Inability famous quotes

Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history. ... Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable

#Inability #Enough #Embellishment

I am pissed off at your insensitive inability to understand why I'm pissed off in the first place.
-- Ai Yazawa

#Pissed Off #Inability #Firsts

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap.
-- Alan Watts

#Intellectual #Inability #Accepting

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
-- Albert Allen Bartlett

#Race #Inability #Environment

The observation of others is coloured by our inability to observe ourselves impartially. We can never be impartial about anything until we can be impartial about our own organism.
-- Alfred Richard Orage

#Perspective #Inability #Observation

We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world's inability to protect and defend the innocent.
-- Angelina Jolie

#Thinking #Evil #Inability

It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.
-- Aristotle

#Men #Inability #Use

Your defeat is not only a reality, which has been historically proven time and again. It can also be seen in your helplessness and your inability to suppress the movement, in your desperate conduct when faced with our guerrillas and the vanguard of the people.
-- Ashraf Dehghani

#Reality #People #Inability

In opposition to the plenary ability taught by the Pelagians, the gracious ability of the Arminians, and the natural ability of the New School theologians, the Scriptures declare the total inability of the sinner to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God's sight
-- Augustus Hopkins Strong

#School #Sight #Inability

Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
-- Barbara Tuchman

#Views #Years #Inability

The fundamental problem most patients have is an inability to love themselves, having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives.
-- Bernie Siegel

#Acceptance #Inability #Fundamentals

Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.
-- Bette Davis

#Sex #Two #Inability

Jesus will brush aside your inabilities.
-- Bill Vaughan

#Jesus #Inability #Brushes

One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.
-- Billy Childish

#Lying #Inability #Problem

The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.
-- Blaise Pascal

#Men #Rooms #Inability

Economists say the inability to delay gratification is a primary predictor of economic failure in life.
-- Brian Tracy

#Inability #Delay #Economic

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.
-- C. S. Lewis

#Humility #Inability #Forget

It is very difficult to reconcile the American ideal of a sovereign people capable of owning and managing their own government with an inability to own and manage their own business.
-- Calvin Coolidge

#Government #People #Inability

Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.
-- Carl Rogers

#Men #Listening #Inability

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
-- Charles Bukowski

#Real #Sadness #Inability

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

#Inability #Faults #Pathology

Cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind. They realize...that we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplest and most explicit of directions.
-- Cleveland Amory

#Cat #Mind #Inability

As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind. They realize that, whether they like it or not, they are simply going to have to put up with what to them are excruciatingly slow mental processes, that we humans have embarrassingly low I.Q.'s, and that probably because of these defects, we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplist and most explicit of directions.
-- Cleveland Amory

#Cat #Mind #Inability

The failure to cultivate virtue, the failure to examine and analyze what I have learned, the inability to move toward righteousness after being shown the way, the inability to correct my faults-these are the causes of my grief.
-- Confucius

#Grief #Moving #Inability

Don't let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something.
-- Cory Booker

#Determination #Inability

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better
-- Daniel Berrigan

#Inability #Favors #May

Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.
-- Daniel Gilbert

#Inability #Riches #Poverty

I mean, I have moments of huge frustration because of my inability to express myself linguistically as clearly as I would like to.
-- David Gilmour

#Mean #Frustration #Inability

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.
-- David Hare

#Stupidity #Inability #Language

It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other.... For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.
-- David Levithan

#Race #Focus #Inability

God actually delights in exalting our inability. He intentionally puts his people in situations where they come face to face with their need for him.
-- David Platt

#People #Inability #Needs

A running theme in my life is my inability to say no to anything.
-- David Pogue

#Running #Inability #Life Is

The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.
-- Dean Koontz

#Quality #Inability #Details

To love in the sense of passion-love is the contrary of to live. It is an impoverishment of one's being, an askesis without sequel, an inability to enjoy the present without imagining it as absent, a never-ending flight from possession.
-- Denis de Rougemont

#Passion #Love Is #Inability

Stress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment.
-- Dr. John

#Stress #Inability #Environment

Departure from the literal aspect, rather than mechanical exactness, is the code of the true artist. However, departures are the result of studied intent rather than inability.
-- Edgar Alwin Payne

#Artist #Inability #Departure

I think the New Bohemians' inability to say no was a big part of our problem.
-- Edie Brickell

#Thinking #Inability #Problem

... clear thinking is not the characteristic which distinguishes our literature today. We are more and more caught up by the unintelligible. People like it. This argues an inability to think, or, almost as bad, a disinclination to think.
-- Edith Hamilton

#Thinking #People #Inability

Our inability to relate to one another is very, very, very important. When we don't have it, we get situations like Bosnia
-- Edward James Olmos

#Important #Inability #Bosnia

The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function.
-- Edward Teller

#Race #Inability #Extinction

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

#Inability #Levels #Problem

All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice.
-- Elliott Erwitt

#Photography #Technique #Inability

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.
-- Emile Zola

#Art #Inability #Boundaries

There's a tiredness of abstract inteligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor does it worry you like the tiredness of knowledge and emotion. It's a weightiness of the conscience of the world, an inability of the soul to breathe.
-- Fernando Pessoa

#Worry #Soul #Inability

My biggest concern for this generation is your inability to focus, especially in prayer.
-- Francis Chan

#Prayer #Focus #Inability

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

#Sobriety #Inability #Temperance

Our real illiteracy is our inability to create
-- Friedensreich Hundertwasser

#Real #Inability #Illiteracy

Actually, the inability of any society to resist immigration, the inability to find other solutions to the problem of employment at the lower, more physical, and menial levels of the economic process, is a serious weakness, and possibly even a fatal one, in any national society. The fully healthy society would find ways to meet those needs out of its own resources.
-- George F. Kennan

#Healthy #Weakness #Inability

Our inability to see the beauty doesn't suggest in the slightest that beauty is not there. Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with broad enough perspective to see the beauty.
-- Harold S. Kushner

#Beauty #Perspective #Inability

I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.
-- Henri Nouwen

#Hypocrisy #Community #Inability

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia
-- Hideki Tojo

#Japan #America #Inability

Inability is often the mother of restriction, and restriction is the great mother of inventive performance.
-- Holger Czukay

#Mother #Inability #Statistics

The source of my difficulties has always been the same: an inability to accept what to others seems natural, and an irresistible tendency to voice opinions no one wants to hear . . .
-- Isabel Allende

#Voice #Want #Inability

Sentimentality , the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
-- James A. Baldwin

#Inability #Emotion #Dishonesty

I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive.
-- James A. Baldwin

#Love Is #Thinking #Inability

Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.
-- James Thurber

#Death #Desire #Inability

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
-- Jean de la Bruyere

#Being Alone #Being Sad #Inability

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.
-- Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

#Inability #Speech #Tongue

I have since learned that the most mature believer is the one who is bent over, leaning most heavily on the Lord, and admitting his total inability to do anything without Christ. The greatest Christian is not the one who has achieved the most but rather the one who has received the most.
-- Jim Cymbala

#Christian #Inability #Admitting

I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.
-- Joe Wright

#Writing #Thinking #Inability

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.
-- John C. Maxwell

#Leadership #Decision #Inability

I sometimes wonder if the inability to find oneself makes one seek oneself in other people, in characters.
-- John Cazale

#Character #People #Inability

There's a certain pattern that exists with geniuses - an eccentricity, a lack of social graces and an inability to really communicate with mere mortals.
-- John Noble

#Grace #Inability #Genius

When you get saved, you get saved not because you deserve it, but because you simply let God save you and because you confess your own poor sinful state and your inability to save yourself.
-- John R. Rice

#Letting Go #Inspiration #Inability

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Majority #Inability

So this is it. You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in, with your ridiculous clothes and your bad jokes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt.
-- Jojo Moyes

#Heart #Clothes #Inability

What do we really want to say to the world? Three main themes. The inability to find completion in our modern society, the inability to find completion within ourselves, and the new way to be human in what Christ offers us - His love and His perfect plan of redemption for us.
-- Jon Foreman

#Perfect #Inability #Three

I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer

#Sorry #Important #Inability

One of the failings of ideologues is their inability to see that everyone else isn't necessarily an ideologue like them.
-- Josh Marshall

#Inability #Libertarian #Failing

Remember God is not surprised by your inabilities, your imperfections, or your faults.  He has always known everything about you that you are just now finding out, and he chose you on purpose for himself.
-- Joyce Meyer

#Imperfection #Inability #Purpose

The inability to listen and to depict in the countenance what others have said has spoiled many a good actress.
-- Julia Marlowe

#Inability #Actresses #Spoiled

As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God
-- Karl Barth

#Giving #Inability #Recognition

My music was my life, and it played a large part in my inability to sustain relationships.
-- Kenny Rogers

#Inability

The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes.
-- Kent Beck

#Team #Technology #Inability

Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.
-- Khaled Hosseini

#Ocean #Feelings #Inability

One of the chief features of incompetence was an inability to see it in oneself.
-- Kim Stanley Robinson

#Inability #Incompetence #Chiefs

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

#Becoming #Inability #Cards

To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this the inability to confront that which is.
-- L. Ron Hubbard

#Inability #Able #Unhappiness

This is always history's greatest failure, its inability to believe what it sees, what, almost always, someone sees.
-- Larry Kramer

#Believe #Inability

Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process.
-- Lawrence Lessig

#Long #Creative #Inability

Only when we try to love God will we see our utter inability to do so. And only when we understand that inability, will we begin to be in awe of His great love toward us.
-- Mike Donehey

#Great Love #Trying #Inability

I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.
-- Mikhail Bakunin

#Development #Inability #Details

The more I study the world, the more I am convinced of the inability of brute force to create anything durable.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

#World #Inability #Study

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#Inability #Outliers

Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.
-- Nhat Hanh

#Anxiety #Inability #Moments

There is no wilderness. There is only our inability to fill the emptiness in which we live ...
-- Octavian Paler

#Sad Life #Inability #Emptiness

The problem with incompetence is its inability to recognize itself.
-- Orrin Woodward

#Inability #Problem #Incompetence

Every day you preach to yourself a gospel of your loneliness, inability, and lack of resources or you faithfully preach to yourself the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
-- Paul David Tripp

#Jesus #Loneliness #Inability

I have an inability to enjoy things, but that's why we're in comedy. If we were happy, we wouldn't be funny, I guess.
-- Paul Feig

#Inability #Comedy #Enjoy

Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.
-- Paul Getty

#Inability #Economy #Notorious

The biggest threat to this country isn't the Russians. It's our own inability to make democracy or capitalism work.
-- Phil Donahue

#Country #Democracy #Inability

The only disease you have is your inability to see you have the power to heal yourself.
-- Ralph Smart

#Motivational #Disease #Inability

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.
-- Richard Sennett

#Inability #Obsession #Failing

Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.
-- Richard Yates

#Insane #Definitions #Inability

What a blessing to be alone with your thoughts when so many are alone with their inability to think.
-- Robert Breault

#Thinking #Blessing #Inability

There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as more.
-- Robert M. Hensel

#Inability #Disability #Persons

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.
-- Samuel Beckett

#Solitude #Inability #Three

Perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments - an inability to accept life as ongoing.
-- Sarah Manguso

#Anxiety #Might #Inability

Your inability to see yourself clearly is what's keeping you alive.
-- Sarah Silverman

#Inability #Alive

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 #Inability