Quotes About Resourcefulness

It was said that a crow flying over Berlin would have to carry his own provisions.

survival in Nazi concentration camps "depended on one's ability to arrange to preserve some areas of independent action

Without thinking about what she was doing, she pulled blueberries from the icebox and peaches from the fruit bin. She might have only been seven years old, but she was smart enough to know that her mother would have a fit if she pulled out knives, or did anything near the two-burner hot plate. Instead, Portia, pulled the peaches apart, catching the sticky-sweet juice on her tongue as it ran down her fingers. She found a slice of angel food cake wrapped in plastic and plopped the fruit on top.

You found a pen?" "No, but I have a can of Cheez Whiz. I'll write your number on the counter with it, then find a pen and copy it.

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

You can go three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food.

I am a firm believer in if you can't get it the old fashioned way, you don't need it.

I can do something else besides stuff a ball through a hoop. My biggest resource is my mind.

Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.

Organized people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.

Necessity is the mother of all invention.

To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.

no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.

Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened... Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be... We are apparently on the trail here of some sort of invisible or hidden hand that beneficially hides difficulties from us.

And it is strange: a few moments after the cars that brought us down drive off, I become aware that already I have discovered something new. Because we do not have a place of our own, nor will have for the next three days, we must invent one. I catch myself, and the eyes of one or two others, searching for a section of the pavement with which we might want to become familiar. We are looking among the concrete slabs for the outline of a home.

There was no word for self-pity in the language of the north-east of Scotland - the nearest being a word which is defined in the Scots dictionary as being 'a term used to express self-reproach on paying too much for something.

She believed in getting as much use as possible from everything, and thought that as long as machinery, or anything else, could be cajoled into operation, it should be kept; to do otherwise, she thought, was wasteful.

At Rome thing can or cannot be done when you are told anything cannot be done, there is an end of it. It is much more convenient at Paris; when anything cannot be done you pay double and it is done directly

Armed to the teeth? He had not even a knitting-needle.

What good is a truck?" the man went on. "Can it forage for its own fuel? Can it go where a camel goes? Can it repair its own wounds? Can it sire more trucks? Machines are no good here in the Emptiness!

Reed shook his head. "Pretty damned clever," he added, unable to keep admiration from his tone.

He is one of those wise philanthropists who, in a time of famine, would vote for nothing, but a supply of toothpicks.

In its early years, he gave three explanations as to why the company survived: "We didn't have any money, we didn't have any technology, and we didn't have a plan

An enterprising person is one who sees opportunity in all areas of life.