Quotes About Limits

One type of slave-owner does not discipline his slaves, gives them no structure, sets them no limits, provides them with no direction and does not make it clear who is the boss. What happens, of course, is that in due time his slaves stop working and begin moving into the mansion, raiding the liquor cabinet and breaking the furniture, and soon the slave-owner finds that he is the slave of his slaves, living

Simão Bacamarte refletiu ainda um instante, e disse: - Suponho o espírito humano uma vasta concha, o meu fim, Sr. Soares, é ver se posso extrair a pérola, que é a razão; por outros termos, demarquemos definitivamente os limites da razão e da loucura. A razão é o perfeito equilíbrio de todas as faculdades; fora daí insânia, insânia e insânia.

The Great God Science. It has failed us, because it was never meant to be a god, but only a few true scientists understand that.

We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

forgiveness is a religious imperative: forgive those who trespass against you. But it is also a very practical strategy based on the belief that there are profound limits to what the formal mechanisms of retribution can accomplish.

It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and the damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish.

The thing we want to learn about a stranger is fragile. If we tread carelessly, it will crumple under our feet. In front that falls a second cautionary note: we need to accept that the search to understand the stranger has real limits. We will never know the whole truth. We have to be satisfied with something short of that. The right way to talk to strangers's with caution and humility.

We should also accept the limits of our ability to decipher strangers. In the interrogation of KSM, there were two sides. James Mitchell and his colleague Bruce Jessen were driven by the desire to make KSM talk. On the other side, Charles Morgan worried about the cost of forcing people to talk: what if in the act of coercing a prisoner to open up, you damaged his memories and made what he had to say less reliable? Morgan's more-modest expectations are a good model for the rest of us.

As I see it, the only pleasure of living is that every joke should be made, every thought expressed, every line of investigation, irrespective of its direction, pursued to the uttermost limits that human ingenuity, courage and understanding can take it. The moment that limits are set... then the flavor is gone.

Success involves going to where others believe is too far.

The limits are pushed by our resolve to succeed beyond tradition.

Without a vision to guide our path, and without ambition that knows no limits, we can never build a bright future for generations to come.

Human sympathy has its limits, and we were contented to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.

It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before... to test yout limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossum.

I listened; I wrote; I learned. I do not know why so many women trusted me enough to speak to me, but underneath anything I write one can hear the percussive sound of their heartbeats. If one has to pick one kind of pedagogy over all others, I pick listening. It breaks down prejudices and stereotypes; it widens self-imposed limits; it takes one into another's life, her hard times and, if there is any, her joy too.

The power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the change that creates them random is just another way of admitting our ignorance about it.

Men in their forties were so sexy: the calm assurance of what a man liked and didn't, where he set limits and where he set none, experience and a sense of adventure. It made the sex so much better.

It's clear that identity is a finite concept. What's not clear is the location of its boundaries.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

I've given lots of people chances, she said suddenly, as if Marion was still in the room to hear us. But there's only so much faith you can have in people.

We both know the limits of this relationship. It's understood. And as long as we're both comfortablewith that, nobody get's hurt. It's basic.' ~Oliva, pg 374

The only trick was never giving more that you were willing to lose.

You need demarcation. Demarcation? I asked. It means a clear separation between two things, he told me. A solid end before a clean beginning. No murky borders. Clarity.

But I knew what it said. That I could be imperfect, but only so much. Human, but only within limits. And honest, to her or to myself, never.