Quotes About Potential

You inherit not your IQ but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances. How does one parcel that one into nature and nurture? It is frankly impossible.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." The question I have for you at this part of our journey together is, "What is your genius?

If individual merit considered in isolation were the source of wealth, then excluding more than half of the population from realizing their potential on account of their sex or skin color would be like sabotaging more than half of all factories or making more than half of all homes uninhabitable.

Another form of laziness is thinking: 'That's not for me; it's beyond my abilities. I'd rather not get involved with it.' In other words, you give up the race before you reach the starting line.

She firmly held the theory that everyone gets at least one very stupid superpower.

People always say they can't do things, that they're impossible. They just haven't been creative enough.

Why was her life over when she was only seventeen? She'd peaked. It was done.

It [Romanticism] is concerned—in the words of Aristotle—not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be.

I know what I want up to the age of two hundred. Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.

The novelist must discover the potential, the gold mine, of man's soul, must extract the gold and then fashion as magnificent a crown as his ability and vision permit.

a vague soil spread and ready from which friendships would spring.

of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character—that

Among the many values that art can offer, the subtlest one - and, perhaps, the most inspiring - is the sight of talent, talent as such, the spectacle of human ability actualizing its best potential. In the presence of a great achievement, you feel as if you were seeing two art works: one is the object before you, the other is the artist who made himself capable of creating it.

The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature--and struggle never to let him discover otherwise. It is important here to remember that the only direct, introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.

of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character.

to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay—that

The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. . . . [Man-worshipers are] those dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth.

settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay—that

deadly aggression is a major, evolution-shaped, innate potential that, given the right conditions, has always been easily triggered. However, its ocurrence and prevalence are subject to wide fluctuations, depending on the prominence of these conditions.

Most people have a way of radiating their potential – not just what they are, but what they could become.

We were unhappy. We compared our situation to our own potentials, to what we could have had, and somehow there was little consolation in the fact that millions of people were unhappier than we were. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?

I see a bird like a cock, which means good news, but you yourself are very agitated. A road that looks bright. And you are on the first step. You are thinking of a hundred things at the same time. One road is closed and dark, and the other is open and full of light. Both could happen; it is your choice. There is a key; a problem will be solved. ... A small ship that is still in the harbor and has not yet started to set sail.

The Glories of the Possible are Ours.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up