Human Capacity Quotes

• The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.

  Jodi Picoult

  Believe, Bamboo, Firsts

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper - Movie Tie-In: A Novel”, p.196, Simon and Schuster

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• The capability of human life is beyond our imagination. What counts is the human capacity to investigate and transform our own mind and the world around us in a powerful and positive direction.

  Gelek Rimpoche

  Powerful, Imagination, Mind

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• We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome.

  Isabel Allende

  Strong, War, People

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• Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Peace, Kings

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.115, Beacon Press

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• Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

  J. K. Rowling

  Inspirational, Imagination, Innovation

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• Imagination is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

  J. K. Rowling

  Imagination, Humans, Power Of Imagination

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• Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Love You, Men, Yield

  Mahatma Gandhi (1977). “Collected Works”

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• Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Knowledge, Capacity, Humans

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• Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Errors, Government, Challenges

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• And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious.

  David Hume

  Strong, Pain, Philosophy

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.306

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• Prayer begins where human capacity ends.

  Marian Anderson

  Christian, Peace, Prayer

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• The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Execution, Overcoming

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• The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves

  Stephen Hawking

  People, Guilt, Way

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• While we may continue to use the words
  smart and stupid, and while IQ tests may
  persist for certain purposes, the monopoly
  of those who believe in a single general
  intelligence has come to an end. Brain
  scientists and geneticists are documenting
  the incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses.

  Howard Gardner

  Smart, Stupid, Believe

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• I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our concept of the richness in human capacity.

  Ken Robinson

  Believe, Capacity, Hope For The Future

  "Do schools kill creativity?". The TED Interview, www.ted.com. February, 2006.

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• The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.

  Michael Shermer

  Self, Belief, Capacity

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.136, Henry Holt and Company

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• The freedom and human capacities of individuals must be developed to their maximum but individual powers must be linked to democracy in the sense that social betterment must be the necessary consequence of individual flourishing.

  Henry Giroux

  Democracy, Individual Power, Social

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• The sorcery and charm of imagination, and the power it gives to the individual to transform his world into a new world of order and delight, makes it one of the most treasured of all human capacities.

  Frank Barron

  Order, Giving, Imagination

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• An atmosphere of trust, love, and humor can nourish extraordinary human capacity. One key is authenticity: parents acting as people, not as roles.

  Marilyn Ferguson

  Keys, People, Parent

  Marilyn Ferguson (1987). “The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s”, Tarcher

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• Other animals can make sounds, and sounds can indicate pleasure and pain. But language, a distinctly human capacity, isn´t just for registering pleasure and pain. It´s about declaring what is just and what is unjust, and distinguishing right from wrong. We don´t grasp these things silently, and then put words to them; language is the medium through which we discern and deliberate about the good.

  Michael Sandel

  Pain, Animal, Sound

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• Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.

  Ron Suskind

  Stress, Suffering, Stuff

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• Think with your heart. See with your heart. Hear with your heart. Feel with your heart. Act with your hear. Speak with your heart. For love is the highest, most powerful, durable human capacity.

  Robert Muller

  Powerful, Attitude, Heart

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• In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.

  Katherine Dunn

  Struggle, Survival, Tools

  FaceBook post by Katherine Dunn from Sep 02, 2012

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• As we enter the 21st Century it is clear that we have entered an unprecedented global age in which our diverse cultures, religions, philosophies, worldviews and perspectives encounter one another in the marketplace of our global village. It is now clear that our future sustainability on this planet calls for radical advances in our rational and human capacities to negotiate the powerful forces between worlds as the human family moves towards a sustainable global civilization.

  Ashok Gangadean

  Powerful, Philosophy, Moving

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• What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.

  Margaret Mead

  Acceptance, Justice, Awareness

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