Competent Quotes

• A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sad, Jealousy, Knowledge

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.236, Penguin

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.

  John Carmack

  Clever, Years, Law

  GameSpy.com Interview with Tom Ham, January 2004.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Men, Activity, Consistently

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am, as I've said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.

  Billy Joel

  Birthday, Insecurity, Age

  33 Copy quote

• All highly competent people continually search for ways to keep learning, growing, and improving. They do that by asking WHY. After all, the person who knows HOW will always have a job, but the person who knows WHY will always be the boss.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Jobs, Asking Why, People

  109 Copy quote

• There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.

  Peter Drucker

  Believe, Hard Work, Men

  7 Copy quote

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

  Laurence J. Peter

  Beauty, Truth, Work

  Laurence J. Peter, Raymond Hull (1969). “The Peter Principle”

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science for the few who are competent to practice it. It depends on correct organisation and above all, on communications.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Communication, Practice, Revolution

  6 Copy quote

• You cannot trust Jesus in areas in which you don't think him competent.

  Dallas Willard

  Jesus, Thinking, Areas

  55 Copy quote

• Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Fall, Physicians, Culture

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness”, p.85, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you sign with a label, they do insist upon certain rights, and if you have a competent attorney, your rights will be protected.

  Tommy Shaw

  Rights, Insecurity, Labels

  Interview with A-J Charron, www.guitarnoise.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I'm really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren't competent readers coming out of middle school, it's really going to be hard for them in high school.

  James Patterson

  School, Kids, People

  "Surviving Summer Camp In James Patterson's 'Middle School'". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. June 22, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.

  Neal Stephenson

  Real, People, Needs

  10 Copy quote

• A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Married, Natural

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.

  T. S. Eliot

  Communication, Simple, Reality

  12 Copy quote

• As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it.

  Ambrose Bierce

  School, Ignorance, Mean

  Ambrose Bierce (2015). “A Cynic Looks at Life”, p.7, Sheba Blake Publishing

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge--Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve--Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

  Ayn Rand

  Honesty, Integrity, Self Esteem

  4 Copy quote

• Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.

  Ralph Nader

  Law, Innocent Person, Perfect

  "Meet the Press" Interview, June 25, 2000.

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.' Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?' That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.

  David Eddings

  Book, Men, Looks

  9 Copy quote

• Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

  George Orwell

  War, Party, Intelligent

  George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.416, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.

  Henri Nouwen

  Discovery, Painful, Theological

  6 Copy quote

• Justice Ginsburg is a very competent justice, and it is a joy to have her on the court, but particularly for me it is a pleasure to have a second woman on the court.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Justice, Joy, Insecurity

  7 Copy quote

• The Faces do not, as some have recently alleged, play badly. They are more than competent, especially at creating a mid-Sixties Rolling Stones-styled groove, as their excellent version of 'Memphis' proves.

  Jon Landau

  Play, Creating, Rolling

  17 Copy quote

• It is by now beyond question that Elton John is a competent and classy entertainer. Few people who have achieved his popularity have succeeded in maintaining his standards for performance and professionalism.

  Jon Landau

  People, Maintaining, Professionalism

  4 Copy quote

• I am constitutionally competent to contest the elections.

  Benazir Bhutto

  Election, Contests

  Interview With Zahid Hussain, newslinemagazine.com. July 2002.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source