Ability

29 quotes.

• Ability is of little account without opportunity.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

• Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study.

  Francis Bacon

• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

  Ernest Hemingway

• 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.

  David M. Burns

• 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.

  Henry Steele Commager

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

  Robert Frost

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

  Oscar Wilde

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

  François de La Rochefoucauld

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

  Flower A. Newhouse

• 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.

  Thomas J. Watson

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

  Henry Wheeler Shaw

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

  Cicero

• Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.

  Thomas Henry Huxley

• Power is the ability not to have to please.

  Elizabeth Janeway

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

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

• 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.

  Robert J. McKain

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

  Attributed to Winston Churchill

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

  Abraham Lincoln

• 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.

  Anonymous

• 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.

  Tom Lehrer

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

  Jane Wagner

• 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.

  Eric Hoffer

• 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.

  Andrew Carnegie

• 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.

  Abraham Lincoln

• 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.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

• They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized.

  Eric Hoffer

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

  Anonymous

• You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

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

  Rosalynn Carter

All categories · Absence →