Quotes about ability

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“Never doubt my weaseling abilities, Shadowhunter, for they are epic and memorable in their scope.”

“This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.”

“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.”

“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”

“I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgement from my brain when I get my head set on something. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense pretty much.”

“The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.”

“The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.”

“An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.”

“Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure…”

“Life demands honesty, the ability to face, admit, and express oneself.”

“Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.”

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”

“We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.”

“The road to wisdom is paved with excess.

The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.”

“Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, 'Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary.”

“Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.”

“The story is always better than your ability to write it.”

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

“We all posses different gifts and abilities. How we use those gifts determines who we are.”

“Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.”

“Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.”

“It's like my garden, love. Everything grows. Including love. And with that growing everyday how can you expect missing her to ever fade away? Everything builds, including our ability to cope with it. That's how we keep going.”

“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.”

“Maybe this is a characteristic of happy people. An ability to be entertained by the world.”

“Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.”

“Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.”

“people's emotions are rarely put into words, far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels, tone of voice, gesture, facial expression and the like”

“Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.”

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”

“Give a man or woman back his self-respect, and in most cases-not all, but most-you also give back that person's ability to think with at least some clarity.”

“Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing
difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is
simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.”

“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.”

“Yes. I owed my life, Angel's life, and my mother's life to a mutant's ability to create industrial-strength snot.”

“Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.”

“I just want to sleep with a clear conscience and wake up with the ability to look at myself in the mirror. I also want my life to be my own. Even if it's a shitty goddamn life, it's still mine.”

“Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.”

“Like all Herondales, his ability to love without measure, without end, was both his great gift and his great curse.”

“If you doubt you can accomplish something, then you can't accomplish it. You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.”

“It's a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.”

“We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case.”

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”

“People who know other people’s secrets can’t afford to do things that impair their ability to control their mouths.”

“Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.”

“The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences.”

“He was very much a man of moods, possibly owing to what is styled the artistic temperment. I have never seen, myself, why the possession of artistic ability should be supposed to excuse a man from a decent exercise of self-control.”

“Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.”

“What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?”

“I don't like seeing you cry. You will stop."
I'll give you a promise," he said gruffly. "And then you will cease your worrying."
You will have confidence in my ability to protect you," he ordered.
You will have faith in me. I command it.”

“My negotiation skills are are on par with George Bush's reading ability. And just like Dubya, every time I've tried to put forth an effort, I am reminded that my only true strength lies in drinking.”

“My own ambition, my deepest and truest ambition, is to find within myself someday, somehow, the ability to do likewise, to do NOTHING - and find it enough.”

“Calvin: Happiness is being famous for your financial ability to indulge in every kind of excess.
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“When two people respect each other, the ability to be vulnerable and to reveal hurt feelings can create a powerful emotional connection that is the source of real intimacy and friendship.”

“Your unique creative talents and abilities are flowing through you and are being expressed in deeply satisfying ways. Your creativity is always in demand.”

“Most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth and power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge.”

“There's something wrong in not appreciating one's own special abilities, my girl. Find your own limitations, yes, but don't limit yourself with false modesty.”

“true love is felonious… You take someone’s breath away… You rob them of the ability to utter a single word… You steal a heart.”

“Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.”

“I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.”

“barfly n.
You have the ability to talk to anyone which is an ability I do not share.”

“One way to define wisdom is the ability to see, into the future, the consequences of your choices in the present. That ability can give you a completely different perspective on what the future might look like.”

“I've always admired your ability to be unilaterally irritating.”

“We are talking here about the future: about the lives of people in the world without wars, without social oppression, without national inequality, without suppression of human’s abilities. In other word, it is about the future that we all call Communism. We strive to imagine (and show to the viewer) the reality of the 21st century - the life of future humans developing, solving their difficulties and problems but being already on the new levels of cognition and morality. But the foundation of that future is being laid now. We strive to represent the future people as vivid and free, in the unity of their joys and cares, poetry and prose of their life. We are in no way satisfied with the primitive and unconvincing image of "people of the future", which can be observed in some works of literature and cinema. At the same time, we consider our work to be polemical with the many books and movies produced by the bourgeois world, which tend to see the future in an apocalyptic or technocratic way, affirming a sort of disbelief in the strength and capabilities of a human being.”

“Provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, generalizations are not incorrect. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decisions in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular crime-riddled county or country in no way implies that one considers all individual residents there to be criminals, only that a sensible determination has been made, based on statistically significant data, as to where scarce and precious resources—one's life and property—are best invested.”

“I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective advantage in their ability to infect human beings, but there is nothing to be gained, in an evolutionary sense, by the capacity to cause illness or death. Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for most microbes, carrying lethal risks far more frightening to them than to us. The man who catches a meningococcus is in considerably less danger for his life, even without chemotherapy, than meningococci with the bad luck to catch a man.”

“The duty of its citizens, then, appears to me too plain to admit of doubt. All should unite in honest efforts to obilterate the effects of the war and restore the blessing of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the country; promote harmony and good feeling, qualify themselves to vote and elect to the State and general legislatures wise and patriotic men, who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country and the healing of all dissensions. I have invariably recommended this course since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it myself.”

“First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.”

“Our sensitivity to the tone, hue, and intensity of light is bound up with our evolutionary heritage. Even the diversity of our visual abilities may echo our ancestors' ecology.”

“The effects of subunit power on organizational decision making and the bases of subunit power are examined in a large midwestern state university. It is hypothesized that subunits acquire power to the extent that they provide resources critical to the organization and that power affects resource allocations within organizations in so far as the resource is critical to the subunits and scarce within the organization. Departmental power is found to be most highly correlated with the department's ability to obtain outside grants and contracts, with national prestige and the relative size of the graduate program following closely in importance. Power is used most in the allocation of graduate university fellowships, the most critical and scarce resource, and is unrelated to the allocation of summer faculty fellowships, the least critical and scarce resource.”

“There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate the capacity of those who do not belong to "our" group. Those who do not share our background cannot have our ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually backward.”

“At Wal-Mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much," or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they'll use you and abuse you." My mentors in these matters were not lazy; they just understood that there are few or no rewards for heroic performance. The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there'll be some left over for the next day.”

“I was… informed, that Baptista Porta, and one or two more, had written somewhat of that Subject, upon this Information I was willing to see whether I might from any of them find any Directions, that might help mee, if I should afterwards have the like Occasion: But I found very little in any of them for my Purpose. Their Businesse being for the most Part, onely to shew how to write in Cipher, (which was not my Work,) and that Things so written were beyond the Skill of Men to decipher. Onely in Baptista Porta (who alone if I mistake not, hath written any Thing to Purpose about deciphering, and was it seemes famous in his Time for his Abilities that Way;) I found that there were some general Directions, such as were obvious from the Nature of the Thing, and which I had before of myself taken Notice of, and made use of so far as the Nature of an intricate Cipher would permit. But the Truth of it is, there are scarce any of his Rules, which the present Way of Cipher (which is now much improved, beyond what, it seemes, it was in his Days) doth not in a Manner wholly elude…”

“It was left by Aristoxenus, who with great ability and labour classified and arranged in it the different modes. In accordance with it, and by giving heed to these theories, one can easily bring a theatre to perfection, from the point of view of the nature of the voice, so as to give pleasure to the audience.”

“Courage is the ability to ignore your options.”

“My greatest satisfaction comes from helping to erase the old opinion about Latin American and black ballplayers. People had the wrong opinion. They never questioned our ability but they considered us inferior in our station of life. Simply because many of us were poor, we were thought to be low class. Even our integrity was questioned. I don't blame the fans for that; I blame the writers. They made it look like we were something different entirely from the white players. We're not. We're the same.”

“Our Lord Jesus evolved just as each of us has. He was human, very human in the beginning of His evolution, but (throughout his physical incarnations) He more strangely than anyone else, more quickly had the power of excellence, that supreme ability to surrender Himself and to give himself to that which is higher than anyone else that has evolved through the earth. So, it was because of this excellence, because of this unusual ability, that Jesus, or better our Lord Emmanuel the only begotten Son, it means in esoteric fact, that our Lord was the only one who had this quality to become the Christ Officiant for our planet.”

“If the right hon. Baronet [Peel] chooses to retire from office in consequence of this vote, he carries with him the esteem and gratitude of a larger number of the population of this Empire than ever followed any Minister that was ever hurled from power…I am not misinterpreting the opinion of the people, not only of the electors, but especially of the working classes, when I tender the right hon. Baronet, in my own name, as I might do in theirs, my heartfelt thanks for the unwearied perseverance, the unswerving firmness, and the great ability with which he has during the last six months conducted one of the most magnificent reforms ever carried in any country, through this House of Commons.”

“Books give us the ability to see things from different perspectives. They educate us, entertain us, force us to think upon certain issues. And reading a book or reading, in general, is an excuse for those who are less sociable like me for not socialising much. And guess what, it works most of the times.”

“The difference in sex does not hinder the ability of being strong on the levels of thinking, giving, having a strong willpower and the ability to take the right decision and the right position after studying all options, once the circumstances that favor creativity and rational thinking are available.”

“The advantage of molecular messaging over other sorts of communication, he says, is its ability to be deployed in hard-to-reach places, such as providing in-body communications for medical applications. The body’s cellular signalling pathways have already been mapped, so these could serve as “communications channels”, says Dr Bush. Digital signals could be sent, say, to the vagal system to help moderate a patient’s blood pressure or heart rate. Data transmitted molecularly might also enable blood-sugar levels to be monitored without invasive pinpricks.”

“It is not a matter of competing with someone else. Essentially, it is accepting our own special abilities as special – and then developing them.”

“When one's subtle body travels outside of the physical body during the dream state, this experience is sometimes referred to as lucid dreaming. When metaphysicians are able to do this at will, the phenomenon is called astral projection or astral traveling: the ability to consciously leave the physical body and project the subtle body beyond its physical limitations.”

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

“No, teaching could be done as fast as a lightning bolt. He’d cut across the valleys of my deepest doubts, giving light to the darkest crevices of my beaten-down, inhibited mind, accessing a natural storytelling ability within me that was utterly profound!”

“A reading test measures one's ability to read reading tests, and reading tests are in themselves… somewhat akin to the world of crossword puzzles or Scrabble or the game of twenty questions. Some people play these games well, and all praise is due them for their skill. But if we ask, What aspect of the world do they comprehend in doing these games well? the answer is, Only the world within the games themselves.”

“You do not need to feel guilty over the creation of any probable selves. They come into reality with problems, but all of you come into reality with challenges that you have set 'ahead of time.' You have given them the gift of existence. They will learn how to use it and develop their own abilities in their own way. You have also given them individuality, which means that they are not yourselves, but variations on yourselves.”

“The mere ability to postpone taxes may not seem all that important, but its consequences are enormous.”

“The brain's synapses are programmed to grow for a number of years, making new connections. After that time, there is a shift toward pruning, to get rid of unneeded connections. …Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself. …the amount of reorganization that can occur in most adults is vastly less than can occur in children and adolescents.”

“It has been remarked that when one passes among the patients of the psychiatric ward, he encounters among the several sufferers every aspect of normal personality in morbid exaggeration. … As one passes through the modern centers of enterprise and of higher learning, he is met with similar autonomies of development. … The scientist, the technician, the scholar, who have left the One for the Many are puffed up with vanity over their ability to describe precisely some minute portion of the world. Men so obsessed with fragments can no more be reasoned with than other psychotics.”

“Social stability is the product of an equilibrium between a vigorous majority and violent minorities. Disorder does not come from an increased inner pressure or from the interaction of explosive ingredients. There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.
It is hard to tell what causes the pervasive timidity. One thinks of video-induced stupor, intake of tranquilizers, fear of not living to enjoy the many new possessions and toys, the example of our betters in cities and on campuses who high-mindedly surrender to threats of violence and make cowardice fashionable.”

“The notion of being an “enlightened” person does not reduce simply to that of being a person who has highly developed cognitive abilities or disposes of a vast stock of knowledge; neither does it reduce to the idea of being a morally good or socially useful person. “Enlightenment” is not a value-free concept because it is connected with some idea of devoting persistent, focused attention to that which is genuinely important in human life, rather than to marginal or subsidiary phenomena, to drawing the “correct” conclusions from attending to these important features—whatever they are—and to embodying these conclusions concretely in one’s general way of living. It involves a certain amount of sheer knowledge, an ability to concentrate and reflect, inventiveness in restructuring one’s psychic, personal, and social habits; but to be enlightened is not to “have” any bit of doctrine, but to have been (re)structured in a certain way.”

“The programme of the British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock is so wildly irresponsible, so separate and apart from the historic NATO strategy, that I think a Labour government that stood by its present policies—and I rather doubt that they would—would, if it didn't destroy the Alliance, at least diminish its effective ability to do the task for which it was created.”

“The pose of innocence is as mandatory as the ability to eat banquet food and endure the scourging of the press.”

“Skill is a property of a person; it is a person's ability to demonstrate a system and sequence of behaviour that [is] functionally related to attaining a performance goal.”

“Social power [is the] potential influence, the ability of a person or group to induce or prevent change in another. Social control [is] the process by which members of a social entity are influenced to adhere to values and principles of proper behavior deemed appropriate for that social entity.”

“Since the 1920s, grand illusion on stage has been synonymous with the restraint and mutilation of female assistants, as if the first act a lucky mortal, newly endowed with the ability to overturn the laws of the universe, would wish to carry out would be the casual torture of the fairer sex for our entertainment.”