness in the link. ↗

— Anita R. Sneed-Carter

#father #head #link #strength #unit

Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly. ↗

— Matthew Quick

#feelings-of-weakness #happiness #life #literature #movie

Superman comics are a fable, not of strength, but of disintegration. They appeal to the preadolescent, (sic) mind not because they reiterate grandiose delusions, but because they reiterate a very deep cry for help. Superman's two personalities can be integrated only in one thing: only in death. Only Kryptonite cuts through the disguises of both wimp and hero, and affects the man below the disguises. And what is Kryptonite? Kryptonite is all that remains of his childhood home. It is the remnants of that destroyed childhood home, and the fear of those remnants, which rule Superman's life. The possibility that the shards of that destroyed home might surface prevents him from being intimate- they prevent him from sharing the knowledge that the wimp and the hero are one. The fear of his childhood home prevents him from having pleasure. He fears that to reveal his weakness, and confusion, is, perhaps indirectly, but certainly inevitably, to receive death from the person who received that information. [...] Far from being invulnerable, Superman is the most vulnerable of beings, because his childhood was destroyed. He can never reintegrate himself by returning to that home- it is gone. It is gone and he is living among aliens to whom he cannot even reveal his rightful name. ↗

— David Mamet

#disintegration #kryptonite #superman #weakness #death

We must remember that possession of physical beauty can easily weaken the moral faculty. ↗

— Frank Tallis

#morality #vanity #weakness #beauty

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes. ↗

— Jean Vanier

#success #weakness #growth

A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness. ↗

— Criss Jami

#denial #facing #facing-fear #facing-problems #fear