Quotes about capacity
page 3

“Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention… the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

“What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede

Fate

“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#127-128
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Men, Learning

“If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Hurt

“I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“I'm investigating people who sacrifice trained killers to dark gods.
Perfect, it will keep him occupied.
In what capacity?
Bait.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

God, People, Perfection, Training

“I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our concept of the richness in human capacity.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Hope, Future

“The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

People, Forgiveness, Time

“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

People

“I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America

Justice

“There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

“We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

“I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

"Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations (1950)
Source: Brave New World

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Education

“A human’s love. I couldn’t wish anything better for him. Animals protect what they know. They protect what they are bound to, but humans…humans have a greater capacity for sacrifice for those who live in their hearts. (Aristotle)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Love, Heart, Animals

“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest
where a heart would fit perfectly
and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –
well then, game over.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Game, Thinking, Heart

“When in situations of stress we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capacity perfectly, placed us here to succeed”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

God

“Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Vision and the Voice: With Commentary and Other Papers

God

“We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make -- and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

People, Education

“Genius is an infinite capacity for causing pain.”

Margaret Atwood book The Robber Bride

Source: The Robber Bride

Pain

“Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.”

Hannah Arendt book The Human Condition

Source: The Human Condition

“Here's the thing about broken hearts. You can always survive them. Always. No matter how deep the hurt, the capacity to heal and move on is even stronger.”

Susan Wiggs (1958) American writer

Source: Summer at Willow Lake

Heart, Hurt

“Help me to withstand your beauty as it stands out of reach. Give me the capacity to forget ever having felt your touch.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Beauty, Help, Forgetting

“The real Tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort-he never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Life, Effort

“Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer”

Eric Metaxas (1963) American journalist

Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

God

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Source: The Town

Love, Strong

“It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

Source: A Wreath of Roses

Time, Waiting, Patience

“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish.”

Terry Southern (1924–1995) American author

“For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Way

“Let me die the moment my love dies.
Let me not outlive my own capacity to love.
Let me die still loving, and so, never die.”

Mary Zimmerman Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

Love

“Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 16, pp. 54–55

Love, God, Way

“when you judge the power that is in a person, you must judge their capacities as both friend and as enemy.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Personality

“Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.”

Idries Shah book Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

Source: Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

Appearance, Dead

“Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Thinking, Wealth

“I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Housing

“One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Age

“Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill - or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death.”

Garth Nix book Mister Monday

Source: Mister Monday

Death

“The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.”

Jay McInerney (1955) American writer

Source: The Last of the Savages

God, Friendship, Family, Way

“You know the incredible thing about hearts is their unbelievable capacity for forgiveness. You’d be amazed what people will overlook when they love someone. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Love, People, Forgiveness, Heart

“My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Happiness

“That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Truth, Faith, Error

“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Peace, Feeling, Knowledge, Joy

“We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

“As the art historian Emily Braun has documented, Klimt read Darwin and became fascinated with the structure of the cell… Thus, the small iconographic images on Adelle's dress are not simply decorative… they are symbols of male and female cells: rectangular sperm and ovoid eggs. …designed to match the sitter's seductive face and her full-blown reproductive capacities.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

Art, Reading

“Human beings are the only animals who have the capacity to envisage something that is not present or something that does not yet exist but which is merely possible. The imagination has thus been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

Source: A History of God (1993), Chapter 7, God of the Mystics

Religion, Art, Imagination, Science

“I pray now and I ask you to pray with me, as I prayed eight years ago, that I am doing, that we are doing, the right thing by our people; for the end of martial law does not mean the end of our efforts, of our needed reforms, of our struggles, of our sacrifices. The passing of martial law does not necessarily carry with it the passing of all the burdens especially the heavy ones. There will be more tests, for our capacity, for our resiliency, for our strength as a people. I say, we have just begun.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Speech proclaiming the termination of the state of Martial law, Heroes Hall, Malacañang (17 January 1981)
1965

People, Law, Effort

“We are conscious of the fact that the timely passage of the budget is the key to fuel not only the entire government machinery but also our capability and capacity as a nation especially in this challenging time.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Samar News http://www.samarnews.com/news_clips24/news508.htm 2013

Time

“The capacity for personal freedom is a rare talent. Talent exists to be used. We do not ask sheep to be wolves; we, the wolves, do not ask ourselves to be sheep. Sheep can make such rules as happen to suit them--but it's foolishly naive to expect wolves to obey.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Freedom, Personality

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

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"Germs"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Life, Death, Bad luck, Thinking

“The powers inherent in man are his intelligence and his physical capacity for work. Those which arise from the condition of society consist of the capacity to divide up labour and to distribute different jobs amongst different People … and the power to exchange mutual services and the products which constitute these means. The motive which impels a man to give his services to another is self -interest- he requires a reward for the services rendered. The right of exclusive private property is indispensable to the establishment of exchange amongst men… Exchange and division of labour reciprocally condition each other.”

Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866) Polish noble

Fryderyk Skarbek (1828), cited in: Karl Marx. Human Requirements and Division of Labour https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm, Manuscript, 1844.

Men, People, Intelligence, Motivation

“One element, however, tends to go flagrantly missing in even the most vivid conspiracy theories about the banking system, let alone in official accounts: that is, the role of military power. There's a reason why the wizard has such a strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him there is a man with a gun.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 364

Money

“The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of the outfit of every honest man.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners (1869)

Parting

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

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People, Appearance

“Neoclassical economic theory forms the central discourse and behavioral model of contemporary management education. Drawing on research and insights from game theory and behavioral economics we have argued that many of the core assumptions underlying this model are flawed. While we cannot say that the widespread reliance on the Homo economicus model has caused the highly level of observed managerial malfeasance, it may well have, and it surely does not act as a healthy influence on managerial morality. Students have learned this flawed model and in their capacity as corporate managers, doubtless act daily in conformance with it. This, in turn, may have contributed to the weakening of socially functional values and norms like honesty, integrity, self-restraint, reciprocity and fairness, to the detriment of the health of the enterprise. Simultaneously, this perspective has legitimized, or at least not delegitimized, such behaviors as material greed and optimizing with guile. We noted that this model has become highly institutionalized in business education. Fortunately, we believe that the potential for moving away from this flawed model is significant and thus can end this chapter on a more optimistic note for the future of business education.”

Rakesh Khurana (1967) American business academic

Herbert Gintis and Rakesh Khurana. " What Happened When Homo Economicus Entered Business School https://evonomics.com/what-happens-when-you-introduce-homo-economicus-into-business/," in: evonomics.com, July 14, 2016.

Health, Education, Behavior, Game

“Man remains in the end what he started as in the beginning: a biosystem with a limited capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the consequence is future shock.”

Alvin Toffler book Future Shock

Future Shock (1970), ch. 15

Change, Future

“I've never had a grandmother, a great-grandmother, nor a great-great-grandmother. I never even had a mother. I have certainly missed a great deal of love thereby, but fortune has compensated me by not giving me the capacity to hate anyone, neither nations nor individuals. If candlesticks and church bells have been plundered from my ancestors, then I'm only grateful that I'm so ignorant about genealogy.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Love, Hate

“Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

Question, Personality

“But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter X, Cause and Consequence, p. 199

Life, Men, History, Communication

“Some other Course therefore must be taken to promote the Search of Knowledge. Some other kind of Art for Inquiry than what hath been hitherto made use of, must be discovered; the Intellect is not to he suffer'd to act without its Helps, but is continually to be assisted by some Method or Engine, which shall be as a Guide to regulate its Actions, so as that it shall not be able to act amiss: Of this Engine, no Man except the incomparable Verulam hath had any Thoughts, and he indeed hath promoted it to a very good pitch; but there is yet somewhat more to be added, which he seem'd to want time to compleat. By this, as by that Art of Algebra in Geometry, 'twill be very easy to proceed in any Natural Inquiry, regularly and certainly: And indeed it may not improperly be call'd a Philosophical Algebra, or an Art of directing the Mind in the search after Philosophical Truths, for as 'tis very hard for the most acute Wit to find out any difficult Problem in Geometry. without the help of Algebra to direct and regulate the Acts of the Reason in the Process from the question to the quœsitum, and altogether as easy for the meanest Capacity acting by that Method to compleat and perfect it, so will it be in the inquiry after Natural Knowledge.”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

"The Present State of Natural Philosophy, and wherein it is deficient," The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke https://books.google.com/books?id=6xVTAAAAcAAJ (1705) ed., Richard Waller, pp. 6-7.

Truth, Art, Search, Question

“Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature - equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Writing for the court, United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)

Women, Law

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, People, Law, Dreams

“As we did before in 1994, I feel we have a capacity to do so again. We succeeded in resolving our problems by peaceful means when everybody expected war and violence… We have one of the best constitutions in the world. We should be proud of this constitution, which provides the framework for a functioning multiparty democracy, independent courts and other institutions that stand for [the] advancement of human rights… He said the country had already held three elections and that two presidents had relinquished their power through constitutional means. Although former president Thabo Mbeki had left under difficult conditions, even that had been done constitutionally… These are all signs of growing constitutional maturity. Our democracy is growing up and there are open debates which will take us to robust contestations.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Speech in Durban https://web.archive.org/web/20150919172235/http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/de-klerk-sanguine-about-sa-1.427715#.WhPN0EpKvqY (2008) 2000s, 2008

War, World, Peace, Feeling

“Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn introduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, each morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own "war aims." It effaces the very notion of war's being brought to an end. Consequently, nobody does anything to bring this end about. In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 181

Life, Death, War, Way

“In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Margaret Wheatley (1992), as quoted in 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself (2004) by Steve Chandler, p. 123

“Throughout all the years and in everything we do, we have focused most of all on the development of human capacity, beginning with our own professional staff, and leveraging their expertise to enrich the Arab community. We have embraced the concept of the ‘knowledge worker’ and have sought to empower our people and the Arab world’s people to dream, to imagine, and to create.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

People, World, Dreams, Imagination

“Most Muslims treat the Quran as a document to imitate rather than interpret, suffocating our capacity to think for ourselves.”

Irshad Manji book The Trouble with Islam Today

Source: The Trouble with Islam Today (2005), Ch. 2: Seventy Virgins?

Thinking

“Maybe you are the “cool” generation … If coolness means a capacity to stay calm and use your head in the service of ends passionately believed in, then it has my admiration.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Baccalaureate address as President of Yale (12 June 1966)

Passion

“If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds of Ormuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas and Christs, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freed themselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freed themselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on, — if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the "Sciences", and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies — their name is legion — and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupefying ballast — the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI

Love, God, People, World

“We take pleasure in watching an athlete break a record, hearing a soprano in full flight, or reading a philosopher of depth and insight. Human accomplishment is the ultimate spectator sport. Apply as much historical analysis to it as we wish, and we’ll not unlock all its mysteries. The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.”

Denis Dutton (1944–2010) Professor and philosopher

" Of Human Accomplishment http://denisdutton.com/murray_review.htm", The New Criterion (February 2004)

Pleasure, Understanding, Sport, Reading

“God involves continuous awareness of finiteness, supreme capacity to feel grief, the renouncing of divine attributes in order to become pure giving, infinite love, redemption and consolation.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Love, God, Feeling

“For physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body; it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound bodies.”

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

1960, Sport at the New Frontier: The Soft American

Intelligence, Strong

“Man's excellence lies in his readiness to let others live and lay down his own life. As he progresses, his food also changes for the better. He has the capacity to grow still further. There have been many more discoveries after Darwin's. The book which you have been reading seems to be an old one. Whether it is old or new, the "Principle of the greatest good of the greatest number," or "survival of the fittest" is false.”

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

In his Letter to Premabehn Kantak, in Collected Works, , Delhi. Ministry of Information (1969-94)., 50:309-10
1930s

Life, Books, Food, Change

“When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity. The greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"The Masterpiece," in A Stroll with William James (1983)

“What I believe is that we’re only just beginning to understand the incredible capacity of human beings, that we can become something unrecognizable, that we can have true freedom, not some tantalizing emblem forever out of reach. Not weary compromise and nagging fear.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Fear, Understanding, Freedom

“Simply waiting for low-carbon-emitting renewable capacity to be large enough will mean that it will be too late to meet the mitigation goals for reducing [carbon dioxide] that will be required under most credible climate-change models.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Palin sees gas drilling as step to curb global warming, Murphy, Kim, April 15, 2009, LA Times, 2011-10-27 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/15/nation/na-palin15, 2009

Change, Waiting

“Education is emancipation from herd opinion, self-mastery, capacity for self-criticism, suspended judgment, and urbanity.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Preface p. vii
The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926)

Education

“[T]he last 15 years have witnessed the ascent of an alternative view, that of embodied or enactive cognition. This new wave arose because the computationalist doctrine failed to account even for the most elementary coping with the world: walking, perceiving object in a natural setting, imagination. Slowly the cards turned into considering that the basis of mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic one) of real time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the head since it is roots in the body as a whole and also in the extended environment where the organism finds itself.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Varela (1998) " The Cosmos Letter http://www.expo-cosmos.or.jp/letter/letter12e.html", Expo'90 Foundation, Japan

World, Imagination, Nature, Sense

“What these tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the "right" answers should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders. At The Maids, a housecleaning service, I am given something called the "Accutrac personality test," which warns at the beginning that "Accutrac has multiple measures which detect attempts to distort or 'psych out' the questionnaire." Naturally, I "never" find it hard "to stop moods of self-pity," nor do I imagine that others are talking about me behind my back or believe that "management and employees will always be in conflict because they have totally different sets of goals."”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us.
Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), Ch. 2: Scrubbing in Maine (p. 59)

Secret, Imagination, Mood, Nature

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech in defence of Aurobindo Ghosh in the Maincktala Bomb Case. The judgement was issued in 1909. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
Legal

Life, Law, Dreams, Idea

“Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 5 (p. 42)

People

“But like Marx, Veblen badly underestimated the capacity of a democratic system to correct its own excesses.”

Robert L. Heilbroner book The Worldly Philosophers

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter VIII, Thorstein Veblen, p. 233

“Last year, the lecture was held in [an auditorium] with a capacity for just 300 people, and half the seats were empty. “What has changed? I am still the same person doing the same science. Why are people so impressed when some academy in Sweden gives an award?”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Appreciate science for what it is: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

People, Science, Change, Personality

“Freedom from a desire to control the outcome, and respect for the capacity of the group, and skills in releasing individual expression”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Carl Rogers on Personal Power (1977)

Freedom

“He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Fragments

Life, Way, Business, Nature

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren Bennis, cited in: Dianna Daniels Booher (1991) Executive's portfolio of model speeches for all occasions. p. 34
1990s

Reality, Leadership

“The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

I 1 as translated in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought with annotated translation of his work On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/bruno03.htm De immenso (1591)

“But we do not normally mistake progressions of weakness, the loss of the simple capacity to escape, for the onset of love. Page 17”

Renata Adler (1938) American author, journalist and film critic

Pitch Dark (1983)

Love, Loss

“On what must an elite be founded? a) Purity of soul. b) Capacity of work and creativity. c) Bravery. d) Tough living and permanent warring against difficulties facing the nation. e) Poverty, namely voluntary renunciation of amassing a fortune. f) Faith in God. g) Love.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Love, God, War, Faith

“Public policy does not admit of definition and is not easily explained. It is a variable quantity; it must vary and does vary with the habits, capacities, and opportunities of the public.”

Arthur Kekewich (1832–1907) British judge

Davies v. Davies (1887), L. R. 36 C. D. 364; see also Egerton v. Earl Brownlow, 4 H. L. C. 1.

“The phonetic animal par excellence is man. All men are born with an infinite capacity for making noises and using them.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

1964, p. 141; Chapter 1; Chapter 1: The Origin of Speech
Speech, 1930

Men, Animals

“Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1988; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Art' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/art-1 1980's

God, Faith, Art, Feeling

“The only justifiable stopping place for for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 4, Reason, p. 120

Pain, Pleasure, Feeling

“The relevance of canonicity has nothing to do with the notion of codified establishments of hierarchical judgment (for which it typically attracts revisionist hostility). Instead, canonicity is important as the capacity to permit vibrant reading relationships to works from the past. … Whatever else the canon may do, its primary function has been the preservation of the reception of literature across periodic borders, thereby calling into question the significance of those borders or the fetishism of contexts. The canon tunnels under the Berlin Wall that periodizers erect between literary regimes. As a fundamental level, therefore, periodization stands at odds with canonicity. Canonicity maintains, cultivates, and develops community over time and across generations; periodization breaks up that identity and suppresses the historical continuities through a strategy of temporal separation.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 19.

Hostility, Communication, Literature, Question

“America has shown we are serious about removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction."…"We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction…. We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems — ballistic missiles — that had been prohibited by the United Nations.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Speech at a Fundraising dinner in New Mexico http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-02-16-cheney-new-mexico_x.htm, (February 16, 2004) 2000s, 2004

“It cannot be too frequently emphasized that the behavior of any animal must depend upon on the nature of the stimulus which it meets, its anatomic and physiologic capacities, and its background of previous experience. Unless it has been conditioned by previous experience, an animal should respond identically to identical stimuli, whether they emanate from some part of its own body, from another individual of the same sex, or from an individual of the opposite sex.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Sex, Behavior, Nature, Animals

Quotes about capacity page 3

Quotes about capacity
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