"Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels"

Voltaire suggests that quarrels arise when both parties lack the strength needed to resolve disagreement through clarity, generosity, or decisive action. Strength here is not brute force; it is steadiness of mind, confidence in one’s position, moral courage, and the practical power to either reconcile or part without rancor. When those forms of strength are missing on both sides, disputes congeal into quarrels, heat without light.

The weak voice shouts to be heard; the weak ego clings to being right; the weak reason grabs at sophistry rather than evidence. Mutual insecurity breeds defensiveness, and defensiveness, facing its mirror, multiplies. Each side reads concession as defeat, apology as humiliation, silence as surrender. Pride is drafted to cover fear, and the conversation becomes a contest staged for an anxious audience of selves.

There is also a structural sense. Parties who cannot enforce a settlement, craft a credible compromise, or walk away unhurt are trapped. The stalemate of limited power makes prolongation rational even when it is irrational; the quarrel persists because neither side possesses the authority or the imagination to end it. Thus the motto: not the banner of one camp, but the shared emblem of inadequacy.

Consider how this scales. Lovers who lack the strength to listen quarrel. Colleagues who lack the security to credit others quarrel. Factions that lack institutional channels for negotiated change quarrel. Even online disputes reveal the pattern: anonymity lowers accountability, and fragility seeks validation through escalation.

The remedy is not domination but cultivation. Strength that prevents quarrels is humility joined to conviction, patience paired with precision, the capacity to absorb slight without surrendering truth. Where one side can bear to understand, or the other can afford to concede, quarrels dissipate into dialogue or into quiet separation. Strength creates space for reason, and reason dissolves needless strife eventually.