Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Joel 3:10.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 26:41.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Corinthians1:27.

Es ist derVorzug und das Wesen der Starken, dass sie die groÞen Entscheidungsfragen stellen und zu ihnen klar Stellung nehmen k o« nnen. Die Schwachen mu«  ssen sich immer zwischen Alternativen entscheiden, die nicht die ihren sind. It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.

-Bonhoeffer, Dietrich
Widerstand und Ergebung,'Ein paar Gedanken u«  ber Verschiedenes' (translated1953).

   The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

-Burke, Edmund
  On Conciliation with  America.

The spirit burning but unbent May writhe, rebelöthe weak alone repent!

-Rochdale
  The Corsair, canto 2, stanza10.

An obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men, including all of us, who haveallowed ittogo onand on with endless fury.

-Chomsky, (Avram) Noam
  Of US involvement in the war in Vietnam.  American Power and the New Mandarins.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

-Eisenhower, Dwight D(avid)
  Inaugural address, 20  Jan.

I know that Ihavethe bodyof a weak and feeble woman, but I havetheheart and stomach of a kingöand a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

-Elizabeth I
   Address at Tilbury on the approach of the Spanish Armada.

To disarm the strong and arm the weak would be to change the social order which it's my job to preserve. Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned.

-Thibault
Crainquebille.

His eyesight has always been weak, a sort of film over the eyes. A doctor advised him not to read, but he said, 'Then I should be ignorant', and he refused an operation because there was a thousandth chance he might go blind and so remain ignorant.

-Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta ne¤  e Persse
  Of Sean O'Casey.  Journal entry, 8  Jun.

We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much.

-Holmes, Oliver Wendell
^9  The Professor at the Breakfast Table, ch.3.

Death and pain dominate this world, for though many are cured, they leave still weak, still tremulous, still knowing mortality has whispered to them; have seen in the folding of white bedspreads according to rule the starched pleats of a shroud.

-Levertov, Denise
  Footprints,'The Malice of Innocence'.

   To be weak is miserable Doing or suffering, but of this be sure, To do aught good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.157^60.

   This is the law of theYukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; That surely theWeak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.

-Service, Robert William
  Songs of a Sourdough,'The Law of theYukon'.