Weaken Quotes & Sayings

The results of recent research on the impacts of climate change dramatically weaken the case for expensive, near-term abatement programs. — Robert O. Mendelsohn

Lydia had been fantasizing about him to the point she nearly drove him insane with it. It had taken four days for his energy to weaken inside her enough that he could go and visit her without fear she would throw him across the town in a gust of wind, and thus cause a scene. Although, getting run out of town after one day would be a new MacGregor record. — Michelle M. Pillow

Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes who weaken themselves and their race by this integrating and intermixing with whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread. All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole-wheat flour. If you want pure sugar, you want dark sugar. — Malcolm X

One ought to avoid all unnecessary worry and exciting thoughts, and to cultivate a firm tranquility of mind. Melancholy reflections will in no way influence fate, whereas one may weaken the constitution by the waste of energy while indulging in them. — George Hackenschmidt

I not only weaken the opposition, I'm going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage. — Hun Sen

I don't want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to repeal it. — Jon Tester

This crude, cowardly bargain seems not to have unduly bothered Hitler. If Mussolini was personally attracted to him, as Ciano said, by "something deeply rooted in his make-up," it might be said that the attraction was mutual, for the same mysterious reasons. Disloyal as he had been to some of his closest associates, a number of whom he had had murdered, such as Roehm and Strasser, Hitler maintained a strange and unusual loyalty to his ridiculous Italian partner that did not weaken, that indeed was strengthened when adversity and then disaster overtook the strutting, sawdust Roman Caesar. It is one of the interesting paradoxes of this narrative. — William L. Shirer

Constant criticism can wear one down and weaken knees. — Marvin J. Ashton

Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find his will beginning to weaken. He didn't realize that this was because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyper-space ports that served the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta. — Douglas Adams

If in making a picture you introduce two ideas, you weaken it by half-if three, it weakens by compound ratio-if four, the picture will be really too weak to consider at all and the human interest would be entirely lost. — Howard Pyle

You cannot be a good house in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood. The credibility and the fair functioning of the neighborhood matter a great deal. Without that, the integrity of the capitalist system will weaken further". — Bernardo Kliksberg

Books suggest the inner light and the method of bringing that out, but we can only understand them when we have earned the knowledge ourselves. When the inner light has flashed for you, let the books go, and look only within. You have in you all and a thousand times more than is in all the books. Never lose faith in yourself, you can do anything in this universe. Never weaken, all power is yours. — Swami Vivekananda

Discrimination weakens the soul and the strength of a nation. — Ron Baratono

The reason of the unreasonableness which against my reason is wrought, doth so weaken my reason, as with all reason I do justly complain on your beauty. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

In your body, the gradually accumulating burden of reactive experiences is called allostatic load, which increases inflammation, weakens your immune system, and wears on your cardiovascular system. In your brain, allostatic load causes neurons to atrophy in the prefrontal cortex, the center of top-down executive control; in the hippocampus, the center of learning and memory; and in other regions. It impairs myelination, the insulating of neural fibers to speed along their signals, which can weaken the connectivity between different regions of your brain, so they don't work together as well as they should. — Rick Hanson

Somebody gotta tell you this:
Cancer kills way more Americans than any Arabic terrorist.
We use more money to fight them than finding a cure,
So a little kid sits there with his chemo-therapist.
Hair falling out while his vital signs weaken ...
He'll be dead while his parent are in debt for his treatment. — Crooked I

I am something of a crank about sleep, for if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there's nothing really wrong with me. It's just another idea. That's how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken. — Saul Bellow

A weakened sense of responsibility does not weaken the fact of responsibility. — William Bennett

When the body is assailed by the strong force of time and the limbs weaken from exhausted force, genius breaks down, and mind and speech fail.
[Lat., Ubi jam valideis quassatum est viribus aevi
Corpus, et obtuseis ceciderunt viribus artus,
Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque mensque.] — Lucretius

Every time you change your orders without obvious reason, you weaken your authority. — Napoleon Hill

In education if you strengthen a strength you weaken a weakness. — Thomas Davis

People are stupid. If I don't do this, there will be no peace. Eventually, time will pass and the pain will heal. Eventually, checkmate's power will weaken and people will begin fighting again. This time, they will use the weapon themselves and once more know true pain. And for the short time, peace will come again. It will give birth to short period of peace within this endless chain of hatred. That's my wish.
Pain is the way to bring peace. — Pain

Burn all the food, and people will starve, weaken, and turn on one another. Destroy the temples and their acolytes, and the people will have nowhere to turn, no sanctuary, no charity. No hope. — Melinda Salisbury

In the area of national security, I urge the swift passage of an anti-terrorism law that will protect rather than subvert, enhance rather than weaken, the rights and liberties that terrorism precisely threatens with extinction. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Is it not possible that my activity as an objective observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being? — Soren Kierkegaard

Puny legs weaken the soul. — John Arnold

It's the irony of woman's life in that she tends to turn her assets to her own detriment in that while her psyche seeks to see her man strong; her instinct tries to weaken him. — BS Murthy

Bad habits are like infection. Inflammation starts from the mouth and weaken the body's ability. — Kishore Bansal

I like it that they [disciples] feed me and pay for my clothes and protect me. And in return I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. Just as I cannot breathe the breath of another or help the heart of someone else to beat or their bones not to weaken or their flesh not to shrivel, I cannot say more than I can say. And I know how deeply this disturbs them, and it would make me smile, this earnest need for foolish anecdote or sharp simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all, except that I have forgotten how to smile. — Colm Toibin

It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced ... Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken pubic support ... When the doubt or fear expressed concerns not the success of a particular enterprise but of the whole social plan, it must be treated even more as sabotage. — Friedrich Hayek

Every day, I remind myself to take the long view of all this. The current madness will have to end, eventually, I'll simply need to outlast it, rather than allowing it to weaken me. — Stephen Nasser

Every business tries to turn this year's success into next year's greater success. It's hard for me to see why Microsoft is sinful to do this. If it's a sin, then I hope all of Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries are sinners. Someone whose salary is paid by U.S.taxpayers is happy to dramatically weaken the one place where we're winning big?! — Charlie Munger

The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he gives us dryness, sufferings, and failures. — Peter Kreeft

Do not bring me your successes; they weaken me. Bring me your problems; they strengthen me. — Charles Kettering

What better way to weaken a powerful enemy than to get it fighting itself? — Charles Stross

Books are never harmless ... they either strengthen us or they weaken us in our faith. Some of them do this even as they entertain us, others as they teach us. In an invisible way their teaching penetrates into our hearts and souls, to continue its work inside, and we inhale the spirit of these books as healing or poisonous vapors. They can bring the greatest benefits and the greatest ruin, for from their ideas that they spread come the deeds of the future. — Peter Prange

Things are grouped together for a reason, but, once they are grouped, their grouping causes them to seem more like each other than they otherwise would. That is, the mere act of classification reinforces stereotypes. If you want to weaken some stereotype, eliminate the classification. Amos's — Michael Lewis

As we approach the crucial battleground, believe that our blades will not shatter.
Believe that our resolve will not weaken.
Though our paths may diverge, our iron hearts remain together.
Swear, that though the land itself may break asunder...We will come back alive! ~Renji Abarai — Tite Kubo

A memorized scripture becomes an enduring friend that does not weaken with the passage of time. — Richard G. Scott

If you happen to be the only one with negative interest rates, you also weaken your currency, which means you make your exports more competitive. — Mohamed El-Erian

While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet. — Rebecca MacKinnon

At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken. — Khaled Hosseini

Good times weaken belief. — James Cook

The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken. — Arthur C. Clarke

Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame - we just can't help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines. — Esi Edugyan

To introduce unconverted persons to the church, is to weaken and degrade it; and therefore an apparent gain may be a real loss. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Bran was the only person I knew who could use words like "blackguard" and make them sound like swear words-but then he could have said "bunny rabbit" in that tone of voice and weaken my spine with the same shiver of fear. — Patricia Briggs

Bad thoughts can be dangerous if left to simmer and weaken the heart slowly and invisibly. Like termites that destroy the beams of a house, secretly, in the dark until it's too late and everything collapses. — Massimo Marino

I'm a person who acknowledges reality. I don't get up every morning and ask myself: What would I do differently if I were chancellor in a black-and-yellow (Christian Democrat and Free Democrat) coalition? The SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the (Christian Democrat and Christian Social) Union stand to weaken their own positions if they don't make this coalition a success. And we both want success. — Angela Merkel

Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. "Life has to end," she said. "Love doesn't. — Mitch Albom

Here (Jerusalem), tears do not weaken the eyes, they only polish and shine the hardness of faces like stone. — Yehuda Amichai

Satan will try to use our troubles to worry and weaken us. But God uses them to strengthen us. — Johnny Hunt

If you weaken, I'll be strong. If you get lost, I'll be your way home. If you despair, I'll bring you joy. I will love you until the end of time. — Karen Marie Moning

Historical events may stay in the collective records of memory, or they may be allowed to deteriorate, slowly or rapidly, through the overt choices of the powerful. The latter usually seek to suppress or weaken collective memories of societal oppression, and to construct positive and often fictional memories of that history. — Joe R. Feagin

Love lost, is still love ... You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. — Mitch Albom

Diversion weakens thy mind. — Toba Beta

Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them - and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution
these can lift at a colossal humbug, - push it a little - crowd it a little - weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.
- "The Chronicle of Young Satan," Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts — Mark Twain

You don't want to help the young too much,it will just weaken them and they'll only resent it. — Mark Tobey

To tell an adult exactly what steps to take towards his salvation was apt to weaken him. It deprived him of his inalienable right to trial and error which was tonic to the character. — Frances Gray Patton

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism. — Martin Rees

Colors blind the eye
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart. — Lao-Tzu

Then he says her name. Her real name. The soft music of it hangs suspended in the air between them. Threat or entreaty, she doesn't know, but she feels her resolve weaken. He says it again, this time, it sounds bitter, false in his mouth. A betrayal. The spell is broken. The woman known as Sophie lifts her arm. And shoots. — Kate Mosse

In the burning and devastated cities, we daily experienced the direct impact of war. It spurred us to do our utmost ... the bombing and the hardships that resulted from them (did not) weaken the morale of the populace. — Albert Speer

the One whom we most need to behold has made himself known. He has traced with a fine hand the lines and contours of his face. He has done so in his Word. We must search for that face, though babies continue to cry, bills continue to grow, bad news continues to arrive unannounced, though friendships wax and wane, though both ease and difficulty weaken our grip on godliness, though a thousand other faces crowd close for our affection, and a thousand other voices clamor for our attention. By fixing our gaze on that face, we trade mere human glory for holiness: — Jen Wilkin

When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party. Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma - hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy. — Neil Steinberg

Angry obsessive thoughts about another weaken your state of mind and well being. If you must have revenge, then take it by choosing to be happy and let them go forever. — Gary Hopkins

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it ... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. — C.S. Lewis

Every time we have opportunity and fail to live up to that truth which is within us, every time we fail to express a good thought, every time we fail to perform a good act, we weaken ourselves, and make it more difficult to express that thought or perform that act in the future. Every time we perform a good act, every time we express a noble feeling, we make it the more easy to perform that act or express that feeling another time. — David O. McKay

Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power. — Marquis De Sade

It can be dangerous to weaken the strong in our attempts to strengthen the weak. — Jim Rohn

Finding a way to move on from him would be hard. I might never accomplish it. I wouldn't chase him, but I would mourn him. As if he were dead, my heart would weaken, and I'd embrace the pain and sadness. Until Gannon, I'd never been truly happy. No one had made me feel complete or like I belonged. — Abbi Glines

You fall in love with someone not because he's nice to you or can read your mind but because, when he kisses you, your knees weaken, or because you can't stop looking at his skin or at the way his legs, inside his jeans, shape the fabric. — Charles Baxter

People who carry in their hearts a strong conviction concerning the living reality of the Almighty and their accountability to Him for what they do with their lives are far less likely to become enmeshed in problems that inevitably weaken society. — Gordon B. Hinckley

In the general election, Nixon refined Goldwater's southern strategy. Unlike Goldwater, who "ran as a racist candidate," Nixon said, the 1968 GOP nominee campaigned on racial themes without explicitly mentioning race. "Law and order" replaced "states' rights." Pledging to weaken the enforcement of civil rights laws replaced outright opposition to them. Nixon "always couched his views in such a way that a citizen could avoid admitting to himself that he was attracted by a racist appeal," said his top aide, John Ehrlichman. — Ari Berman

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what - these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank. — William Zinsser

A fief, the elder Hosokawa had advised, was like a castle wall built of many rocks. A rock that could not be cut to fit in comfortably with the others would weaken the whole structure, even though the rock itself might be of admirable size and quality. — Eiji Yoshikawa

It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffiness of expectancy. It is only at certain times that they weaken, letting imagination in. That's the time to get them. ("The Disinheritors") — Richard Matheson

There's a Chinese proverb that says "Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you & embracing those that strengthen you" Your mind is like a Ferrari (Or your favorite car) it is Awesome! ... but if you put sand on the gas tank it won't run. Don't put sand (negativity) on your mind. Think positive, encouraging, uplifting thoughts, & the negative will soon evaporate. — Pablo

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. — Montesquieu

We hold our tongues in check because if they are undisciplined they empty the soul of the strength of heavenly grace, and weaken its healthful vigour. — Peter Damian

Lost love is still love, Eddie. It just takes a different form, that's all. You can't hold their hand... You can't tousle their hair... But when those senses weaken another one comes to life... Memory... Memory becomes your partner. You hold it... you dance with it... Life has to end, Eddie... Love doesn't. — Mitch Albom

There is nothing your knife handlers can do in the way of rioting and demonstrating that will have any permanent effect as long as, in the extremity, there is an army equipped with kinetic, chemical, and neurological weapons that is willing to use them against your people. You can get all the downtrodden and even all the respectables on your side, but you must somehow win over the security forces and the Imperial army or at least seriously weaken their loyalty to the rulers. — Isaac Asimov

I have never once been persuaded as to the causal link between the Iraqi regime, al-Qaeda and September 11. I do believe the impact of war under these circumstances is bound to weaken the international coalition against terrorism itself ... — Charles Kennedy

The heart swellings convince me of the folly of those who dare to think that any new ties can weaken the first and best of nature. — Stephanie Dray

Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes that weaken growth by reducing incentives to save, invest, innovate, and work. — Martin Feldstein

But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam. — Abu Bakar Bashir

Thus we come to the problem of determining what the poem is 'about.' Charles Altieri notes that '[a]n expression of the self can be one that is intended, the self's act, or one that is symptomatic, the act of a self not in control of what it manifests'(24) In 'Yankee Doodle,' and to a lesser extent in '$$$$$$," the interesting aspects of the poem are not 'the intended expression of the self.' The lack of explicitness is not suggestive in any positive sense because we feel that were things to be spelled out, this would weaken, not strengthen, the narrator's case by revealing the unacknowledged irrationality at the root of it. — Russell Harrison

Every time you think you weaken the nation. — Moe Howard

Israel has no interest in destroying Hamas; it seeks merely to weaken and isolate it. Hamas gives Israel an out, a convenient villain, someone to blame. — Anonymous

Hasn't there ... been a little too much zeal in our reproof of children and friends for yielding to the temptations we ourselves find it most difficult to resist? We punish where we can least afford to sympathize. Of all the horrors of the daily news, it seems hardest to imagine the kind of cruelty that is intensified by the pain of its victims, but whenever we feel sympathy would weaken us, we are a little closer to the torturer. — James Richardson

It is weakness, says the Vedanta, which is the cause of all misery in this world. Weakness is the one cause of suffering. We become miserable because we are weak. We lie, steal, kill and commit other crimes, because we are weak. We die because we are weak. Where there is nothing to weaken us, there is no death nor sorrow. We are miserable through delusion. Give up the delusion and the whole thing vanishes. — Swami Vivekananda

Not only are you what you eat, but you also can be what's eating you. Don't become your problems or let them overtake you. — Anthony Liccione

ISIS have to be defeated. They have to be defeated militarily. How are we going to do that if we continue to weaken our military? — Marco Rubio

Know that humiliation does not weaken you, it strengthens you. The more egoistic you are, the more humiliation you feel. When you are childlike and have a greater sense of kinship, you do not feel humiliated. When you are steeped in love with the Existence, with the Divine, nothing whatsoever can humiliate you. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

We cannot weaken or destroy political parties in ther United States without weakening or destroying the rule of the people ... Those who support party organization and submit to party discipline are supporting the only course yet discovered for orderly government by the people. — Calvin Coolidge

I didn't go to Harvard or Princeton, but I can count - the defunding box canyon is a tactic that will fail and weaken our position, — Bob Corker

Society has become well versed in the methods necessary to weaken the radicalism of the Gospel by reducing Christianity to what is viewed as reasonable by the logic of the market and by a culture committed to a largely post-Christian, consumerist vision of human life. Thus the disruptive character of Christianity is silenced and Christian spirituality is repackaged as a soothing therapeutic exercise that serves the needs of a culture committed above all else to the enjoyment of consumer activities. — Matthew T Eggemeier

When you are expending much energy on someone else's demise, it's like you weaken your psychic immune system. — Heidi Julavits

There they are.
The extreme definiteness with which they stand, now a brilliant white, again yellow, and in some lights red, imposes ideas of durability, of the emergence through the earth of some spiritual energy elsewhere dissipated in elegant trifles. But durability exists independently of our admiration. Although the beauty is sufficiently humane to weaken us, to stir the deep deposit of mud - memories, abandonments, regrets, sentimental devotions - the Parthenon is separate from all that; and if you consider how it has stood out at night, for centuries, you begin to connect the blaze (at midnight the glare is dazzling and the frieze almost invisible) with the idea that perhaps it is beauty alone that is immortal. — Virginia Woolf

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth disputed whether John Kerry deserved some of his five medals. A large part of Kerry's defense was an appeal to the authority of veterans who supported him-one of whom has now been revealed to have received a medal he doesn't deserve. This doesn't prove the Kerry detractors were right, but it certainly doesn't weaken their case. — James Taranto