Quotes About Capability

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.

Don't let that weapon technology proliferate. Don't let Saddam Hussein get capability for nuclear or chemical weapons, because he's already shown a willingness to use any weapon at his disposal.

At the heart of any school reforms that aren't simply tuning the mudsill mechanism lie two beliefs: 1) That talent, intelligence, grace, and high accomplishment are within the reach of every kid, and 2) That we are better off working for ourselves than for a boss.

In this sense, an object is of the highest degree of complexity if it can do very difficult and involved things.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

Unless the manager or coach believes that people possess more capability than they are currently expressing, he will not be able to help them express it. He must think of his people in terms of their potential, not their performance. The majority of appraisal systems are seriously flawed for this reason. People are put in performance boxes from which it is hard for them to escape, either in their own eyes or their manager's.

To use coaching successfully we have to adopt a far more optimistic view than usual of the dormant capability of all people. Pretending we are optimistic is insufficient because our genuine beliefs are conveyed in many subtle ways of which we are not aware.

the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith.

I told you it was easy," HARV said. "True, but you say that about everything." "That's because everything is easy for me." "Everything but humility." "No, that's easy, too. I just choose not to practice it.

The domestic cat is a bit of a contradiction. It freely accepts human friendship while never allowing even the most contented life to dim its sense of who it is and what it is capable of.

There are wings on the shoulders of all men, But being invisible the wings are never spread.

Confidence is a prerequisite to competence. Yes! because when your confidence grows, your competence is bound to grow along with it. I mean, self-confidence boosts competence unimaginably.

Sometimes it seems to me that I am capable of absolutely nothing, but that nature through me can accomplish a great deal.

At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it is written, and we can see how it was done.

We are not now concerned with perfection or excellence; we seek only for simple fitness and bare competency.

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.

You're obviously capable of achieving a lot, but ability can never take the place of desire. Don't be tempted to do something just because you can. That's what got you off course in the first place.

The body itself, simply from the laws of its own nature, can do many things which its mind wonders at … it is in the mind's power alone both to speak and to be silent and to do many other things which they therefore believe depend on the mind's decision … if, on the other hand, the body is inactive, the mind is at the same time incapable of thinking

If you are capable of perceiving it, you are capable of living it.

You'll be amazed at how capable people think you are if they don't know you well. Don't waste that advantage.

At one point, people are going to have to realize that maybe I know what I'm doing.

I want to be able to do anything. I know it's probably not reasonable to expect, but that's what I'd like to do.