Quotations on Ability

Native ability without education is like a tree without fruit.

~ Unknown

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

~ George Bernard Shaw

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.

~ André Gide

There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.

~ Elbert Hubbard

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

~ Elbert Hubbard

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Laurence J. Peter

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

~ Bertrand Russell

One good head is better than a hundred strong hands.

~ Thomas Fuller

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

~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.

~ Confucius

The question "Who ought to be boss?" is like as "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.

~ Henry Ford

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 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 goverment is competence, because it's so rare.

~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.

~ Josh Billings

They are able because they think they are able.

~ Vergilius

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

~ Sir Francis Bacon

Everyone must row with the oars he has.

~ Proverbs

- English Proverb

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

~ Napoleon Bonaparte

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

~ Edward Hand

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

~ John Henry Newman

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.

~ John G. Pollard

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

~ Horace Walpole

The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

~ Edward Gibbon

- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire