Quotes About Capacity

The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age.

Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes-which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification- which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.

The East German manages to combine a Teutonic capacity for bureauracy with a Russian capacity for infinite delay

We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy.

I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man's capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy. I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create.

Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein, who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. Part of the reason we went into Iraq was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.

The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.

What constrains or enables the capacity of human beings to work in groups is not so much the technology, but rather the capacity of the human brain to have and monitor social interactions.

The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain.

When war is waged, it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.

Forgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame-and pain-in a relationship...It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness...But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive.

In the mid-1980s, operating problems took [nuclear] plants off-line so often that, on an annual basis, they operated at only about 55 percent of their rated total generating capacity. Today, as a result of several decades of experience and an intense focus on performance ... nuclear plants in the United States operate at over 90 percent of capacity. That improvement in operating efficiently is so significant in its impact that it can almost be seen as a new source in electric power itself.

Without wilderness, we will eventually lose the capacity to understand America. Our drive, our ruggedness, our unquenchable optimism and zeal and elan go back to the challenges of the untrammeled wilderness.

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover.

We are beginning to realize that even the most fortunate people are living far below capacity, and that most human beings develop not more than a small fraction of their potential mental and spiritual efficiency. The human race, in fact, is surrounded by a large area of unrealized possibilities, a challenge to the spirit of exploration.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.

It's not leadership by position that allows people to succeed; it's the capacity to influence the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, and the actions of other human beings.

The more worrying feature of the new global corporate structures is their capacity to devastate national labour markets by transferring their operations to cheaper locations overseas.

You can become anything you want to be ... It's a matter of authority. Whatever a man's confidence, that's his capacity.

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

I felt that no boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside. And I think it was out of this experience, not at the moment consciously, but through the years, I came to believe that health services ought not to have a price tag on them, and that people should be able to get whatever health services they require irrespective of their individual capacity to pay.

The slight, the facile and the merely self-glorifying tend to drop away over the centuries, and what we are left with is the bedrock: Homer and Milton, the Greek tragedian and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Cervantes and Swift, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and James and Conrad. Time does not make their voices fainter, on the contrary, it reinforces our sense of their truth-telling capacity.

I believe that all women of working ages and physical capacity, regardless of income, should be expected to earn their livings either in or out of the home. Until this attitude prevails I believe the position of women will be uncertain and undignified, in spite of poetic rhapsodies to the contrary.

To work is not only a right, it is a duty. To work to the full capacity of one's powers is necessary for human development - the full use of one's best faculties - this is the health and happiness for both man and woman.

The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.

The schoolmaster is the person who takes the children off the parents' hands for a consideration. That is to say, he establishes a child prison, engages a number of employee schoolmasters as turnkeys, and covers up the essential cruelty and unnaturalness of the situation by torturing the children if they do not learn, and calling this process, which is within the capacity of any fool or blackguard, by the sacred name of Teaching.

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data -- i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.

The legacies that parents and church and teachers left to my generation of Black children were priceless but not material: a living faith reflected in daily service, the discipline of hard work and stick-to-itiveness, and a capacity to struggle in the face of adversity.

An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt.

Novels are political not because writers carry party cards -- some do, I do not -- but because good fiction is about identifying with and understanding people who are not necessarily like us. By nature all good novels are political because identifying with the other is political. At the heart of the 'art of the novel' lies the human capacity to see the world through others' eyes. Compassion is the greatest strength of the novelist.

What is possible for you in Christ Jesus depends on your capacity to believe.

If there's any country that has the capacity not to control North Korea, but to influence North Korea, it's still China. The Chinese always say they have very little influence. They have more than they say they do. We should put pressure on them to do it and there's finally, we're seeing the first signs of a little bit of Chinese disaffection. At some point they're getting tired of the antics of this country. This is a dangerous ally for China to have. And the more Chinese can pressure them and put the economic screws on them, the better it will be for everybody.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

I've always believed in God. I also think that's the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you're in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

Ever more people are alert to the challenge of global poverty and global warming. We know that solutions are at hand. We will not sleepwalk into catastrophe. We have the capacity to forsee and forestall, and I believe we will find the will to act

The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.

If my artist life didn't work or if I needed to work in some capacity part-time in something, I knew I'd have a real life skill [become a therapist].

The most important thing is to build local capacity, meaning train local forces, build the local defense institutions, defense ministries, command and control, because, in the long run, it is expected that local forces are stabilizing their own country, fighting terrorism themselves, instead of NATO deploying a large number of combat troops in combat operations.

But the key to our marriage is the capacity to give each other a break. And to realize that it's not how our similarities work together; it's how our differences work together.

Speakers are not supposed to waste time on platitudes, but the capacity of this generation for ignoring the obvious and concentrating on the negative and the obscure is immense.

I suppose I do believe that the greatest art consoles a wound that it creates, that art can give you the capacity to endure and respond to the pain it forces you to feel. Psychological pain, I mean.

if you wish to train yourself for higher executive positions, the first thing for you to decide is what you are training for. Ability to dominate or manipulate others? That ought to be easy enough, since most of the magazines advertise sure ways of developing something they call 'personality.' But I am convinced that the first essential of business success is the capacity for organized thinking.

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

For many, life has become more about what they can't do rather than what they can do. The truth, however, is that you are far greater than you think and have truly amazing potential. The key is to tap into your higher self and unleash your full capacity for success and happiness.