Quotes about capacity
page 11

“If I had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/30/mode/1up pp. 30–31

Girl, Boy, Nature, Memory

“It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some thin rationalization to clothe the obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness. The philosopher-psychologist William James used to talk a great deal about the stream of consciousness. He says that the very interesting and unique thing about human nature is that man had the capacity temporarily to block the stream of consciousness and place anything in it that he wants to, and so we often end up justifying the rightness of the wrong. This is exactly what happened during the days of slavery. Even the Bible and religion were misused to crystallize the patterns of the status quo. And so it was argued from pulpits across the nation that the Negro was inferior by nature, because of Noah’s curse upon the children of Ham. The apostle Paul’s dictum became a watchword: Servants, be obedient to your master. And then one brother had probably studied the logic of the great philosopher Aristotle. You know Aristotle did a great deal to bring into being what we know as formal logic, and he talked about the syllogism, which had a major premise and a minor premise and a conclusion. And so this brother could put his argument in the framework of an Aristotelian syllogism. He could say, All men are made in the image of God. This was the major premise; then came the minor premise: God, as everybody knows, is not a Negro. Therefore, the Negro is not a man. This was the type of reasoning that prevailed.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Life, Men, God, Children

“We have come to the point where we are able to say to those who will even use violence to block us, we will match you capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet you physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And so throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Love, Children, Making love, Law

“Evolution proceeds on three general lines: the spiritual, the mental-emotional,and the astral-vital; and the physical body is the channel through which all these in wrapped capacities, tendencies, and powers, express themselves on the physical plane, if the environment at any particular moment or at any particular passage of time be appropriate and fit for the expression of this or that or of some other such attribute, power, or faculty.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 10
Man in Evolution (1941)

Time

“it was partly by their writings that my eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the dernier mot of social improvement. The scheme gradually unfolded by the St. Simonians, under which the labour and capital of society would be managed for the general account of the community every individual being required to take a share of labour either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being classed according to their capacity, and remunerated according to their works, appeared to me a far superior description of Socialism to Owen's.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Communication, Freedom, Teachers, Appearance

“Perhaps there is some hope that its capacity for death and terror among the defenseless may restrain nations from using the atom bomb against each other, just as in the last war such fears made them avoid employment of the new and deadlier poison gases developed since World War I. However, I am forced to a reluctant conclusion that for the security of my own country which has been the guiding principle in my approach to all problems faced during my career, there is but one course open to us: Until the United Nations, or some world organization, can guarantee- and have the power to enforce that guarantee- that the world will be spared the terrors of atomic warfare, the United States must have more and better atomic bombs than any potential enemy.”

William D. Leahy (1875–1959) United States admiral, ambassador to France, Chief of Staff

Source: I Was There (1950), p. 442

Death, War, World, Fear

“These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/233/mode/1up pp. 233-234

Pleasure, Education, Making love, Motivation

“If communication takes place between the artwork and the public, it is on the level of sensibility, through the emotions and their immanent modifications. It does not have anything to do with words, with collective, ideological or scientific representations, or with their critical, intellectual or literary formulations, in short, anything that is called culture. It is totally independent from that type of culture. This is why it is addressed to the group of people who ‘lack culture’. It is popular in the sense that it leads to what is most essential in each human being: one’s capacity to feel, to suffer and to love.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible: On Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 73
Books on Culture and Barbarism, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988)

Love, People, Making love, Feeling

“The capacity for denial is an example of the body's sometimes short-sighted vision. Some of the body's automatic responses hurt over the long run more than they help. The formation of scar tissue, for example, prevents the nerves in the spine from reconnecting after an accident. In many injuries, swelling causes more damage than the original trauma.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

Help, Hurt

“Let me be absolutely clear: in terms of potential deaths and the impact on our economy, the crisis we face from coronavirus is on the scale of a major war, and we must act accordingly. Nobody knows how many fatalities we may see, but they could equal or surpass the U.S. casualties we saw in World War II. It is an absolute moral imperative that our response -- as a government, as a society, as business communities, and as individuals -- meets the enormity of this crisis... If our neighbor or co-worker gets sick, we have the potential to get sick. If our neighbors lose their jobs, then our local economies suffer, and we may lose our jobs. If doctors and nurses do not have the equipment and staffing capacity they need now, people we know and love may die. The American people deserve transparency... We need daily information -- clear, science-based information -- from credible scientific voices, not politicians.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2020

Love, Death, War, People

“The most important feature of the previous ban was the prohibition on large-capacity ammunition magazines. A large magazine is arguably the most critical feature of an assault weapon, and restrictions on magazines have the potential to affect many more gun crimes than do those on military-style weapons. Restrictions focused on magazine capacity may also have a greater chance of gaining sufficient public and political support for passage than would new restrictions on assault weapons, though current polling suggests that both measures are supported by three-quarters of non-gun owners and nearly half of gun owners.”

Christopher S. Koper American sociologist

[Koper, Christopher S., w:Christopher S. Koper, America’s experience with the federal assault weapons ban, 1994–2004, Reducing Gun Violence, 2013, 168, 9781421411101, http://www.uiw.edu/library/documents/reducing_gun_violence_in_america.pdf]

Support, Chance

“At the very point when a privileged fraction of the working class seems to be in a position to acquire multiple skills, to achieve workplace autonomy and continually widen their capacities for action - all of which are things that were ideals of the worker self-management currents within the labour movement - the meaning of this ideal is thus radically altered by the conditions in which it seems destined to be fulfilled. It is not the working class which is achieving these possibilities of self-organization and increasing technological power; it is a small core of privileged workers who are integrated into new-style enterprises at the expense of a mass of people who are marginalized and whose job security is destroyed -people shunted from one form of occasional, unrewarding and uninteresting employment to another, who are often reduced to competing for the privilege of selling personal services (including shoe-shining and house-cleaning) to those who retain a secure income.”

André Gorz (1923–2007) austrian philosopher

pp, 70-71 https://books.google.com/books?id=WbpvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA70 <br class="br">Critique of Economic Reason, 1988

People, Shoe, Housing, Personality

“The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country — or, for that matter, a region — to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people’s ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Bad Big Idea"
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

People, Health, Making love, Food

“If you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into primates, suddenly you might transform primates into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human – speech or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to a human. These possibilities, at the moment, are largely being explored in fiction but we need to start thinking about them now.”

Thomas Baldwin (philosopher) (1947) British philosopher

As quoted in Medical research warning over human cells in animals https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/jul/22/medical-research-humans-animals-regulation by Alok Jha, 22 July 2011, The Guardian.

Way, Thinking, Relation ships

“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty; and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”

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

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s

War, Bad luck, Truth, Lie

“Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. Right is the claim of the individual to his share of the benefit arising from his neighbors' discharge of their several duties.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

"Summary of Principles". 1.5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“…I have discovered that plays are easier to write than novels if the writer has a certain verbal facility, a certain capacity for the colloquial, an ear for the secret cadences of the spoken word. A play can be written with more ease than a novel…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On plays versus novels in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

Secret

“Much more seriously, in those traditional eco-systems that we chose to retain, millions of non-human animals will continue periodically to starve, die horribly of thirst and disease, or even get eaten alive. This is commonly viewed as "natural" and hence basically OK. It would indeed be comforting to think that in some sense this ongoing animal holocaust doesn't matter too much. We often find it convenient to act as though the capacity to suffer were somehow inseparably bound up with linguistic ability or ratiocinative prowess. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, and a great deal that it isn't.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste <br class="br"> The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Disease, Nature, Thinking, Sense

“(en) "I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow. as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today."”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

о религии

Happiness, Age, World, Making love

“IN a free‐enterprise, private‐property system, a corporate executive is an employe of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose—for example, a hospital or school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but the rendering of certain services. In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary responsibility is to them.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Money, Making love, School, Law

“My dear young friends … I believe in you. I have grown increasingly convinced that your generation has the capacity to transform the dawning century into an era of peace and dialogue. You have the means of reconciling our fractured humanity with itself and with the natural world.… You are the first generation of truly global citizens. The problems that you face today were not created by you. My generation and that of your parents … are the problem generations. You must be the solution finding generation! Make good use of collective intelligence, based on sharing. And above all be the generation that acts. You have the capacity to lead humanity towards a renewed form of fraternity, justice and solidarity….”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

World, Making love, Peace, Justice

“The continuation of diachrony in perceptions of life and death spreads across a form of antinatalism essentially co-opted from a kind of Western fetishism of Buddhism, namely efilism. Coming etymologically from the reverse of 'life', efilism claims it is better never to have been. Efilist philosophers such as David Benatar hinge their arguments on basic binaries of pleasure and pain which roughly correlate to good and bad and extend to a vindication of life and death. Efilism has a vague correspondence with utilitarianism but emphasizes the suffering of life over utilitarianism's greater good. Both are absolute in their perception of the capacity to evaluate which is which, making both dependent on economic measure of value as an either/or, and to an extent both on (anthropocentric) determinism. Efilism's redeeming feature is that it promotes antinatalism, and often veganism, in its aspirations to a reduction in suffering, and this attitude promises potentials for opening the world through the cessation of the human.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 152-153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life, Death, Pain, Bad luck

“Nothingness is capacity, and night the opportunity of light.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Vol. II, Ch. V Aphorisms and Extracts, p. 68.
Memoirs and Correspondence (1900)

Light, Night

“The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

War, Happiness, People, Truth

“I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on (25 December 2020)

Falseness

“If the economy today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase, if that were necessary. But our resources and manpower are not being fully utilized; the general level of prices has been remarkably stable; and increased competition, both at home and abroad, along with increased productivity will help keep both prices and wages within appropriate limits.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Men, Home, Change, Help

“There is no need for us to be satisfied with a rate of growth that keeps good men out of work and good capacity out of use.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Men

“What we need to think about perhaps for Mission Blue is increasing the biologging capacity. How is it that we can actually take this type of activity elsewhere? And then finally -- to basically get the message home -- maybe use live links from animals such as blue whales and white sharks. Make killer apps, if you will. A lot of people are excited when sharks actually went under the Golden Gate Bridge. Let's connect the public to this activity right on their iPhone. That way we do away with a few internet myths. So we can save the bluefin tuna. We can save the white shark. We have the science and technology. Hope is here. Yes we can. We need just to apply this capacity further in the oceans.”

Barbara Block (1958) American marine biologist

Source: Tagging tuna in the deep ocean https://www.ted.com/talks/barbara_block_tagging_tuna_in_the_deep_ocean (April 2010)

People, Making love, Hope, Way

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Men, War, People, Making love

“The main burden of local defense against local attack, subversion, insurrection or guerrilla warfare must of necessity rest with local forces. Where these forces have the necessary will and capacity to cope with such threats, our intervention is rarely necessary or helpful. Where the will is present and only capacity is lacking, our Military Assistance Program can be of help. But this program, like economic assistance, needs a new emphasis. It cannot be extended without regard to the social, political and military reforms essential to internal respect and stability. The equipment and training provided must be tailored to legitimate local needs and to our own foreign and military policies, not to our supply of military stocks or a local leader's desire for military display. And military assistance can, in addition to its military purposes, make a contribution to economic progress, as do our own Army Engineers.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Making love, Help, Training

“American capitalism is arrogant, self-confident, merciless and convinced of its capacity to dictate the destinies of the world.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Source: Article in The Daily Herald (14 December 1945), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 141

World, Confidence, Self-confidence

“Language is the most formless means of expression. Its capacity to describe concepts without physical or visual references carries us into an advanced state of abstraction.”

Ian Wilson (conceptual artist) (1940–2020) American artist, born 1940

Source: Conceptual Art, (1984), as cited in: " Ian Wilson, plug in #47; exhibition 27/09/2008 - 08/03/2009 http://vanabbemuseum.nl/en/programme/detail/?tx_vabdisplay_pi1%5Bptype%5D=18&tx_vabdisplay_pi1%5Bproject%5D=349 at Van Abbemuseum.nl, The Netherlands.

“There is no distinction here between the kinds of service, provided they are unselfish, strenuous, moved by the ideal to help and serve... I cannot give you one by one the numerous divisions of the Way of Service. Anything that is of value to human life is included on that way. Choose then what way you will, because of your capacities and your opportunities; it matters not as regards the treading of the first steps.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 20

Life, Way, Help

“Spiritual evolution is the progressive advance of mankind toward a state of things in which the light of ethical perfection shall be reflected from the face of human society; that is, in which all men shall live and move and have their being in mutually promoting the highest life of each and all. It means that the object of social reformation shall not be a mere change in the conditions under which men live, but a change in human nature itself. It means that we shall look forward consciously to the breaking forth of new powers in ourselves, to the release, through our own efforts, of capacities dimly latent in us.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Some Characteristics of the American Ethical Movement (1925)

Life, Men, Nature, Effort

“The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Life, Question, Appearance, Relation ships

“Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology?”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

"Simpler Social Problems Have Proved Intractable", paragraph 138
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Problem, Freedom

“Profits, wages and salaries are still determined not by any conditions of national interest or social justice, but by the traditional methods of laisser-faire. Under conditions of full employment, this must result in a continuous inflationary pressure, which undermines the real value of social security and small savings, as well as making our products less competitive in foreign markets and so jeopardising our capacity to maintain the standard of living.”

Richard Crossman (1907–1974) British Member of Parliament

‘Introduction’, New Fabian Essays (1952), pp. 26–27

Making love, Justice

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Future

“Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Life, Decision, Change, Past

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Powerful

“Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Life, Wisdom, Secret, Art

“Democracy's premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it's wrong; that given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged.”

Ben Fountain (1958) American writer

Wisdom, Happiness, Democracy, Time

“Where the self is conceived as prior to its ends, independent of the roles it may occupy at any given time, reputation cannot be a matter of honor in the traditional sense. For the unencumbered self, not honor but dignity is the basis of respect―the dignity that consists in the capacity of persons as autonomous agents to choose their ends for themselves. Unlike honor, which ties respect for persons to the roles they inhabit, dignity resides in a self antecedent to social institutions, and so is invulnerable to injury by insult alone. For selves such as these, reputation matters, not intrinsically, as a matter of honor, but only instrumentally, as a business asset for example.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

Business, Sense, Time, Personality

“What we are is consciousness. The body is the vehicle through which consciousness can taste experiencing. And in the human form, consciousness has the capacity and opportunity to realise its own source and thus come into a direct experience of this.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

“Do I trust the Taliban? No. But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, July 2021, Remarks by President Biden on the Drawdown of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan

War, Training

“As women, we need to continue to rise in our capacity as leaders in civil society, private sector, public sector and other spheres-to look at how we can help each other thrive in environments where we grow, where we are supported and protected.”

Neo Masisi (1962) first lady of Botswana

Source: Botswana: First Lady Neo Jane Masisi Speech Delivered At the Virtual Launch of the W Summit Diamond Impact Week 2020 https://allafrica.com/stories/202012040594.html (4 December 2020)

Women, Support, Help

“All sorts of men had the capacity to kill for the convenience of their betters; though usually, the only spell required could be fitted in a clinking purse.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Hallowed Hunt

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Hallowed Hunt (2005), Chapter 5 (p. 84)

Men

“The idea that freedom consists in our capacity to choose our ends finds prominent expression in our politics and law. Its province is not limited to those known as liberals rather than conservatives in American politics; it can be found across the political spectrum.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 1. The Public Philosophy of Contemporary Liberalism
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

Law, Idea, Freedom

“Wisdom consists not only in knowing truths and being able to communicate them, but also in the sage’s capacity to recognize the most subtle limitations or hazards of human nature.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2008, Christianity / Islam, World Wisdom, 141, 978-1-933316-49-9]
Spiritual path, Wisdom

Wisdom, Truth, Communication, Nature

“The sense of the sacred is the capacity to perceive, or feel, the presence of the Celestial in earthly symbols, whether sacramental or natural; and this implies the sense of dignity as well as of devotion.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2016, La conscience de l’Absolu, Hozhoni, 57, 978-2-37241-020-5]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred

Feeling, Nature, Sense

“Community is life: from it comes our capacity for survival. That is how it was when we lived in caves and so it is today.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), What should survivors tell their children?

Life, Communication

“Above all practice the presence of God in prayer. Divine Mind has given us all potentialities, in prayer we recognize it as the source of these, and with a right understanding of our relation to it our soul grows great with infinite capacity, all potentiality. "With God all things are possible."”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

"All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine."
Source: Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)

God, Soul, Understanding

“The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.”

Achille Mbembe (1957) Cameroonian political scientist

Source: "Necropolitics," as translated by Libby Meintjes, Public Culture, Volume 15, Number 1, Winter 2003, pp. 11-40

“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Source: Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935), Ch. 23

“We all have the capacity to be the best, we just need to use the capacity the best.”

- Goa

“I consider that goodness of being and doing constitute the rock-bottom of one’s life. By goodness I mean the capacity to feel with others and to live and feel as others do, and be in a position to act so that no one is hurt by the act.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

What Life Has Taught Me
Autobiography of Swami Sivananda (1958)

Life, Feeling, Hurt

“Human beings have this peculiar capacity that no other creatures have: I know how I can be hurt, because I am aware of my own limitations–painfully aware—and now, because I know how I can be hurt, I know how you can be hurt, and I can take advantage of that. And that's how evil enters the world.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Unsourced

World, Evil, Hurt

“The study of religion opens the human capacity for beauty, meaning, and an awareness of something more than ourselves.”

Susan Ashbrook Harvey (1953) Late antique and Byzantine Christian scholar

[Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, 4, Sohn, Justin, Brown-RISD Cornerstone, An Interview With Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Fall 2015, 4, 1, 16, https://viewer.joomag.com/mag/0401098001450315834?feature=archive, 2022-04-30, en-US, https://web.archive.org/web/20220430014121/https://viewer.joomag.com/mag/0401098001450315834?feature=archive, 2022-04-30, live]

Religion, Beauty, Study

“In this tragedy I would like to underline a beautiful thing, in my opinion, and that is the Uganda's capacity to welcome.”

Giuseppe Franzelli (1942) Italian priest

The Vatican News interview with the Bishop of Lira, Msgr. Franzelli. https://www.africamission.org/en/news/l'intervista-di-vatican-news-al-vescovo-di-lira-mons-franzelli.html (26 June 2018)

Beauty

“One could not overshoot a planet’s carrying capacity without disaster following—that was what Earth’s history since the nineteenth century existed to prove.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 621)

History

“By being so far educated beyond his capacity is he unable to learn within himself from nature? Divorced as he is from her, who and what can now be his? Does the so-called free man of democracy merely exploit his sovereignity?”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

Education, Democracy, Nature, Learning

“If we show or tell someone a truth about ourselves, it will cause them to become more clear about their truth. We have to develop the capacity to make room for both truths.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Truth

“An unlimited capacity of a human for self-improvement makes him an object of constant respect and admiration.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

“Life unfolds in very unique and mysterious ways. We are made by the actions we take or the inactions that solidifies with our environment to bring about a choice for us to take action or inaction and this cycle repeats and repeats to bring us to this point we are in time. When all of our individual actions accumulate this brings about a great change to our environment which in turn changes us as it slowly evolves.
When you contemplate this simple
concept further you realise at one point we have the ability to change our environment and at another point we can't help but be changed by our environment; our environment defines us as people and as people we shape our environment but as all great things we are limited by our very own environment but we still have the capacity of changing said environment, Here my friends is a paradox of life.”

N3du

Life, People, Way, Change

“Only those who realize their own capacities and qualities are not affected by the opinions of others. Be careful, because those who praise are not entirely sincere. Those who criticize are mostly out of envy, jealousy and malice.”

Titon Rahmawan

Jealousy, Envy, Sincerity

“Relationships involve the inevitability of rupture. The degree of security and joy felt within a relationship is about our capacity to create repair.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Joy

“The capacity of imagination is to realize what you can imagine. Whatever creation needs imagination.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La capacità di immaginazione consiste nel realizzare ciò che si può immaginare. Qualsiasi creazione ha bisogno di immaginazione.
Source: prevale.net

Imagination

“Music demands spontaneity granting the soul the capacity to express itself without limits.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La musica esige spontaneità concedendo all'anima la capacità di esprimersi senza limiti.
Source: prevale.net

Music, Soul

This quote waiting for review.

“Perhaps one of the most troubling features of our time is this capacity to absorb even the most disturbing events without allowing them to alter our collective priorities.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Cuando una ciudad aprende a convivir con sus desaparecidos Mundial, memoria y desaparición en la Guadalajara de 2026. (2026, 10 junio). Zona Docs. https://www.zonadocs.mx/2026/06/10/cuando-una-ciudad-aprende-a-convivir-con-sus-desaparecidos-mundial-memoria-y-desaparicion-en-la-guadalajara-de-2026/

Time

Quotes about capacity page 11

Quotes about capacity
page 11