Incapable Quotes - Page 9

• Our ordinary language has no means for describing a particular shade of color. Thus it is incapable of producing a picture of this color.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Mean, Color, Ordinary

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• The fact that John Prescott is being paid large sums of money to do little or nothing adds to the general malaise surrounding this government and the feeling that ministers are incapable of tackling serious issues.

  Vince Cable

  Government, Issues, Feelings

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• When information which properly belongs to the public is systematically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and -- eventually -- incapable of determining their own destinies.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Destiny, People, Ignorant

  Nixon, Richard M. (1974). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1972”, p.402, Best Books on

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• Horror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it.

  James De Mille

  Fear, Long, Feelings

  James De Mille (2015). “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder”, p.108, Booklassic

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• In a great nation, the majority are incapable of judging wisely of things.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Power, Judging, Majority

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• The whole [Scotch] nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.

  Horace Walpole

  Scotch, Void, Humour

  Horace Walpole (1866). “The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford”, p.67

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• The world has known only very few rebels. But now is the time: if humanity proves incapable of producing a large number of rebels, a rebellious spirit, then our days on the earth are numbered. We have to change our consciousness, create more meditative energy in the world, create more lovingness.

  Rajneesh

  Motivational, Numbers, Humanity

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• Cats never feel threatened. They are genetically incapable of accepting that anyone could possibly dislike anything as perfect as a cat.

  Kathy Young

  Cat, Perfect, Accepting

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• No age or condition is without its heroes . The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon , the least confused thinker its Socrates , the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare .

  George Bernard Shaw

  Confused, Hero, Age

  George Bernard Shaw (1968). “Four Plays by Bernard Shaw”, Pocket Books

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• To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Self Esteem, Men

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.364, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes - and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.

  Saul Bellow

  Emotional, People, Feelings

  Saul Bellow (2016). “It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future”, p.138, Odyssey Editions

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• Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth.

  M. King Hubbert

  Two, Growth, Culture

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• After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Butterfly, Age, Nero

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.459, Psychology Press

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• Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, School, Thinking

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• Nobody has ever been able to experience what they have thoroughly understood - or understand what they have experienced until they have achieved a detachment that renders them incapable of repeating the experience.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Understanding, Experience, Able

  Zelda Fitzgerald (1992). “The Collected Writings”, New York : Collier Books ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International

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• A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.

  William Safire

  Children, Able, Causes

  "On Language: The Wicked Which and the Comma" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. September 2, 1984.

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• Time is so fleeting that if we do not remember God in our youth, age may find us incapable of thinking of him.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Thinking, Age, Fleeting

  Hans Christian Andersen, Hal Betzold (1997). “Tales of Faith & Wonder: Stories of Christian Faith from a Master Storyteller”, Chariot Victor Pub

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• We see constituents who are manifestly incapable of undertaking any normal work... Those whose applications for benefits are subsequently rejected go through a period of incredible stress, and some, sadly, take their lives during that time. Applicants who appeal usually win.

  Jeremy Corbyn

  Stress, Winning, Benefits

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• The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Prayer, Men, Mind

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• The institution of Masonry ought to be abandoned as one capable of much evil, and incapable of producing any good which might not be affected by safe and open means.

  John Marshall

  Mean, Evil, Safe

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• Even when I can play Europe's most precious keyboard, to have to listen to people who don't understand, or do not want to understand, and who are incapable of grasping my intent, whatever I play, does surely forfeit my lust for playing at all.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Europe, Play, People

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• Why is the mind incapable of deciding its own subject matter? Why when we desperately want to think of one thing to we invariably think of another?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Thinking, Mind, Want

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• Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Men, Years, Tomorrow

  Mikhail Bulgakov (1967). “The master and Margarita [by] Mikhail Bulgakov”

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• The moment the organic unity of belief and behaviour is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Humanity, Unity, Behaviour

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• Perhaps the most incapable Executive that ever filled the presidential chair...it would be difficult to imagine a man less fit to guide the state with honor and safety through the stormy times that marked the opening of the present century.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Safety, Presidential

  Theodore Roosevelt (1987). “The Naval War of 1812, Or, The History of the United States Navy During the Last War with Great Britain: To which is Appended an Account of the Battle of New Orleans”, Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press

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