Quotes about capability (1416 quotes, page 11)

“Combining al Qaeda's significant fighting capabilities with a stronger focus on the administrative capabilities that might permit it to hold ground, the Islamic State copied the latter from Hezbollah's model. Basically, Islamic State is a combined al Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah on steroids, destabilizing the region, dissolving borders/changing the political geography in the mid-east, and hardening political positions that make mid-east peace-building more remote by the day.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

General Mattis [Ret.] speaking about the Islamic State of the Levant in an interview with Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/mattis-testimony-isis-2014-9

Peace , Change , Fight

“Evolutionary psychology was the organizing framework—the source of “explanatory adequacy” or a “theory of the computation”—that the science of psychology had been missing. Like vision and language, our emotions and cognitive faculties are complex, useful, and nonrandomly organized, which means that they must be a product of the only physical process capable of generating complex, useful, nonrandom organization, namely, natural selection. An appeal to evolution was already implicit in the metatheoretical directives of Marr and Chomsky, with their appeal to the function of a mental faculty, and evolutionary psychology simply shows how to apply that logic to the rest of the mind.”

Steven Pinker (1954) psychologist, linguist, author

Steven Pinker, "Foreword" in: Buss, David M., ed. The handbook of evolutionary psychology. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. p. xiv

Nature , Science

“Although many of the artifices employed in the works before mentioned are remarkable for their elegance, it is easy to see they are adapted only to particular objects, and that some general method, capable of being employed in every case, is still wanting.”

George Green (mathematician)

introducing his mathematical methods for the description of electricity and magnetism, [George Green, An essay on the application of mathematical analysis to the theories of electricity and magnetism, T. Wheelhouse, 1828, vi]

“The skirmishes with the theologians had had their charm, but he knew well that no lasting accord exists between those who seek, ponder, and dissect and pride themselves on being capable of thinking tomorrow other than they do today, and those who accept the Faith, or declare that they do, and oblige their fellow men to do the same, on pain of death.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

il [Zénon] savait fort bien qu'il n'existe aucun accommodement durable entre ceux qui cherchent, pèsent, dissèquent, et s'honorent d'être capables de penser demain autrement qu'aujourd'hui, et ceux qui croient ou affirment croire, et obligent sous peine de mort leurs semblables à en faire autant.
The Indictment, p. 317
The Abyss (1968)

Death , Men , Pain , Faith

“Greed: a word commonly used by liberals, low achievers, anti-capitalists and society's losers to denigrate, shame and discredit those who have acquired superior job skills and decision making capabilities and who, through application of those job skills, achieve success.”

Neal Boortz (1945) American author, journalist, and radio host

Quoted, without citation, in O'Boyle's Quotes, Jokes & Anecdotes (2012), p. 25
Attributed

Decision , Success

“The author has the reputation of being against color. I am indeed against color when it masks incompetence; when it allows the superimposition of characteristics to the point of absurdity; when people believe it capable of representing ordered data.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Graphics and graphic information processing (1981), p. 222; partly cited in: Laura R. Novick and Sean M. Hurley (2001) " To Matrix, Network, or Hierarchy: That Is the Question http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/Markman/PSY394/NovHur.pdf" in: Cognitive Psychology 42, 158–216 (2001)

People , Color

“There are tons of capable people in this country, and while I have been in this exploratory phase, yes, I have been considering who would I put in various roles, who do I consider to be some of the true patriots of this country that could help a Herman Cain cabinet if I were to run and to become president. And so yes, so far I have not come across or I don't have acquaintances with people who have professed the Muslim religion who are on a list of people I would consider. We are—we have become a nation of crises, Neil. And being politically correct is not something I'm going to spend a whole lot of time worrying about when we've got all of these other problems that we are facing right here in this country.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Your World w/ Cavuto
Television
Fox News
2011-03-28, quoted in [Herman Cain Can't Find Any Qualified, Patriotic Muslims, 2011-03-28, Political Correction, Media Matters for America, http://politicalcorrection.org/video/201103280016, 2011-10-07]

People , Religion , Problem , Time

“In another of history's terrible ironies, the barbarian influence on Western Christianity enlivened it beyond anything the diluted Greeks of Byzantium were now capable of. The mad barbarians pushed Western Christianity into retaining some of the plastic abundance, the inventive plasticity, the fathomless versatility that had once been incomparably characteristic of the Greeks.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

History , Madness

“There is a revolutionary scientific perspective (stemming) from the General Systems Research movement and (with a) wealth of principles, ideas and insights that have already brought higher degree of scientific order and understanding to many areas as of biology, psychology and some physical sciences… Modern systems research can provide the basic of a framework more capable of doing justice to the complexities and dynamic properties of the socio-cultural system.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Sociology and modern systems theory (1967), p. vii as cited in: cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory. p. 7-8.

Justice , Idea , Understanding , Science

“Those skilled in mathematical analysis know that its object is not simply to calculate numbers, but that it is also employed to find the relations between magnitudes which cannot be expressed in numbers and between functions whose law is not capable of algebraic expression.”

Antoine Augustin Cournot Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth

Source: Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth, 1897, p. 3 ; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/198/mode/2up, (1914) p. 33: About the nature of mathematics

Law , Mathematics

“I do not feel capable of writing a single word of counsel to those dear young people, more than to say that my heart goes out to every one of them, regardless of the fact that I have never seen them and may never do so. I want them to find Jesus, and make Him a daily, hourly, and momently part of themselves. O how I want them to get the fullest measure of happiness and success out of life. I want them to see the Great Creator in the smallest and apparently the most insignificant things about them. How I long for each one to walk and talk with the Great Creator through the things he has created. How I thank God every day that I can walk and talk with Him.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

George Washington Carver: In His Own Words http://books.google.es/books?id=JcncXGNSJQQC&hl=es&source=gbs_navlinks_s (1991), edited by Gary R. Kremer, University of Missouri Press, p. 135

Life , God , People , Feeling

““And someone that brilliant must be a devil?” queried Galt, dryly.
“Not at all,” explained Donal, patiently. “But having such intellectual capabilities, a man must show proportionately greater inclinations toward either good or evil than lesser people. If he tends toward evil, he may mask it in himself—he may even mask its effect on the people with which he surrounds himself. But he has no way of producing the reflections of good which would ordinarily be reflected from his lieutenants and initiates—and which, if he was truly good—he would have no reason to try and hide. And by that lack, you can read him.””

Gordon R. Dickson book Dorsai!

“Mercenary II” (section 4, p. 386)
Dorsai! (1960)

People , Way , Evil , Reading

“Various perspectives exist in an enterprise, such as efﬁciency, quality, and cost. Any system for enterprise engineering must be capable of representing and managing these different perspectives in a well-deﬁned way.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Michael Grüninger and Mark S. Fox (1995) " The role of competency questions in enterprise engineering http://www.eil.utoronto.ca/enterprise-modelling/papers/benchIFIP94.pdf." Benchmarking—Theory and Practice. Springer US, 1995. 22-31.

Way

“Unless there is a decentralisation of power, in the financial markets and in politics, then there can be no negotiations that can transform the present system of domination. Domination by the rich of the poor, by the educated of the uneducated, by the City of the country. Perhaps a simpler but more controversial way of putting it is that the German economy, with workers on the boards, regional banks, vocational labour market entry and co-determined pension funds has proved to be more capable of producing goods than ours. Their system is based upon subsidiarity and vocation, the cornerstones of the Christian inheritance. Secular modernity is not working. It is inappropriate for our times. Here’s a new paradox: Modernity is out of date.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, Tackling Poverty Together http://www.bluelabour.org/2013/11/24/tackling-poverty-together/

Education , Way , Time , Country

“Now the salient characteristic of the decision tools employed in management science is that they have to be capable of actually making or recommending decisions, taking as their inputs the kinds of empirical data that are available in the real world, and performing only such computations as can reasonably be performed by existing desk calculators or, a little later electronic computers. For these domains, idealized models of optimizing entrepreneurs, equipped with complete certainty about the world - or, a worst, having full probability distributions for uncertain events - are of little use. Models have to be fashioned with an eye to practical computability, no matter how severe the approximations and simplifications that are thereby imposed on them…
The first is to retain optimization, but to simplify sufficiently so that the optimum (in the simplified world!) is computable. The second is to construct satisficing models that provide good enough decisions with reasonable costs of computation. By giving up optimization, a richer set of properties of the real world can be retained in the models… Neither approach, in general, dominates the other, and both have continued to co-exist in the world of management science.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: 1960s-1970s, "Rational decision making in business organizations", Nobel Memorial Lecture 1978, p. 498; As cited in: Arjang A. Assad, ‎Saul I. Gass (2011) Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators. p. 260-1.

World , Fashion , Optimism , Decision

“We were aware of her profile, and it was… first, it’s artistic: can she do it? Is she capable of handling this? Can she handle it emotionally? The song. Because it’s a very emotional song. Can she handle it melodically? Does she have the range for it? Second, now then, you’ve got that, now you look to see…because it’s a very strange duet, and I’ve always said it was meant to be a duet. I had the song in ’86, and I don’t care what anybody else says; I know it was my song, it was given to me in ’86, I was gonna do it, it was always gonna be a duet, and I think the only real life of it is a duet. And that’s my opinion, and my opinion only. That’s it. But when it’s a duet, it’s a definitive duet. And then because of how it’s a call-and-response duet, you needed the timbre of the voices. If you get someone with the same timbres… I’m being analytical, but that’s exactly why we picked Marion Raven. And then on the fourth hand… what, she’s twenty-two years old? She can get MTV where I can’t!”

Meat Loaf (1947) American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor

On working with Marion Raven in a duet performance of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now".
A chat with Meat Loaf (2006)

Life , Thinking

“And now the sagacious reader, who is capable of reading into these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception of the serious feelings with which I then set foot in Emmendingen.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Autobiography: Truth and Poetry Book xviii. London 1884 p. 115 books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=ff-TMQCqkPQC&pg=PA115

Feeling , Reading

“Islam's money and muscle power may look impressive, certainly capable of doing some real damage to targeted countries and societies, but Islam has no chance of becoming the religion of a science-based, space-conquering world society. Exclusivist revelations have no appeal among educated people, especially after they have acquainted themselves with the Vedantic or Buddhist philosophies. That is why the Churches are investing huge resources in the battle for Asia's mind, where they face their most formidable enemy. That is why they are so active in India: not only is India's atmosphere of religious freedom more hospitable to them than the conditions of Islamic countries, or even of non-Islamic countries where proselytization is prohibited (countries as divergent as China, Myanmar, Israel, and, at least formally, Nepal); but they also know and fear the intrinsic superiority of the Indian religion.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Quoted in "The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple: Third Revised Edition" by Ishwar Sharan (2010) https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HL35NxR5S_QC
2000s

Money , People , World , Education

“Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

"The Power of Music" (1964), translated in Music Journal, September 1965, p. 37.

Music , Feeling , Suffering , Painting

“The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Richter.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Law

“Most retired business people "know how to work but they don't know how to play; they are completely devoid of the spirit of relaxation and recreation. Such forced idleness is ruinous to the morale of many of the more capable men of affairs."”

Burrill Bernard Crohn (1884–1983) American gastroenterologist

Speaking at the second annual graduate fortnight of the New York Academy of Medicine, 15 October 1929. [Lays Nervous Ills to Use of Tobacco: Dr. B.B. Crohn Says Excessive Smoking Is More Serious Problem Than Drinking: Warns Against Cigarette: Medical Fortnight Speaker Lists Excitable States, Hyperacidity and Ulcers as Effects, The New York Times, 16 October 1929, http://search.proquest.com.dclibrary.idm.oclc.org/docview/104691648/87889E05D1964D8EPQ/1?accountid=46320]

Men , People , Business

“Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

As quoted in "The Works of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford" in The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, Vol. 27 (1798) edited by Ralph Griffiths, p. 187

Men , World , Drawing

“Sangakkara: Being a good captain is about pulling your own weight in the side and making sure you perform. The better you perform, the easier captaincy becomes. It's a nice interesting balance about your own performance and also surrounding yourself with players of quality which makes captaincy the easiest job because you know you have match-winners in your side. You know people can execute whatever's asked of them. So decision-making becomes very easy. Take Ricky Ponting and the Aussie side that he had under him for a few years. Hard decisions were very rare because you just had to look at your team and knew exactly what they were capable of.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

People , Decision

“If someone tries to tell you you are the greatest generation in the history of America, don't believe them. You aren't. You have the capability to be, but you aren't.”

Josh McDowell (1939) American writer

"Why True Love Waits," talk in Ouray, CO (2007-06-15)

History

“In other words, making the most effective use of our female soldiers makes good sense. It enhances our capability. That is a simple truth.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Truth , Sense

“Stoicism’s contribution to the shaping of the Western intellectual tradition is probably second only to that of Jewish monotheism. If monotheism advanced the revolutionary concept of an all-powerful and all-pervasive but non-material God ruling the universe, the theory of Natural Law posited that God’s universe was rational and capable of being grasped by human intelligence.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 7

God , Law , Intelligence , Nature

“The people are as capable of achieving their industrial freedom as they were to secure their political liberty, and both are necessary to a free nation.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

People , Freedom

“For whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 18 (p. 364).

Idea , Thinking

“I'm very aware that this programme may be regarded as bleak or depressing - an increasing population with an ever decreasing supply of resources – but humans have capabilities that animals don't: to think rationally; to study; to plan ahead. The number of people on the planet depends on the personal decisions we each make regarding the number of children we have even setting aside the moral responsibility we have to protect other species, if we continue to damage our ecosystem, we damage ourselves. Its clear that we'll have to change the way that we live and use our resources. We're at a crossroads where we can chose to cooperate or carry on regardless. Can our intelligence save us? I hope so. m46s24-m47s15”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

Children , People , Hope , Way

“If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 73

Idea , Understanding

“There is very good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism itself will no longer exist—most obviously, as ecologists keep reminding us, because it's impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet, and the current form of capitalism doesn't seem to be capable of generating the kind of vast technological breakthroughs and mobilizations that would be required for us to start finding and colonizing any other planets. Yet faced with the prospect of capitalism actually ending, the most common reaction—even from those who call themselves "progressives"—is simply fear. We cling to what exists because we can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn't be even worse.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", pp. 381–382

Fear , Imagination

“The sanctions exist — not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction … And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Press remarks http://web.archive.org/web/20020217230935/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/933.htm with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa, in Ittihadiya Palace, Cairo (24 February 2001).
2000s

People , Hurt

“To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

People , Feeling , Parting

“To any thinking person, it must be obvious that there is something badly wrong in relations between human beings and the animals that human beings rely on for food; and that in the past 100 or 150 years whatever is wrong has become wrong on a huge scale, as traditional animal husbandry has been turned into an industry using industrial methods of production. … It would be a mistake to idealise traditional animal husbandry as the standard by which the animal-products industry falls short: traditional animal husbandry is brutal enough, just on a smaller scale. A better standard by which to judge both practices would be the simple standard of humanity: is this truly the best that human beings are capable of?”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

“ Animals can't speak for themselves - it's up to us to do it! http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/animals-cant-speak-for-themselves--its-up-to-us-to-do-it/2007/02/21/1171733841769.html,” in theage.com.au (February 22, 2007)

Food , Thinking , Past , Animals

“Positivism : knowledge is hard, real, and capable of being transmitted in a tangible form.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Source: Dealing with Complexity (1988), p. 247.

Knowledge

“Realism's 'truth' as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nature. People content with the discoveries they have made ignore the fact that there are other things to be discovered, even broader avenues to be explored. They have found bacteria, but not what they consist of. [quote of 1892)”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

OKK 1760 (Nice, January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 81
1880 - 1895

People , Truth , Quotes , Literature

“I have heard so much about the perils ahead that I have had nightmares for several nights, in which I lived through all the horrors of war... The militia are quartered in the studio, hence there is no way of using it. I do not read the newspapers much any more; one a day is enough for me. The Prussian atrocities upset me, and I want to retain my composure... Would you believe that I am accustomed to the sound of the canon [of the Prussians]? It seems to me that I am now absolutely inured to war and capable of enduring everything.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

In a letter, Late Sept. 1870 to her sister Edma, from besieged Paris by the Germans; as cited in Impressionist quartet, ed. Jeffrey Meyers; publishers, Harcourt, 2005, p. 107
1860 - 1870

War , Way , Reading , Night

“A plane is not necessarily a planet. A plane may be one planet, but a plane may also exist where no planet is. One planet may have several planes. Planes may also involve various aspects of apparent time. Planes can and do intermix without the knowledge of the inhabitants. A plane may be a time... or only one iota of vitality that exists all by itself. A plane may cease to be. A plane is formed for entities as patterns for fulfillment along various lines. It is a climate conducive to the development of unique and particular capabilities and achievements... an isolation of elements.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 103-104, quoting from Seth Session 16

Knowledge , Time

“But I do think we need to explore the commitment problem, which has caused many women to mistakenly conclude that men, as a group, have the emotional maturity of hamsters. This is not the case. A hamster is MUCH more capable of making a lasting commitment to a woman, especially if she gives it those little food pellets. Whereas a guy, in a relationship, will consume the pellets of companionship, and he will run on the exercise wheel of lust; but as soon as he senses that the door of commitment is about to close and trap him in the wire cage of true intimacy, he'll squirm out, scamper across the kitchen floor of uncertainty and hide under the refrigerator of Non-Readiness.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Column, August 18, 1991
Columns and articles

Women , Men , Food , Guy

“There is not a beast of the field but may trust his nature and follow it; certain that it will lead him to the best of which he is capable. But as for us, our only invincible enemy is our nature.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 190.

Nature

“Most of my news, I get from the radio news stations. One of the stations' advertising lines is "Give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world." In 22 minutes, they just have time for the headlines, so they can only really tell you what happened — which, by the way, is the news. They tell you how many people were killed in Iraq today, but they don’t then bring on some Republican senator to explain to you how that’s good. Or, on the contrary, they don’t bring in a bunch of Democrats to tell you why it’s bad. They just tell you what happened. That’s the news. I am capable of analyzing my own news. What makes these people qualified to analyze my news for me? No matter what side they’re on, I never agree with them.”

Fran Lebowitz (1950) author and public speaker from the United States

Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005).

People , World , Way , Time

“There is information showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began to work with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies Eyes (p. 124) Scheuer later retracted this statement. https://archive.is/nLW4y.
2000s

“In this highly competitive world, there is a crying need for the government to assure that schools in the country, for one, are able to produce graduates who have the capability to find quality work that mostly requires a sufficient level of technology skills.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

[www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/02/16/909422/chiz-wants-eco-growth-translated-jobs The Philippine Star]
2013, Mid-Term Campaign Trail

World , School , Cry , Country

“I think we should not be in a great rush to deal with this issue. We should be patient and find the most suitable time to do away with the suspension. If we decide to start enrichment in the face of opposition by the West, we must find the best time and the most favorable conditions, and if we decide to work with the West, we must utilize all our capabilities and everything that is in our power to achieve our objectives. We should not rush into this. We must move very carefully, in a very calculated manner.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Discussing Iran's strategy for advancing its nuclear program against the opposition of the international community
2004 speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council

Thinking , Time

“I had before me the product of two mutually exclusive philosophies. Economism would insist that having made the perfect pencil, Thoreau should make more pencils and sell them for money with which to buy more material to make still more pencils to sell for money to buy still more material, and so on, because the making and selling of pencils is the whole content of life. Thoreau did not believe it is the whole content of life. It was clear that economism's philosophy was the only one which my companion was capable of accepting. Detach him from his particular specialised practice of it, and existence would have no further meaning for him; and in this he was representative of the great bulk of society in this present age.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 173

Life , Money , Age , Perfection

“The test for aid to poor nations is therefore whether it makes them capable of being productive. If it fails to do so, it is likely to make them even poorer in the – not so very – long run.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Foreign Aid

“Seeing capable women holding positions of authority and importance in the country is very encouraging to young people, especially girls.”

Sangeeta Niranjan Fijian businesswoman

Interview with the Fiji Times, 18 September 2005

Women , People , Girl , Country

“Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for "the average programmer" — you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1975) Comments at a Symposium http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD05xx/EWD512.html (EWD 512).
1970s

“The advent of the new political economy marked a decisive moment in the demise of the republican strand of American politics and the rise of contemporary liberalism. According to this liberalism, government should be neutral as to conceptions of the good life, in order to respect persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their own ends. Keynesian fiscal policy both reflected this liberalism and deepened its hold on American public life. Although those who practiced Keynesian economics did not defend it in precisely these terms, the new political economy displayed two features of the liberalism that defines the procedural republic.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

Life , Decision , Personality

“Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Children , Parent

“There are huge differences in the way male and female actors are perceived. Women have to be a certain size, in order to get good roles. The only successful, larger-than-average female actor I can think of is Kathy Bates. And once women reach a certain age, they can only expect one or two good roles per year, whereas male actors can continue working regularly well into their forties. Then there are the types of roles available to women. We're constantly depicted as sidekicks, ingenues, and hangers-on, rarely as independent and capable individuals. And the enormous, huge discrepancies in pay…. the amounts that some male actors make are astronomically obscene. Women in Hollywood are constantly shown that there's a difference between them and men, and that that's okay. But it's not okay.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On inequality in Hollywood — reported in Lynne Melcombe, BC Woman "Supernatural SuXXess" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/94_95/95bcwoman.shtml (October, 1995)
1990s

Women , Men , Age , Way

“Military doctrine is universally, and has been since the time of Napoleon, imbued with the "Spirit of the Offensive." There are some very good reasons for this, which we shall review elsewhere. As with many other ideas which have a sound basis in reason, constant and fervent reiteration has created distortions, like the attitude, for example, which regards a healthy respect for enemy capabilities as defenseminded and hence ignoble.”

Bernard Brodie (1910–1978) American nuclear strategist

Pg. 43
Strategy in the Missile Age

Idea , Universe , Time

“Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything that anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That's not a war on them, that's a war for them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government then so be it!”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican National Committee winter meeting, , quoted in * 2014-01-23
Fox's Huckabee: Democrats Tell Women They Can't Control Their Libidos
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/23/foxs-huckabee-democrats-tell-women-they-cant-co/197717

Life , Women , War , Education

“Computer-aided design is not automatic design, although it must include many automatic design features. By automatic design we mean design procedures which are capable of being completely specified in a form which a computer can execute without human intervention.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Computer-Aided Design: A Statement of Objectives (1960), p. 2.

“As a young man of pure British descent, some of whose forefathers have held high position in the British army, I have always been desirous of devoting what little capability and energy I may possess to the country which I love so dearly.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Peter Martland, "Lord Haw Haw: The English voice of Nazi Germany" (The National Archives, 2003), p. 145. UK National Archives KV 2/245/301a.
Letter to the University of London Military Education Committee, 9 August 1922.

Love , Country

“The art of self-transformation for the sake of developing practical capabilities seems to have a similar content in the most varied historical circumstances. The Mamluks and the Normans suffered defeat because they failed to open up and readjust the organizational and social contexts of warfare. The Seljuqs succeeded because they did just that. The West African coastal kingdoms used an extraneous technological advantage to avoid having to change radically. But they could neither go on the offensive against the savanna states nor prepare themselves to resist their European patrons and trading partners.
In all these instances success seems to have required the dissociation and recombination of available models of the organizational and social context of military activity. To have succeeded would not have meant, for the Mamluks, becoming like the Ottomans; it would have meant creating an order that never existed before. To possess the alien, you must change it.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), pp. 169-170

Art , Suffering , Change , Success

“Further, humanity must never be complacent about the virtues of human nature. Therefore, everything must be done at all levels to prevent alienation, inequality, deprivation, fear, injustice, anarchy and the loss of the rule of law. History has shown repeatedly that humankind is capable of unthinkable brutality and injustice. This is often a result of what I call fear(survival)-induced pre-emptive aggression, which may occur no matter how calm the situation appears, although it is not necessarily inevitable. Moreover, where there is injustice that is perceived as posing a threat to survival, humankind will do whatever necessary to survive and be free. In such instances, might (military or otherwise) may not prevail or be the optimal solution.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), pp.16-17

Fear , Law , History , Optimism

“Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software packages have become popular means for both large and medium-sized organizations to overcome the limitations of fragmented and incompatible legacy systems. ERP systems are designed as integrated sets of software modules linked to a common database, handling basic corporate functions such as finance, human resources, materials management, sales, and distribution. Most ERP packages also provide multiple language and currency capabilities, enabling integration of global operations. The popularity of ERP is documented in a study that showed that nearly 19 percent of organizations across all industry sectors have installed ERP software, with the manufacturing sector leading the trend. The study also showed that ERP's popularity continues to rise, with 34 percent of the surveyed organizations investigating, piloting, or implementing ERP packages. Davenport characterized ERP as "the most important development in the corporate use of information technology in the 1990s"”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Source: Learning to implement enterprise systems (2002), p. 18

Study

“I at least had some knowledge of the warping, mutating power of the Lords of Disorder, the supernatural entities who on John Daker’s Earth would be called Arch-Demons, the Dukes of Hell. I knew that they made use of our most treasured virtues and most honoured emotions. That they were capable of almost any illusion. And that all that was keeping them from pouring forth from their stronghold to engulf so many other Realms of the multiverse was their caution, their unreadiness or unwillingness to war against the rival power of Law. But if we humans invited them to our realms, they would come.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2, Chapter 9 (p. 613)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

War , Law , Hell , Knowledge

“The ideal system engineer is an engineer thoroughly versed in his field but conversant with and knowledgeable of other fields. You have to have the capability and desire to become a 'six-month expert'… You've got to want to become a generalist, too.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Mathematicians are useful (1971), p. 1

Knowledge

“It is necessary to keep in mind the possibility of simultaneously conducting two, if not three, offensive operations of various fronts on a theater of war with the intention of strategically shaking the enemy's entire combat capability as extensively as possible.”

Semyon Timoshenko (1895–1970) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Evolution of Soviet Operational Art" - Page 89 - by David M. Glantz, Harold Steven Orenstein - 1995

War

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Thomas Romney Robinson

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Love , Life , Wisdom , Men

“The strength of capitalism does not lie in the neoclassical idea of stability, but in its ability to unleash this creative energy. like a chaotic mathematical system, it is capable of producing surprise.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 6, At Rest Versus In Motion, p. 194

Lie , Mathematics , Idea

“The problem of method … includes four main issuesː the possibility of an alternative to logic and causation, capable of overcoming the inadequacies of both rationalism and historicism; the link between this third method and causality; the connection between the meaning of an act for its agent and its meaning for an observer; and the relationship of systematic theory to historical understanding.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Law in Modern Societyː Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (1976), p. 245

Understanding , Problem

“Now I’m up at the front and Tall Bloke, Long Suit, is still Sieg-Heiling; women are still jiggling and beseeching. There is an unspoken acknowledgment that I am an interloper, that I am unlike everybody else there, neither Eritreanh or Ethiopian, and that there is a risk, therefore, that I am there to mock or judge or disrupt, and I’m capable of all those things.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Women

“On natural selection: "Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance."”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 146

God , Intelligence , Nature , Universe

“Nazis did not expect Soviet resistance to be so strong. The deeper they moved into this country's territory, the more fierce it became. When Hitler's armies approached Moscow, every man and woman here thought it imperative to resist the enemy. And that resistance grew by the day. The enemy was sustaining heavy losses, one after another. In fact, Hitler's best troops perished here. Nazis believed the Red Army was not capable of defending Moscow, but their schemes failed.”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

Strong , Loss , Country

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, — comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman. … Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", pages 327-328 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=344&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Women , Men , Law , Music

“Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2006, Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections (2006)

God , Books , Faith , Communication

“There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty. Arren found himself unwilling to stay on these cold summits. He said after a little while, “I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are innocent; they kill because they must.”
"That is why nothing else can resist us. Only one thing in the world can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it.””

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 3, "Hort Town" (Arren and Ged)

Men , World , Hope , Thinking

“It was good to be back in the wilderness again, where everything seems as peace. I was alone - just me and the animals. It was a great feeling - free once more to plan and do as I pleased. Beyond was all around me. My dream was a dream no longer. I suppose I was here because this was something I had to do - not just dream about it but do it. I suppose too I was here to test myself - not that I had never done it before but this time it was to be a more thorough and lasting examination. What was I capable of that I didn't know yet? Could I truly enjoy my own company for an entire year? And was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me? I had seen its moods in late spring, summer, and early fall but what about the winter? Would I love the isolation then, with its bone-stabbing cold, its ghostly silence? At age 51, I intended to find out.”

Richard Proenneke (1916–2003) American hermit

Alone in the Wilderness DVD, Bob Swerer Productions
Paraphrase by Sam Keith for One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey Dick's exact words are not known.

Love , Age , Peace , Dreams

“We're all capable if we have faith and passion.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Faith , Passion

“An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker — the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

"An Artistic Impression" (1909) in Style and Idea (1985), p. 189
1900s

Art

“She too had found the experience transforming. How could she not? A demon had been exorcised. Several. And just when she felt more capable of love than she had ever been, she found herself alone.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 23 (p. 407)

Love

“The socialist system of society should only be, and can only be, an historical product, born out of the school of its own experiences, born in the course of its realization, as a result of the developments of living history, which – just like organic nature of which, in the last analysis, it forms a part – has the fine habit of always producing along with any real social need the means to its satisfaction, along with the task simultaneously the solution. However, if such is the case, then it is clear that socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase. It has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force – against property, etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New Territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: The Russian Revolution (1918), Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"

School , Way , History , Nature

“This is the message of critics not only in Europe, but also in the United States itself, where anti-Americanism continues to prosper among university, journalistic, and literary elites. But in Europe, these ideological reasons for blaming America first are multiplied by simple jealousy of American power. The current American "hyperpower" is the direct consequence of European powerlessness, both past and present. The United States fills a void caused by our inadequacies in capability, thinking, and will to act.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

Jealousy , Thinking , Universe , Past

“It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. … what has no meaning admits no explanation.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to General Alexander Smyth, on the book of Revelation (or The Apocalypse of St. John the Divine) (17 January 1825) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/04/opinion/main671823.shtml
1820s

Dreams , Reading

“Just because a state is not liberal, it can still be a democracy. And in fact we also had to and did state that societies that are built on the state organisation principle of liberal democracy will probably be incapable of maintaining their global competitiveness in the upcoming decades and will instead probably be scaled down unless they are capable of changing themselves significantly.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Tusnádfürdő speech http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp, 26 July 2014

Democracy , Change

“I am not really suggesting that we should construct cybernetic cigarette boxes, merely that the situation described contains all the elements which would have to be taken into account in a design of a practical cognitive system. These can be described as:
1. The actual physical system (the box), whose construction is such that conditions hazardous to it can be identified;
2. A disordered and changing environment containing such hazards;
3. A motor ability capable of removing the system from the vicinity of danger;
4. Means of perceiving these aspects of the environment, capable of signalling the danger in advance,
5. A brain or a mechanism for deciding what to do on the basis of the perceived information.
The inclusion of complementary positive elements such as advantageous situations and the desire to seek them, would not affect the general scheme in any essential way.”

Edward Ihnatowicz (1926–1988) Cybernetic sculptor

Source: The Relevance of Manipulation to the Process of Perception, 1977, p. 134

Way , Change , Box

“Although this book deals with the conflict between religion and science, I see this as only one battle in a wider war—a war between rationality and superstition. Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. xii

War , Books , Religion , Mathematics

“We have the following of the majority of a class, the vanguard of the revolution, the vanguard of the people, which is capable of carrying the masses with it.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 22–27.
Collected Works

People

“The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Architecture of Theories (1891)

Law , Intelligence , Mathematics , Universe

“To be capable of respect is, in these days, almost as rare as to be worthy of it.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“This railway is the most absurd scheme that ever entered into the head of a man to conceive. Mr. Stephenson never had a plan — I do not believe he is capable of making one. He is either ignorant or something else which I will not mention. His is a mind perpetually fluctuating between opposite difficulties; he neither knows whether he is to make bridges over roads or rivers, or of one size or another; or to make embankments, or cuttings, or inclined planes, or in what way the thing is to be carried into effect. When you put a question to him upon a difficult point, he resorts to two or three hypothesis, and never comes to a decided conclusion. Is Mr. Stephenson to be the person upon whose faith this Committee is to pass this Bill involving property to the extent of £400,000/£500,000 when he is so ignorant of his profession as to propose to build a bridge not sufficient to carry off the flood water of the river or to permit any of the vessels to pass which of necessity must pass under it.”

Edward Hall Alderson (1787–1857) Lawyer and jurist

Edward Hall Alderson, counsel employed in opposition to the proposed Liverpool & Manchester Railway. On 25th April, 1825, George Stephenson gave evidence to the House of Commons committee looking into the proposed railway.

Faith , Way , Question , Water

“I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 88

Hate , Fear , Coffee , Time

“Emergence is the phenomenon of properties, capabilities and behaviours evident in the whole system that are not exclusively ascribable to any of its parts. Classic examples of emergence include: self awareness from the human brain; the pungent smell of ammonia emerging from two colorless, odorless gases-nitrogen and hydrogen; and so on.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management (2003), p. 24

Parting

“Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.”

Alvin Plantinga (1932) American Christian philosopher

God , Exercises , Freedom , Evil

“My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic. The normal human society is very little troubled by them. Whenever a new one appears the average man displays signs of dismay and resentment. The only way he can take in such a new idea is by translating it crudely into terms of more familiar ideas. That translation is one of the chief functions of politicians, not to mention journalists. They devote themselves largely to debasing the ideas launched by their betters. This debasement is intellectually reprehensible, but probably necessary to carry on the business of the world.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Life , World , Way , Idea

“A man has been entrusted to receive the Goal of creation by correcting himself. This action is called: “Which has been created by the Creator to be done.” This correction is the obtaining of the “intention to bestow.” Only in the degree of obtaining such an intention does a man become capable to receive what has been ordained for him by the Creator.”

Baruch Ashlag (1907–1991) Polish rabbi

Dargot HaSulam

“The threat levels are going up, the dangers are increasing and our capability to deal with them has gone down because of the way the Obama administration has operated for the last eight years.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

At the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series in Sarasota https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/articles/2017/1/23/dick-cheney-sarasota (January 2017)
2010s, 2017

Way

“Of what my Granadiers are capable, only I know — who they equal will exist, who exceeds them won't.”

José de San Martín (1778–1850) Argentine general and independence leader

De lo que mis Granaderos son capaces, solo lo sé yo, quien los iguale habrá, quien los exceda no.
100 Masones Su Palabra (2010)

“If we look at the parpens piled up on the building site or at the block of bronze, nothing about them manifests that they are suited to being a house or a statue. … Aristotle speaks of the materials considered as such in terms of "the buildable" (I, 201a 16, b Bf), coining an adjective whose suffix expresses capacity (what he calls dunamis). This capacity, as we have seen, cannot be grasped after the manner of that with which perception provides us (color, hardness, etc.); it requires a gaze capable of probing more deeply, of proceeding from the real to the possible—as when Michelangelo "sees" a David in the formless block abandoned by other sculptors.”

Rémi Brague (1947) French historian

"Aristotle's Definition of Motion and its Ontological Implications," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, p. 12

Color , Housing

“There is a paradigm shift towards a distributed and integrated enterprise. Currently, computer systems that support enterprise functions were created independently. This hampers enterprise integration Therefore, there is a need for a computer based data model which provides a shared and well deﬁned terminology of an enterprise, and has the capability to deductively answer common sense questions.
This paper discusses how TOVE tackles these needs by deﬁning a framework for modeling generic level representations such as activities, time, and resources. Since there has never been a well-deﬁned set of criteria to evaluate such models, this paper also introduces a set of evaluation criteria which may be used to evaluate modelling efforts.”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Mark S. Fox, John F. Chionglo, and Fadi G. Fadel (1993) " A common-sense model of the enterprise http://windsor.mie.utoronto.ca/enterprise-modelling/papers/fox-ierc93.pdf." Proceedings of the 2nd Industrial Engineering Research Conference. Vol. 1. 1993.

Question , Support , Sense , Effort

“The more complex the faculty of awareness or consciousness is in an organism, the more discriminations are possible to it, i. e., the more differentiating and integration between and of aspects of reality it is capable of engaging in.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

Roy A. Childs, Jr., The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism: An Open Letter to Objectivists and Libertarians,” Part I, (1969); : Republished in: Roy A. Childs, Jr. Anarchism & Justice, Libertarianism.org Press, 2012.

Reality

“For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion: The Significance of Religious Myth, Symbolism, and Ritual within Life and Culture (1961).

Nature , Reality

“In any potential collectivity, members have different interests, capabilities, preferences, and so forth. They want to accomplish different things. However, to achieve some of these diverse ends, concerted, interdependent actions are required.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Karl E. Weick. "Group Processes, Family Processes, and Problem Solving," in J. Aldous, T. Condon, R. Hill, M. Straus, and I. Tallman, eds., Farnily Problem Solving: A Synzposizim on Theoretical, Methodological, and Substantive Concerns. Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden Press, 1971, p. 26
1970s