Ability Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them — a diminishing number in my case.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. Simplification is the essence of abstraction from which objective values are not necessarily eliminated.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.

Flannery O'Connor

It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.

Miyamoto Musashi

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee, and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

John D. Rockefeller

Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able. In a logical system, it is convenient to say that possibility passes over into actuality. However, in actuality it is not so convenient, and an intermediate term is required. The intermediate term is anxiety, but it no more explains the qualitative leap than it can justify it ethically. Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself.

Søren Kierkegaard

It would conduce to national progress and save a great deal of time and trouble if we cultivated the habit of never supporting the resolutions either by speaking or voting for them if we had not either the intention or the ability to carry them out.

At the same time, we'll engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals, and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands — because our ability to influence others depends on our willingness to lead and meet our obligations.

Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner.
But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing — and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.

I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability.

Bertrand Russell

The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.

Henry David Thoreau

We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister.

In a battle, as in a siege, the art consists in concentrating very heavy fire on a particular point. The line of battle once established, the one who has the ability to concentrate an unlooked for mass of artillery suddenly and unexpectedly on one of these points is sure to carry the day.

Napoleon I of France

The sense organs, which are limited in scope and ability, randomly gather information. This partial information is arranged into judgments, which are based on previous judgments, which are usually based on someone else's foolish ideas. These false concepts and ideas are then stored in a highly selective memory system.

We have a natural creative ability and it is very important to realize this.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement … Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.

Winston Churchill

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.

Having encountered many setbacks, Havel lived with a spirit of hope, which he defined as the ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon. He played a seminal role in the Velvet Revolution that won his people their freedom and inspired generations to reach for self-determination and dignity in all parts of the world.

For our self respect depends upon our ability to make requital, for good or for evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

In business, I've discovered that my purpose is to do my best to my utmost ability every day. That's my standard. I learned early in my life that I had high standards.

The voters selected us, in short, because they had confidence in our judgement and our ability to exercise that judgement from a position where we could determine what were their own best interest, as a part of the nation's interest.

John F. Kennedy