Ability

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.

Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.

I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.

Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability.

Man has made some machines that can answer questions provided the facts are profusely stored in them, but we will never be able to make a machine that will ask questions. The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer.

My son, observe the postage stamp! Its usefulness depends upon its ability to stick to one thing until it gets there.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without naturalability.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not.

Power is the ability not to have to please.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.

The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer.

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.

The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Tolerance is a great trait to contain, but so is the ability to shut up.

You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.