"Give it a kick at the right place and it'll work"
About this Quote
The brilliance is its casualness. A "kick" is crude, even contemptuous; "the right place" pretends to be technical. That pairing smuggles in a worldview: coercion is acceptable if presented as precision. It implies there is always a lever, a pressure point, a targeted strike that turns chaos into compliance. The promise of "it'll work" is the most revealing clause - an impatience with process and an impatience with moral ambiguity. Results are the moral argument.
Context matters because Weizman lived at the seam between cockpit and cabinet: Israel's early decades where existential threat, rapid institution-building, and recurring war made decisiveness a civic virtue. In that environment, blunt candor reads as competence. The subtext, though, is the danger of mistaking short-term functionality for legitimacy. Machines don't resent you after the kick. People do. The quote sells control as a craft, while quietly admitting how often power defaults to impact rather than persuasion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Weizman, Ezer. (2026, January 16). Give it a kick at the right place and it'll work. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/give-it-a-kick-at-the-right-place-and-itll-work-104598/
Chicago Style
Weizman, Ezer. "Give it a kick at the right place and it'll work." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/give-it-a-kick-at-the-right-place-and-itll-work-104598/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Give it a kick at the right place and it'll work." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/give-it-a-kick-at-the-right-place-and-itll-work-104598/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.






