Quotes on Ability

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

Frankly I've never really subscribed to these adjectives tagging me as an 'icon', 'superstar', etc. I've always thought of myself as an actor doing his job to the best of his ability.

Making people laugh is a really fabulous thing because it means you're getting deep inside somebody, into their psyche, and their ability to look at themselves.

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.

Once I knew that I wanted to be an artist, I had made myself into one. I did not understand that wanting doesn't always lead to action. Many of the women had been raised without the sense that they could mold and shape their own lives, and so, wanting to be an artist (but without the ability to realize their wants) was, for some of them, only an idle fantasy, like wanting to go to the moon.

Lack of lawful access certainly affects our ability to do our jobs, but we know where the harm really falls when evidence is kept unavailable - it falls on innocent people, the people we're sworn to protect.

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

A great leader has the ability to instill within his people confidence in themselves.

When you lose the ability to step up and hit the ball as hard and as far as you want, that also affects your ability to will the ball to go where you want it to go, if you know what I mean.

I love what I do. I was given the most incredible gift that can be given to anyone. I could never imagine a world without music, and I feel grateful that I've been given the ability to share that.

Looting has an immense impact on our ability to understand our global cultural heritage; once these objects are gone, so too is our chance of piecing together humanity's shared story.

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength and idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner.

In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

Individually and collectively, Cherokee people possess an extraordinary ability to face down adversity and continue moving forward.

I had, by thirteen, developed a sort of Taoist hubris about my ability to control via non-control.

Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.