Quotes about competence
page 7

“Were an impartial and competent observer of the state of society in these middle colonies asked, whence it happens that Virginia and Maryland (which were the first planted, and which are superior to many colonies and inferior to none, in point of natural advantage) are still so exceedingly behind most of the other British trans-Atlantic possessions in all those improvements which bring credit and consequence to a country?”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

he would answer - They are so, because they are cultivated by slaves. … Some loss and inconvenience would, no doubt, arise from the general abolition of slavery in these colonies: but were it done gradually, with judgement, and with good temper, I have never yet seen it satisfactorily proved that such inconvenience would either be great or lasting. … If ever these colonies, now filled with slaves, be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of the improvement must be the abolition of slavery. Such a change would hardly be more to the advantage of the slaves, than it would be to their owners."
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

Country, Nature

“Here’s my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can’t fake are erections, competence and creativity. That’s why meetings become toxic — they put uncreative people in a situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Life, People, Effort

“The Republican party is a party of progress and of liberality toward its opponents. It encourages the poor to strive to better their children, to enable them to compete successfully with their more fortunate associates, and, in fine, it secures an entire equality before the law of every citizen, no matter what his race, nationality, or previous condition. It tolerates no privileged class. Every one has the opportunity to make himself all he is capable of.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Ulysses S. Grant, as quoted in Words of Our Hero, Ulysses S. Grant https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22the+one+thing+i+never+wanted+to+see+again+was+a+military+parade%22&source=bl&ots=zH525oYpJn&sig=ACfU3U0GLPNgij-FmXIDwgWp_Kg8zDskWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4uc7PzKniAhUq1lkKHWhlBfQQ6AEwBXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20one%20thing%20i%20never%20wanted%20to%20see%20again%20was%20a%20military%20parade%22&f=false, by Jeremiah Chaplin, p. 59 1880s, Speech at Warren, Ohio (1880)

Making love, Law, Children

“Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessities of life; which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

pp. 366-367. https://books.google.com/books?id=-6JfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA366 A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

Money, Time, Country, People

“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"”

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

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

“In a liberal system, society and nation are nothing but an aggregation of competing individuals. What holds them together is the Constitution and the market economy. There is no nation – or if there is, it is only a political nation... When there is no nation, there is no community and no community interest. In essence this is the relationship between the individual and society from a liberal point of view.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Communication

“To understand the crisis we need to get beyond the blame game. For at the root of the crisis was not failures of character or competence, but a failure of ideas.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

Source: John Maynard Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009), Ch. 1 : What Went Wrong?

Idea, Game, Failure, Understanding

“Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived", but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)

Way, Future, Learning, Teachers

“… his work gradually became identifiably Simakian — constrained, intensely emotional beneath a calmly competent Genre SF surface; tales deeply Pastoral in the sense that his idylls, his Edens, were almost inevitably supported by some superior civilization, sometimes urban… <…”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Sense, Support

“Schools are entrenched bureaucracies whose practitioners do not compete for business, do not need to get re-elected or to attract patients, customers, clients. Those educators who would like to innovate have relatively little authority to change their style.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

Business, Education, School, Change

“Whose American dream? The dream is a chameleon; it has changed again and again. For the first immigrants, America was a continent to explore and exploit, a haven for the unwanted and the dissenters—a new beginning. Gradually the dream became an ascetic and idealized image of democracy, bespeaking the age-old hope for justice and selfgovernance. All too quickly, that dream metamorphosed into an expansionist, materialist, nationalist, and even imperialist vision of wealth and domination—paternalism, Manifest Destiny. Yet even then, there was a competing Transcendentalist vision: excellence, spiritual riches, the unfolding of the latent gifts of the individual.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Democracy, Justice, Wealth, Dreams

“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 Critique of Economic Reason, 1988

Housing, Personality, People, Self-confidence

“Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation—however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories—for glories they are—in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1911/nov/28/morocco#column_384 in the House of Lords during the Agadir Crisis (28 November 1911) 1910s

History, Success, Forgetting, Intelligence

“‘Such voices … in any case are pretty much in the minority. The dominant ideology is that which ascribes clear priority and absolute competence to shastric codification.’”

Sheldon Pollock (1948) American linguist

Quoted from Rajiv Malhotra, The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

“Humanity could live in peace - but it doesn't, because from the cradle we are taught to compete and fight, win, dominate and kill each other. These lessons and the world view behind them becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: a state of affairs is created where you have to compete, fight and kill.”

Yrjö Kallinen (1886–1976) Finnish politician

World, Self-confidence, Peace, Fight

“When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Help

“Look—I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand like my dad, they lay in bed wondering, can I keep my health care, can I pay my mortgage. Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don′t look like you or worship the way you do or don′t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person′s shoes—as my mom would say—just for a moment, stand in their shoes. Because here′s the thing about life: there′s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”

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

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Family, Soul, Life, Understanding

“Verily there is magic in numbers! The sovereign multitude can out-legislate the Almighty, at least in their own conceit. But how many does it take? Just enough to make a nation. It did not take many thousands to make Texas a nation. Yet Texas, especially after the battle of San Jacinto, was perfectly competent to decree any of these things, and to make slavery, murder, &c. absolutely meritorious. Whether any smaller number could nullify the divine law, we leave to our great metaphysicians to determine.”

Adin Ballou (1803–1890) American minister

How Many Does It Take

Making love, Law

“To compete with your reflection, is to have already won long term.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

“Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve something truly great.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Journal Articles

Courage, Effort, People, Question

“My apprentices were exasperating. They were competing to see who was laziest.”

Glen Cook (1944) American fiction writer

Source: Short Fiction, Bone Eaters (2015), p. 230

“If somebody has the competency to do something, and the desire to do something, then nothing about their race, sex or sexual orientation should hold them back. But minimizing difference is not the same as pretending difference does not exist. To assume that sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019)

Sex

“What I would say is the single most important thing, if you want to avoid all the stupid errors, is knowing where you're competent and where you aren't. And that's very hard to do because the human mind naturally tries to make you think you're way smarter than you are.”

Charlie Munger (1924) American business magnate, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist

[A Conversation with Distinguished Alumnus Charles T. Munger (CERT '44, CAVU), December 17, 2020, Caltech, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaDU1J91hY8] (quote at 18:20 of 58:41)

Error, Thinking, Stupidity, Way

“No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth.”

Isaac Asimov book The Currents of Space

Source: Empire novels (1950–1952), The Currents of Space (1952), Chapter 11 “The Captain” (p. 114)

“Criticizing without having the slightest competence on a subject is the first sign of a person's immaturity.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Criticare senza avere la minima competenza su un argomento è il primo segno di immaturità di una persona.
Source: prevale.net

Personality

“The professional player in me came out. The button changed from off to on, and I saw the difference between playing for fun and playing to win. You have to choose whether to have fun or whether to compete.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

Change

“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

“It is better to buy than compete.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

'It's better to buy than compete': The FTC is using Mark Zuckerberg's own words against him https://www.businessinsider.com/ftc-facebook-lawsuit-makes-zuckerberg-emails-public-instagram-whatsapp-competition-2020-12" (2008)

“It’s possible that having a strong competitor would encourage us to compete better.”

Ren Zhengfei (1944) Chinese businessman

Interview with CNBC (October 4, 2019)

Strong

“Should there be competing articles, so that you would have the Catholic article on abortion, the evangelical Christian version, and the Planned Parenthood version.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Source: Reminiscing in Jimmy Wales: “Wikipedia is from a different era” https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2021/01/jimmy-wales-wikipedia-different-era" (January 14, 2021)

“1. Strive to be a leader of character, competence, and courage.
2. Lead from the front. Say, "Follow me!" and then lead the way.
3. Stay in top physical shape- physical stamina is the root of mental toughness.
4. Develop your team. If you know your people, are fair in setting realistic goals and expectations, and lead by example, you will develop teamwork.
5. Delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their jobs. You can't do a good job if you don't have a chance to use your imagination or your creativity.
6. Anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles. Don't wait until you get to the top of the ridge and then make up your mind.
7. Remain humble. Don't worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head.
8. Take a moment of self-reflection. Look at yourself in the mirror every night and ask yourself if you did your best.
9. True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to a successful leader is to earn respect- not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character.
10. Hang Tough!

Never, ever give up.”

Dick Winters (1918–2011) American military personnel

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters (2006)
Source: Leadership at the Point of the Bayonet: Ten Principles for Success, p. 293

Night, People, Way, Imagination

“If there are any competent journalists here, I’m ready for their inquiries.”

Charles E. Gannon (1960) American novelist

Source: Trial by Fire (2014), Chapter 1 (p. 7)

“While moral rectitude cannot be substituted by professional competencies, it does promote and cultivate them.”

Agostino Vallini (1940) Catholic cardinal

Pope’s vicar calls on teachers to educate in hope and be witnesses of Christ https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/14872/popes-vicar-calls-on-teachers-to-educate-in-hope-and-be-witnesses-of-christ (23 January 2009)

“The irony is that so many countries are competing in arms races, they don't even care how many people have been and will be victims.”

Titon Rahmawan

Country, People

“Never compete with who comes from hell, he knows evil better than you.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Non competere mai con chi proviene dall'inferno, conosce il male meglio di te.
Source: prevale.net

Hell, Evil

Quotes about competence page 7

Quotes about competence
page 7