Best Inability Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation.”

“Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That He can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with Him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.”

“Several people have told me that my inability to suffer fools gladly is one of my main weaknesses.”

People Suffering Fool Weakness Inability

Author:Edsger Dijkstra

“Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.”

Years Lasts Views Common Modern Century Disease Impulse Historian Rulers Last Year Inability Malfunction Richard Ii

Author:Barbara Tuchman

“Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god.”

“Departure from the literal aspect, rather than mechanical exactness, is the code of the true artist. However, departures are the result of studied intent rather than inability.”

Artist Results Aspect Code Inability Competence Literal Departure True Artists Exactness

Author:Edgar Alwin Payne

“Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.”

Economy Industry Profit Inability Notorious

Author:Paul Getty

“No one can mock your meagre achievements or inability to accomplish the simplest of tasks, if they remain figments of your imagination. You can revel, again and again, in the glory of a fairy tale doomed never to appear in reality.”

Ifs Reality Imagination Achievement Glory Tasks Accomplish Tales Fairy Fairy Tale Again And Again Doomed Simplest Inability Mock Figments

Author:Chris Murray

“In today's life, the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and triumph is now conquered almost by the same means by which you conquer internment in an asylum: the inability to think, amorality and hiperexcitation.”

Thinking World Mean Today Stupid Conquer Triumph Inability Asylums Insensitive Internment Amorality

Author:Fernando Pessoa

“All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.”

Source: Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of

“What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction”

Source: Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)

“What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.”

Thinking Way Long Two Enough Answers Assuming Endless Familiar Granted Merit Inability Taking Things For Granted

Author:Eric Hoffer

“As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind. They realize that, whether they like it or not, they are simply going to have to put up with what to them are excruciatingly slow mental processes, that we humans have embarrassingly low I.Q.'s, and that probably because of these defects, we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplist and most explicit of directions.”

Knows Mind Humans Wells Process Realizing Lows Cat Enormous Limitation Length Human Mind Defects Inability Explicit Infuriating

Book:The cat who came for Christmas ; The cat and the curmudgeon ; The best cat ever

Source: The cat who came for Christmas ; The cat and the curmudgeon ; The best cat ever

“This absence of similarity among military questions naturally brings out the inability of memory to solve them; also the sterility of invariable forms, such as figures, geometrical drawings ( épures ), plans ( schémas ), etc. One only right solution imposes itself:;: namely, the application, varying according to circumstances, of fixed principles.”

Form Memories Principles Plans Military Figures Circumstances Solutions Solve Absence Drawing Fixed Etc Application Inability Similarity

Book:The Principles of War

Source: The Principles of War

“Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks.”

Source: Film as Art

“I mean, I have moments of huge frustration because of my inability to express myself linguistically as clearly as I would like to.”

Mean Moments Huge Frustration Inability

Author:David Gilmour

“I think what drove me away from being a reporter was an inability to accept that the world came in neat stories. Every story you have to report is just part of something bigger. The news isn't what happened last night - it's some cumulative thing that's happened over centuries. I found it hard to think of one event and drag it out of a bubbling pot and present it as the story that explains it all.”

Thinking World Hard Stories Lasts Night Found Accepting Happened Century Events News Bigger Reports Pot Drag Reporters Inability Last Night Neat Cumulative

Author:Terry Pratchett

“The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.”

Source: A History of Science: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece

“All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers.”

Thinking Men Years America Speak Given Black My Own Results Four Serious Exercise Court Injustice Jail Chicago Four Years Peers Behalf Inability Jury Court System

Author:Bobby Seale

“The world was sick, and the ills from which it was suffering were mainly due to the perversion of man, his inability to live at peace with himself. The microbe was no longer the main enemy; science was sufficiently advanced to be able to cope with it admirably. If it were not for such barriers as superstition, ignorance, religious intolerance, misery and poverty.”

Ifs Men World Able Suffering Religious Enemy Poverty Ignorance Sick Misery Dues Barriers Superstitions Intolerance Inability Perversion Religious Intolerance Microbes

Author:Brock Chisholm

“Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goals.”

Long Artist Courses Goal Careers Achieve Periods Skills Frustration Improving Inability Perfectionist

Book:Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity

Source: Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity

“Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says.”

“The speed of the human mind is remarkable. So is its inability to face the obvious.”

Mind Humans Faces Obvious Speed Denial Remarkable Human Mind Inability

Book:The Gospel Of Judas

Source: The Gospel Of Judas

“Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.”

Should Said Self Facts Age Together Middle Connections Opposites Sake Accomplish Absence Curious Code Destructive Leisure Inability Idleness Middle Ages Restlessness Self Destructive

Author:Josef Pieper

“The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.”

Persons Reason Able Individual Church Ability Weakness Institutions Threat Rationality Inability Teachable Individual Strength

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly.”

People Ifs Knows Feels Watches Balance Higher Safe Demand Authority Conservative Factors Inability Assured Deliberate Contributing Orderly Imports Reluctance

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“If Apple has a flaw, it's the inability of the company to crush competition using the kind of aggressive tactics that companies like Microsoft and Intel have always applied.”

Ifs Kind Company Competition Apples Crush Flaws Aggressive Inability Tactics Microsoft

Author:John C. Dvorak

“Pattern recognition and association make up the core of our thought. These activities involve millions of operations carried out in parallel, outside the field of our consciousness. If AI appeared to hit a brick wall after a few quick victories, it did so owing to its inability to emulate these processes.”

“Las Vegas was and is a hard town that will make you pay for your inability to restrain your desires.... If you have a weakness, Las Vegas will punish you.”

Ifs Hard Desire Pay Weakness Towns Inability Vegas Las Vegas

Book:Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-first Century

Source: Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-first Century

“If Jesus ever commanded us to do something that He was unable to equip us to accomplish, He would be a liar. And if we make our own inability a stumbling block or an excuse not to be obedient, it means that we are telling God that there is something which He has not yet taken into account.”

Ifs Mean Would Be Jesus Taken Accounts Excuse Accomplish Block Liars Inability Obedient Stumbling Stumbling Blocks

Book:My Utmost for His Highest

Source: My Utmost for His Highest

“I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.”

Ifs Thinking Problem Certain Love Is Alive Changed Terror Touched Mask Inability Inability To Love

Author:James A. Baldwin

“Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view... The best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse.”

Way Important Causes Views Objects Ignorance Appreciate Spread Point Of View Aids Best Way Misunderstanding Inability Intercourse Systematic Doings General Knowledge

Author:Nikola Tesla

“Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.”

Moments Might Accepting Anxiety Inability Ongoing Fixation

Author:Sarah Manguso

“The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.”

Humans Human Beings Quality Mouths Species Details Scales Tendencies Conspiracy Panic Sane Incapable Inability Defining Sustaining Inattention

Book:Fear Nothing: A Novel

Source: Fear Nothing: A Novel

“the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles. ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.”

“Jesus will brush aside your inabilities.”

Jesus Brushes Inability

Author:Bill Vaughan

“it is only on posters and in advertisement pages that Americans have those chubby cheeks, expanding smiles, smooth looks, and faces flushed with well-being. In fact, almost all are at odds with themselves; drink offers a remedy for this inner malady of which boredom is the most usual sign: as drinking is accepted by society, it does not appear as a sign of their [Americans'] inability to adapt themselves; it is rather the adapted form of inadaptability.”

“Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.”

Source: And so it goes

“Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.”

Two Reason Three Sex Behinds Failing Higher Communicate Fourth Bathroom Inability Inability To Communicate

Book:This 'n That

Source: This 'n That

“Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.”

People Firsts Hard Philosophy Evil Difficult Silence Talking Produce Conversation Disease Cures Remedy Inability Talkative

Book:Plutarch's Complete Works

Source: Plutarch's Complete Works

“Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.”

“The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon.”

Thinking World Needs Faces Found Future Responsible Sacred Arise Hopelessness Inability Here And Now Live In The Present Hopes Up

Book:Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places

Source: Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places

“My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.”

Mind Language Failing Thirds Sentences Principal Desks Inability Parallels Baths Spontaneity Nuisance Second Thoughts

Author:Vladimir Nabokov

“Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history. ... Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone.”

Humans Wells Enough Force Impulse Strongest Simplest Inability Human History Consuming Irresistible Embellishment

Book:ARCHITECTURE, ANYONE?

Source: ARCHITECTURE, ANYONE?

“... clear thinking is not the characteristic which distinguishes our literature today. We are more and more caught up by the unintelligible. People like it. This argues an inability to think, or, almost as bad, a disinclination to think.”

People Thinking Today Literature Clear Caught Arguing Characteristics Caught Up Inability Clear Thinking

Book:The Ever-Present Past

Source: The Ever-Present Past

“Economists say the inability to delay gratification is a primary predictor of economic failure in life.”

Economic Primaries Delay Economist Inability Gratification Failure In Life

Author:Brian Tracy

“Your defeat is not only a reality, which has been historically proven time and again. It can also be seen in your helplessness and your inability to suppress the movement, in your desperate conduct when faced with our guerrillas and the vanguard of the people.”

People Has Beens Reality Movement Defeat Desperate Proven Inability Helplessness Guerrillas Vanguard

Author:Ashraf Dehghani

“The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed.”

“The idea that money brings power and independence is an illusion. What money usually brings is the need for more money - and there is a shabby and pathetic powerlessness that comes with that need. The inability to risk new lives, new work, new styles of thought and experience, is more often than not tied to the bourgeois fear of reducing one's material standard of living. That is, indeed, to be owned by possessions, to be governed by a sense of property rather than by a sense of self.”

“Question of "Where We Begin" turns to be not only a formal question but also a question central to the attempt to make sense of things about which it is very difficult to make any sense - illness, death, despair, suicides, cruelty, the various troubles love can provoke, our inability to really know one another when we our inner selves are walled off by our bodies.”

Knows Self Body Turns Difficult Trouble Despair Suicide Illness Various Cruelty Make Sense Provoking Formal Inability Inner Self

Author:Kyle Minor

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Inability Quotes