Inability Quotes - Page 12

• The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

  Albert Allen Bartlett

  Race, Environmental, Exponential Growth

  "Arithmetic, Population and Energy". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2002.

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• The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life considered absurd and contradictory. This poverty is widespread today, in very different forms in the materially rich as well as the poor countries. The inability of joy presupposes and produces the inability to love, produces jealousy, avarice - all defects that devastate the life of individuals and of the world. This is why we are in need of a new evangelization - if the art of living remains an unknown, nothing else works... this art can only be communicated by [one] who has life - he who is the Gospel personified.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Country, Art

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• There are no philosophical problems, there is only a suite of interconnected linguistic cul de sacs created by language's inability to reflect the truth.

  Victor Pelevin

  Philosophical, Language, Problem

  "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf". Book by Victor Pelevin, 2008.

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• The corn that is B something 5 corn thats been genetically altered in the United States, it cant reproduce but it has huge kernels, its very sweet and its wonderful but the winds have blown this across into Mexico. And so the Mexican corn is being infected with the inability to reproduce.

  Nick Nolte

  Sweet, Wind, Mexican

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• If I’m a young black man in South Central L.A., where poverty is rampant and unemployment is skyrocketing, I see that Washington’s promises of a year ago have gone unfulfilled, I see that perhaps for a second time, the court’s inability to mete out justice in a blind fashion, why shouldn’t I vent my anger?

  Bryant Gumbel

  Fashion, Men, Years

  "The Race Card as Get Out of Jail Free Card: The 'Why Shouldn’t I?' Defense". "Today", archive.mrc.org. April 15, 1993.

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• The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.

  Simone Weil

  Spiritual, Block, Real

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.189, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Finding happiness is not as simple as having good friends or a full social life. The crunch issue is our ability, or inability, to find within ourselves a sense of meaning or deeper purpose, something not found in everyday life.

  Mark Vernon

  Spiritual, Good Friend, Simple

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• Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.

  Thomas Paine

  Government, Design, World

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.16, Penguin

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• A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age.

  Robert Benchley

  Birthday, Fall, Men

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• There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief — a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

  George Eliot

  Beauty, Crush, Baby

  "Adam Bede".

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• B*tch: a reflection of people’s lack of creativity & inability to acknowledge & embrace a powerful woman; a woman who won’t comply.

  Kelly Cutrone

  Powerful, Creativity, Reflection

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• This inability to engage in debate or handle disagreement is becoming the calling card of the left.

  Kirsten Powers

  Cards, Calling, Becoming

  "Fox News’ evangelical Democrat: An interview with Kirsten Powers". Interview withJonathan Merritt, religionnews.com. April 10, 2013.

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• I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls.

  Haven Kimmel

  Sports, Passion, Athlete

  Haven Kimmel (2002). “A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana”, p.127, Broadway Books

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• Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives.

  Tony Judt

  People, Alternatives, Imagine

  Tony Judt (2010). “The Memory Chalet”, p.96, Penguin

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• I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Religious, Distance, Ignorance

  Barbara Brown Taylor (2011). “Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith”, p.224, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• One of the chief features of incompetence was an inability to see it in oneself.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Incompetence, Chiefs, Oneself

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2009). “Galileo's Dream”, p.380, Spectra

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• I'm a Pisces, and Pisces have this weird inability to be completely spontaneous. We're too conscious of our actions. I've always been way too sensible for my own good.

  Billy Corgan

  Our Actions, Way, Pisces

  "Smashing Pumpkins: SPIN’s ‘Mellon Collie’ Cover Story, ‘Zero Worship’". Interview with Craig Marks, www.spin.com. October 23, 2015.

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• The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels.

  Eli Broad

  Levels, Problem, Stage Managers

  Eli Broad (2012). “The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking”, p.42, John Wiley & Sons

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• But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.

  Mark Nepo

  Hurt, Giving Up, Reality

  FaceBook post by Mark Nepo from May 22, 2012

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• Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Vacation, Pleasure Seeking, Relax

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• All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is"... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol-all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics.

  John D. Barrow

  God, Spiritual, Littles

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• I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity, to name a few.

  Brené Brown

  Creativity, Black And White, Love Is

  "Living Brave". Interview with Mary Sykes Wylie, Rich Simon, www.psychotherapynetworker.org. September, 2016.

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• This time I m not going to tell you a story. I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there.

  Paulo Coelho

  Country, Ideas, Insanity

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• The coward’s fear of death stems in large part from his incapacity to love anything but his own body. The inability to participate in others’ lives stands in the way of his developing any inner resources sufficient to overcome the terror of death. — J. Glenn Gary, The Warriors

  Sebastian Junger

  Warrior, Coward, Overcoming

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• The inability to grasp the pathology* of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.

  Chris Hedges

  Faults, Pathology, Rulers

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