Quotes About Limitations

Don't Think Outside the Box—Find the Box

What is most striking about the most powerful man in the world is not the power that he wields. It is how constrained he and his lieutenants are by forces that lie beyond their grasp and perhaps their understanding.

The possibilities. Is there any greater pain to know what could be, and yet be powerless to make it be?

Although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to

He only had the imperfect medium of words.

I couldn't see beyond the walls of our apartment or the few miles between home and school. Every day was about getting through it. Every weekend was about getting back to school, where there could be some structure and my routines.

Too many locks, not enough keys.

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

You can only fit so many words in a postcard. Only so many in a phone call. Only so many into space, before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.

Chair or no chair: a binary relation. But the vicissitudes of moving the body around are infinite. You never know what a person in a chair can do.

I revere the Bill of Rights, but at the same time I believe that anyone who's using three or more of them at a time is hogging them too much. (152)

I guess nothing restrains people from demanding ideal conditions. Very little restrains them from anything.

Mental prison: The illusions and unproductive thinking that limit our ability to see the world clearly and act upon it rationally.

I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of each other. No one communicate to me those sensations of love, joy, rapture, and delight which I do not naturally possess; and, though my heart may glow with the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent.

Man is born not to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problem begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the comprehensible.

I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of each other. No one can communicate to me those sensations of love, joy, rapture, and delight which I do not naturally possess; and, though my heart may glow with the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent.

Humble people know their limitations: they know what they know, and they know what they do not know; they know what they can do or be, and they know what they cannot do or be

A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence . . . defines what can and cannot be done to her.

Our healthy shame is essential as the foundation of our spirituality. By reminding us of our essential limitations, our healthy shame lets us know that we are not God. Our healthy shame points us in the direction of some larger meaning. Our healthy shame is the psychological ground of our humility.

The Edsel was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time. It was also a prime example of the limitations of market research, with its 'depth interviews' and 'motivational' mumbo-jumbo.

For when it starts feeling like a prison in there—and it usually does for most people—you are confronted with the fact that the bars are of your own making.

I have explored and have voluntarily entered into domains forbidden by a large fraction of those in our culture who are not curious, are not explorative and are not mentally equipped to enter these domains.

Secondly, [man] should weigh his abilities-or rather lack of abilities.

Having once aroused in our mind enough faith in our own will-power to create a universe of contemplation and forget everything else, there are few limitations to the happiness we may enjoy.