might makes right

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the doctrine that power or physical force, rather than moral principle or legal right, is the ultimate basis of political authority and the determinant of just outcomes; the phrase describes a worldview in which those who are strongest set the rules, and legitimacy is derived from capacity rather than consent or ethics; it is associated with realist and Machiavellian traditions in political thought, and with critiques of international relations as a system in which great powers impose their will on weaker states and dress their self-interested actions in the language of universal norms