Competent Quotes - Page 12

• I was not a great ballhandler. I just worked very hard at it, and I got to be a good ballhandler-a competent ballhandler-but never a great ballhandler.

  Jerry West

  Hard

  Source: alanpaul.net

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• I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women.

  Hyman Rickover

  Teacher, Responsibility, Men

  "Energy Resources and Our Future". Remarks at a Banquet of the Annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association, www.resilience.org. May 14, 1957.

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• But in this country, while you have to be competent to pull off a terrorist attack, you don't have to be competent to cause terror. All you need to do is start plotting an attack and - regardless of whether or not you have a viable plan, weapons or even the faintest clue - the media will aid you in terrorizing the entire population.

  Bruce Schneier

  Country, Media, Population

  "Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot" by Bruce Schneier, www.wired.com. June 14, 2007.

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• There are a lot of reasons people don't talk about climate change. One of them has to do with the language of science, and people feeling not competent about this issue.

  Margaret D. Klein

  Issues, People, Feelings

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• You have people who know you are competent enough to do your job and then you have the ones that just hover around.

  Sarah Gadon

  Jobs, People, Enough

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Judging, Creative

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.334, Modern Library

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• The nation-state is becoming less and less competent to perform its international political tasks... These are some of the reasons pressing us to lead vigorously toward the true building of a new world order.

  Nelson Rockefeller

  Order, Nwo, Political

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• With software products, it is usual to find that the software has major `bugs' and does not work reliably for some users... The lay public, familiar with only a few incidents of software failure, may regard them as exceptions caused by exceptionally inept programmers. Those of us who are software professionals know better; the most competent programmers in the world cannot avoid such problems.

  David Parnas

  World, May, Bugs

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• After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age.

  Thomas Szasz

  Self, Discipline, Drug

  Thomas Szasz (1996). “Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market”, p.24, Syracuse University Press

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• Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Perfect, Mind, Language

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• A free society, to be truly worthy of that name, owes healthy, competent individuals the right to end their lives on their own terms.

  Jacob M. Appel

  Names, Healthy, Individual

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• You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Self Esteem, Men, Democracy

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• No man is competent to manage another.

  Edmund A. Opitz

  Men, Manage

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• The state is the only institution entitled to apply coercion and compulsion and to inflict harm upon individuals. This tremendous power cannot be abandoned to the discretion of some men, however competent and clever they may deem themselves. It is necessary to restrict its application. This is the task of the laws.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Clever, Men, Law

  Ludwig Von Mises (1969). “Bureaucracy”, ICON Group International

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• And it's a necessity [for journalists] to pretend to be competent on every subject, some of which they really do not understand. They are under that necessity, I regret; I'm sorry for them. But to pretend to understand all the things you write about, and habitually to write about things you do not understand, is a very corrupting thing.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Sorry, Regret, Writing

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• 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.

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• A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.

  John J. Pershing

  Leadership, Vision, Troops

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• He who knows how to teach a child is not competent for the oversight of a child's education unless he also knows how to train a child.

  Henry Clay Trumbull

  Children, Learning, Teach

  Henry Clay Trumbull (1893). “Hints on Child-training”

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• What's wrong with "the new elite?" Forget cultural insularity or smugness. The main problem with the "new elite" is that they're not an elite at all. That is, they aren't particularly smart, or competent.

  Glenn Reynolds

  Smart, Political, Smugness

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• One may have a right to be unconventional and even eccentric, so long as one is fully competent and a decent person; but one's ideal as a professor should be to conduct oneself as an admirable human being: just, kind, tolerant, competent, committed, and good-humored.

  Robert Audi

  Teaching, Long, Unconventional

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