Quotes About Competence

If I'm not a good talker, so be it, but my record will speak for itself.

I let my racket do the talking.

If you're talking about nuclear physics, I have to defer to the next guy. But if you're talking about football, I don't have to take a back seat to anyone.

Think about it: If you don't have any actual, tangible skills, then how can you do anything? You may be laughing and nodding, but do you realize how few people, when asked the basic question, 'What can you do?' stumble on the answer and have nothing to say? Most people.

He or she who gets hired is not necessarily the one who can do that job best; but, the one who knows the most about how to get hired.

Successful enterprises are usually led by a proven chief executive who is a competent benevolent dictator.

Hemingway's judgment on people, that the competent guy does it on his own and the incompetents lean on each other." In

all this work to buttress self-esteem and happiness not only makes children less capable of moral action—more self-occupied, less able to invest in others, more fragile, and less able to stand up for important values—but more likely to fret about their attractiveness, competence, or importance to others, more prone to worry and unhappiness.

And you know what else I used to love? I loved to watch you get into your car and drive away - just because it meant you knew exactly what you were doing, and because you always did it so well.

Sydney: I can do a lot of things, Adrian. And—at the risk of sounding egotistical —I mean, well, I can do a lot of pretty awesome things that most people can't." Adrian: "Don't I know it. You can change a tire in ten minutes while speaking Greek." Sydney: "Five minutes.

I guess I just had trouble shaking that feeling that I had to take care of everything because no one else could do it right.

Mr. Wonka knows exactly what he's doing.

What one man can do, another man can do.

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence

It is not nonsense and nobody asked you; you aren't competent to have an opinion about it.

Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!

That was Heinlein in a nutshell: the responsible human being, the competent human being, the human being who knows how to die gallantly when faced with the Birkenhead drill. Not because it's heroic, but because

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." ? Robert A. Heinlein, writing as Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love

revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science only a few are competent to practice. It depends on correct organization and, above all, on communications. Then, at the proper moment in history, they strike. Correctly organized and properly timed it is a bloodless coup.

I remembered hearing Dad say: "Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

He was probably stud duck at the Rotary Club cookouts. I could have taken him while whistling the Michigan fight song and balancing a seal on my nose.