Competent Quotes - Page 12

• We often treat children as if they're not very competent to do anything on their own. So we make them stop learning in a natural way - by exploring. Logo [the computer programming language ] allows them to find their way around the computer, as they would find their way around the house, uncontaminated by the bureaucracies of schools.

  Seymour Papert

  Children, School, House

  "Sunday Interview - Seymour Papert/ Computers in the Lives of Our Children/ an Mit Mathematician and Philosopher Is Exploring How Technology Can Educate the Next Generation - and Their Parents". www.sfgate.com. February 2, 1997.

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• More than half of all people filing income tax forms use someone else to prepare the forms for them. Then they have to sign under penalty of perjury that these forms are correct. But if they were competent to determine that, why would they have to pay someone else to do their taxes for them in the first place?

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Income, Use

  "Random Thoughts" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. June 13, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the real money in investment will have to be made as most of it has been in the past not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.

  Benjamin Graham

  Real, Mean, Past

  "The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing". Book by Benjamin Graham. Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 17, 1949.

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent ... It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Government, Liberty

  22 Copy quote

• I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way.

  Mark Twain

  Girl, Fall, Effort

  Mark Twain “Carnival of Crime in Ct”, Library of Alexandria

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Thinking, Government

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.384, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• How infinitely happier and more grateful is the whole personality or spirit when it finds something nourishing in art or writing or thinking, than the mere mind or intellect is: the kinship you celebrate in these personalities is your own dismembered Orpheus stumbling across another fine organ to rejoin to itself. I put it this way: aristic psyche loves itself enough to chasten itself, to put itself through boot camp for the sake of being competent for life, alive to life.

  Kenny Smith

  Life, Art, Grateful

  4 Copy quote

• From the Balkans to Africa, from Asia to the Middle East, we have witnessed the weakening or absence of effective governance leading to the ravaging of human rights and the abandonment of longstanding humanitarian principles. We need competent and responsible states to meet the needs of "we the peoples" for whom the UN was created. And the world's peoples will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights, the three pillars of the UN, are advanced together with equal vigour.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Rights, Together, East

  25 Copy quote

• I think the fault is more with historicists who have stubbornly failed to develop a good theory of historicity. By simply resting on the feeble laurels of prima facie plausibility ('Jesus existed because everyone said so') and subjective notions of absurdity ('I can't believe Jesus didn't exist!'), the existence of Jesus has largely been taken for granted, even by competent historians who explicitly try to argue for it.

  Earl Doherty

  Jesus, Believe, Taken

  8 Copy quote

• Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

  Lee Simonson

  Education, Events, Favourite

  7 Copy quote

• In business, integrity is just as important as in any of the great public offices... but I believe one of the first and fundamental obligations of competent business leadership is above all to protect the reputation and integrity of the business - to that degree the integrity of the business is the integrity of the leader.

  Peter Cosgrove

  Leadership, Integrity, Believe

  14 Copy quote

• All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

  Jimmy Carter

  Honesty, Government, People

  125 Copy quote

• Pat has been instrumental in what we've done here so far and the most selfish thing for me is that I want to see what we've done placed in the hands of the most competent person, and that's Pat. No one would come close to being able to continue to build on what we've done here so far like he will.

  Bobby Knight

  Basketball, Selfish, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• When what is is congruent to what is supposed, the reaction is functional and the mental processes competent. When what is and what is supposed have nothing to do with each other, the choice of reactions is random. Something tears.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Choices, Tears, Reactions

  Samuel R. Delany (2013). “City of a Thousand Suns”, p.45, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The twentieth century saw an amazing development of scholarship and criticism in the humanities, carried out by people who were more intelligent, better trained, had more languages, had a better sense of proportion, and were infinitely more accurate scholars and competent professional men than I. I had genius. No one else in the field known to me had quite that.

  Northrop Frye

  Intelligent, Men, People

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham (2004). “Northrop Frye unbuttoned: wit and wisdom from the notebooks and diaries”, Gnomon Distribution

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Exchanging blows generously, which is not uncommon in some other martial arts, is unthinkable in Shaolin philosophy, because a Shaolin disciple always assumes that an opponent is competent and able to inflict damage with just one blow.

  Wong Kiew Kit

  Art, Philosophy, Blow

  Wong Kiew Kit (2002). “The Art of Shaolin Kung Fu: The Secrets of Kung Fu for Self-Defense, Health, and Enlightenment”, p.73, Tuttle Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use.

  Herbert Spencer

  Average, Trying, Citizens

  Herbert Spencer (1858). “Essays--scientific, political and speculative”, p.324

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• You have to have competent people evaluating the athlete, not the housewives!

  Bela Karolyi

  Athlete, Gymnastics, People

  19 Copy quote

• Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Bible, God, Religious

  Abraham Lincoln (2011). “Lincoln on the Civil War: Selected Speeches”, p.44, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sexism is so five minutes ago. I think for the most part, people accept that women are as competent as men.

  Katie Couric

  Inspirational, Men, Thinking

  17 Copy quote

• The acid test for any theology is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved, heart, soul, mind, and strength? ... If it fails to set a lovable God--a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being--before ordinary people, we have gone wrong

  Dallas Willard

  Heart, People, Soul

  9 Copy quote

• There is nothing miraculous about puzzles. Competent mentalism is miraculous.

  Max Maven

  Miraculous, Puzzles

  12 Copy quote

• If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled.

  John Quincy Adams

  Wise, Government, Doubt

  John Quincy Adams, Kenneth V. Jones, United States. President (1825-1829 : Adams) (1970). “John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848; chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”, Oceana Pubns

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students.

  Paulo Freire

  Teacher, Teaching, People

  Paulo Freire (2000). “Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage”, p.64, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and are unable to distinguish between honest emotional reactions and sentimental approaches to life, you will never write a competent short story.

  Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien

  Writing, Character, Emotional

  8 Copy quote