A collection of quotes on the topic of ability, doing, use, people.
The Reason and the objective of Education Reform
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
citizenship in the changing world of tomorrow.
“You can have more children only according to your ability to feed them.”
“Everybody has talent, but ability takes hard work.”
“You are the only person on earth who can use your ability.”
Its okay to tell a lie but believing in your own lies makes you the first victim, you become your own enemy which limits ability to think progressively towards success in life.
Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.124 (July 2018)
1790s, The Age of Reason, Part III (1807)
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.96 (July 2018)
“Leadership is ability to decide what is to be done a then get others to do it.”
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 19, "The illusion of understanding", page 201 (ISBN 9780141033570).
Variant: You are educated when you have the ability to hear almost anything without losing your temper, or your self-confidence.
“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.”
Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk
Profile at North American Bangladesh Info Center http://www.bongoz.com/people/yunus.html
“If you don't have ability, you wind up playing in a rock band.”
This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell
Misattributed
Dianetics And Scientology Technical Dictionary (1975); 1987 edition, p. 370.
Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, (July 2018)
Source: From "The Joy of Painting" Mobquotes https://mobquotes.com/bob-ross-quotes/
“It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.”
“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
“Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.”
Source: The Spellmans Strike Again
Variant: God does not begin by asking our ability, but more of our availability. When we prove our dependability, He will in crease our capability.
Source: House Harkonnen
“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)
The First Notebook
No Longer Human
In:P.83
Presidents of India, 1950-2003
“It is so strange - if anyone takes my name, I have the ability to make them famous.”
From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi
1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal" — "government by consent of the governed" — "give me liberty or give me death." Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives. Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.
Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 135
Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 202
Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You
The Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human
Source: Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century. 1998, p. 90: Also cited in: AA Files: Annals of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Nr. 31-32 (1996). p. 111
Address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (2 December 2006)]
“The ability to write reflects on one’s capacity to think clearly.”
Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/GovernorMigunaMiguna/posts/562705787252139, 2016
2016
“The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”
Ashley Montagu (1981, p. 156), cited in: Thomas J. Sweeney (1989), Adlerian counseling: a practical approach for a new decade, p. 54
As quoted in The Subconscious Diet : It's Not What You Put in Your Mouth; It Is What You Put in Your Mind (2005) by Hugh B. Sanders, p. 104 <!-- also quoted in The First Step : A Peek at the Real World (2006) by Gudmundur O. Sigurdarson, p. 41 -->
Context: Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
Source: The Montessori Method (1912), Ch. 5 : Discipline, p. 100.
Context: Let us picture to ourselves a clever and proficient workman, capable, not only of producing much and perfect work, but of giving advice in his workshop, because of his ability to control and direct the general activity of the environment in which he works. The man who is thus master of his environment will be able to smile before the anger of others, showing that great mastery of himself which comes from consciousness of his ability to do things. We should not, however, be in the least surprised to know that in his home this capable workman scolded his wife if the soup was not to his taste, or not ready at the appointed time. In his home, he is no longer the capable workman; the skilled workman here is the wife, who serves him and prepares his food for him. He is a serene and pleasant man where he is powerful through being efficient, but is domineering where he is served. Perhaps if he should learn how to prepare his soup he might become a perfect man! The man who, through his own efforts, is able to perform all the actions necessary for his comfort and development in life, conquers himself, and in doing so multiplies his abilities and perfects himself as an individual.
We must make of the future generation, powerful men, and by that we mean men who are independent and free.
Oath of Hippocrates (c. 400 BC)
Context: I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.
About
Context: "Howard takes great care to develop mood and atmosphere in his best stories, and in so doing makes the reader feel the dark, desperate undercurrent of his character's schemes and struggles. It is in this that I feel closest to Howard, and it is something that his conscious imitators have never captured. The disparity of writing styles aside, the mood immediately sets pastiche-Howard apart from the real article. Pseudo-Conan is out having just the best time, 'cause he's the biggest, toughest, mightiest-thewed barbarian on the block, and he's gonna have a swell time of brawling and chopping monsters and rescuing princesses and offing wizards and drinking and brawling and … and... etc... etc.... But in Howard's fiction the underlying black mood of pessimism is always there, and even Conan, who enjoys a binge or a good fight, is not having a good time of it at all. This is particularly true of Solomon Kane and King Kull-driven men whom not even a desperate battle can exorcise their black mood, while Conan at times can find brief surcease in excesses of pleasure or violence. I think Solomon Kane and King Kull were closer to Howard's true mood, while Conan represented the ability to escape briefly from black reality that Howard wished he could emulate. He failed. Of all Howard's characters I most prefer King Kull, and it is Kull who is closest to my own Kane..." ~ Karl Edward Wagner, Midnight Sun, "The Once and Future Kane", 2007, (First published in REH: Lone Star Fictioneer #1, Spring 1975)
Biographical memoir: "John von Neumann (1903 - 1957)" in Year book of the American Philosophical Society (1958); later in Symmetries and Reflections : Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (1967), p. 261
Context: A deep sense of humor and an unusual ability for telling stories and jokes endeared Johnny even to casual acquaintances. He could be blunt when necessary, but was never pompous. A mind of von Neumann's inexorable logic had to understand and accept much that most of us do not want to accept and do not even wish to understand. This fact colored many of von Neumann's moral judgments. "It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature." Only scientific intellectual dishonesty and misappropriation of scientific results could rouse his indignation and ire — but these did — and did almost equally whether he himself, or someone else, was wronged.
Interview with William Hoster, quoted in God's Gold (1932) by John T. Flynn
Context: I believe the power to make money is a gift of God … to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.
“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
Variant: I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
“Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.”
Variant: Progress is a man´s ability to comlicate simplicity.
“You have an amazing ability to depress me sometimes, you know that?"
"I try my best.”
Source: Death Bringer
This appears to be a variation of a quote often attributed to Caskie Stinnett in 1960, "A diplomat...is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip" https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kcycAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA90&dq=%22A+diplomat+is+a+person+who+can+tell+you+to+go+to+hell+in+such+a+way+that+you+actually+look+forward+to+the+trip.%22 but which appears to have been in common use in the 1950s and is first recorded in the Seattle Daily Times in 1953 as "Diplomat—one who can tell you to go to hades and make you look forward to the trip". http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_diplomat_is_a_person_who_can_tell_you_to_go_to_hell_so_that_you_look_forw/
Misattributed
Variant: Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions
Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
“Where are our Men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their Country?”
“What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.”
“Often secret desires as well as abilities surface in our dreams.”
Source: Hunted
“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”
Source: Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud
“Responsibility is the ability to respond.”
As Quote Investigator explains, allegories about animals doing impossible things have been incredibly popular in the past century. But no, this one isn't from Einstein. (Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/.)
Misattributed
Variant: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
“Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.”
Source: See You at the Top
