the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.17 in modern English
100
Scrabble Score
50
Letters
7
Syllables
17
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Bitter is the necessity of it. It knows no law. In the world the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
- "But the present organisation of society, national and international, works on the principle that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
- "I felt then, as I do now, that the growth of the United Nations into a truly effective world organization was our best, perhaps our last, hope of bringing about enduring and creative peace if mankind was to end a savage tradition that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
- "But for the weak, power – the power of others – is largely a source of inequality and subordination. The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must, including hierarchic subordination."
- "The unilateral actions on the part of the United States, as in Iraq, threaten not so much the integrity of the Concert as the foundational norms of international society, such as sovereignty and non-intervention, which had provided the basis for that society in the first place. If this trend continues, we may end up with a hyper-realist world in which “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”."
- "The overall argument is that powerful states and wealthy capitalists use what power they have to gain even more power. They save the lucrative parts of the production process for themselves, and force weaker actors into the parts that yield relatively little reward. ¶ In this respect, economic structuralism fully agrees with the realist statement that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”."
Etymology
Calque of Ancient Greek δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν (dunatà dè hoi proúkhontes prássousi kaì hoi astheneîs xunkhōroûsin) in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War 5.89 (the Melian dialogue). Thucydides presents the sentence as part of an ultimatum from Athens to the city of Melos demanding tribute. The Melians having rejected the order, their city was taken by force and their population enslaved and massacred by the Athenians. The following year, Athens suffered a serious defeat that lead to its conquest by Sparta. The wording that has become standard is from Richard Crawley’s 1874 translation.