Quotes About Ability

If initiative is the ability to do the right thing, then efficiency is the ability to do the thing right.

— Kelly Miller

Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention.

— Whitney Moore Young, Jr.

The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.

— Confucius

It is a great ability to be able to conceal one’s ability.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Don’t let your will roar when your power only whispers.

— Thomas Fuller

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren.

— William Henry Hudson

One good head is better than a hundred strong hands.

— Thomas Fuller

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

— George Bernard Shaw

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.  If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war.  If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

— John Foster Dulles

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare.

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it.  What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it.  Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself--and thus make yourself indispensable.

— Andre Gide

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

— Laurence J. Peter

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

— Sam Rayburn

Don’t wish me happiness--I don’t expect to be happy...it’s gotten beyond that somehow.  Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor--I will need them all.

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.

— Damon Runyon