Quotes About Limitation

Take the great example of the four-minute mile. One guy breaks it, then all of a sudden everyone breaks it. And they break it in such a short period of time that it can't be because they were training harder. It's purely that it was a psychological barrier, and someone had to show them that they could do it.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

I'm trying to do music which inspires the desire to transcend politics, which has a limited and selfish and egoist and unknowledgable end about what anyone knows about existence.

I would rather we limited - for the sake of transparency - we limited the number of taxes that we had and we were right up front about what they are, how much they are, and so forth.

I do everything I think possible or acceptable to escape from this trap.

I can't wring blood from a stone.

I wanted to be an astronaut and wanted to go to space camp, but then I found out that I was too short to become an astronaut. My mom really made me believe that if I worked hard enough and if I really wanted to do it, I could do it.

A tethered thing is a dead thing...

What you cannot imagine, you cannot fear.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

We will never be more that we have been destined to be!

We will never be more than we are meant to be!

A camera is an opening in a box: that is the best emblem of the fact that a camera holding an object is holding the rest of the world away. The camera has been praised for extending the senses; it may, as the world goes, deserve more praise for confining them, leaving room for thought.

And if, indeed, there is nothing beyond the corner? Who can affirm if beyond so-called 'reality' anything exists at all? Beyond a reality that I have probably created? As long as I'm steeped in this reality up to my neck, as long as it is sufficient for me—everything is tolerable. But what would happen if I wanted one day to lean out of my safe environment and glance beyond its borders?

The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world

Plus un esprit se limite, plus il touche par ailleurs à l'infini.

For the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.

je mehr sich einer begrenzt, um so mehr ist er andererseits dem Unendlichen nah; gerade solche scheinbar Weltabseitigen bauen in ihrer besonderen Materie sich termitenhaft eine merkwürdige und durchaus einmalige Abbreviatur der Welt.

Sabit fikirli, kafas?n? tek bir düÅŸünceye takm?? her türlü insan, yaÅŸam?m boyunca beni çekmiÅŸtir, çünkü bir insan kendini ne kadar s?n?rlarsa, öte yandan sonsuza o kadar yak?n olur; iÅŸte böyle görünüÅŸte dünyadan kopuk yaÅŸayanlar, özel yap?lar? içinde kar?nca gibi, dünyan?n tuhaf ve eÅŸi benzeri olmayan bir maketini kurarlar.

Ac? çekmek için bile yetersizdim.

For the more a man limits himself, the more he is close to the infinite.

Einzig das Unmeßbare, das Unfaßbare erschreckt uns, alles Begrenzte dagegen, alles Bestimmte fordert zur Probe heraus und wird zum Maß unserer Kraft.

Les monomaniques de tout poil, les gens qui sont possédés par une seule idée m'ont toujours spécialement intrigué, car plus un esprit se limite, plus il touche par ailleurs à l'infini.

For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless; it is precisely those who are apparently aloof from the world who build for themselves a remarkable and thoroughly individual world in miniature, using their own special equipment, termit-like.