Deficiency Quotes

• Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.

  Helen Keller

  Inspirational, Patience, Acceptance

  Helen Keller (1920). “Out of the Dark: Essays, Lectures, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision”

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• A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or he may be in Church and be aware of God; but if he is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in all things and places, and is willing to give Himself everywhere so far as lies in Him... He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere.

  Meister Eckhart

  Prayer, Lying, Men

  Meister Eckhart (2007). “Meister Eckhart's Sermons”, p.21, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Deficiency motivation doesn't work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

  Wayne Dyer

  Life, Happiness, Spiritual

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• My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.

  Douglas Adams

  Funny, Humor, Doctors

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts Volume 2: The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases”, p.42, Pan Macmillan

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• However, we do not lack anti-terrorist laws. I do not believe that the recent London bombs were the result of any deficiencies in our legal system.

  Kenneth Clarke

  Believe, Law, Bombs

  "Full text: Kenneth Clarke's speech", www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2005.

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• Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Imbalance, Rooms, Gains

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• You can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.

  Linus Pauling

  Disease, Nutrition, Wellness

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• We learn by our problems. We correct our deficiencies if there are any.

  Joe Arpaio

  Problem, Ifs

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• I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It's called expatriate

  James Hillman

  America, Long, Expatriates

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• In a sense, what we do with the regional development agencies is to give them resources to look at the deficiencies in the economy in the regional areas, so they can address themselves to that.

  John Prescott

  Agency, Giving, Looks

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• Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Memories, Imagination, Life Is

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Reading, Complaining

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.261, Univ of California Press

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• Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies not only is the death-blow dealt here for the first time to 'teleology' in the natural sciences, but their rational meaning is empirically explained.

  Karl Marx

  Struggle, Book, Science

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1942). “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: selected correspondence, 1846-1895: with explanatory notes”

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• Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an overly rigorous control of an insignificant variable and a widespread deficiency in the framing of pertinent questions. Investigators seem to have settled for what is measurable instead of measuring what they would really like to know.

  Edmund Pellegrino

  Knowledge, Science, Data

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• Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

  Wayne Dyer

  Gratitude, Appreciate, Who You Are

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• The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.

  J. William Fulbright

  Feelings, Excess, Asia

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.32, Random House

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• The terms "idiot" and "lunatic" were acceptable diagnostic terms in England up until 1959. "Imbecile" and "feeble-minded person" were, likewise, listed as official categories in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. England has always lagged a bit behind in discarding outdated terms for the disadvantaged. When I was there in 1980, it was still possible to shop for used clothing at the local Spastic Shop. That is, compared to the United States, where it takes, oh, about twenty-five minutes for a diagnostic euphemism to become a conversational faux pas.

  Mary Roach

  Imbeciles, England, Twenties

  Mary Roach (2010). “Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife”, p.56, Canongate Books

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• But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.

  John Stuart Mill

  Individuality, Excess, Individualism

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.197, Hackett Publishing

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• Fortunately the Italian people has not yet accustomed itself to eat many times a day, and possessing a modest level of living, it feels deficiency and suffering less.

  Benito Mussolini

  Italian, People, Suffering

  "Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy". Book by Carol F. Helstosky, 2006.

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• Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.

  Jane Austen

  Men, Body, Information

  Jane Austen (2006). “8 Books in 1: Jane Austen's Complete Novels. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady Susan, and Love an”, p.307, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Ideas, Doe

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• Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Two, Vices

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• The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.

  Walter Bagehot

  Knowing, People, Mind

  Walter Bagehot (1858). “Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen”, p.337

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• If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Talent, Ability, Industry

  'Discourses on Art' (ed. R. Wark, 1975) no. 2 (11 December 1769)

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• I cannot separate the finances of India from those of England. If the finances of the Indian Government receive any severe and irreparable check, will not the resources of England be called upon to meet the emergency, and to supply the deficiency?

  Richard Cobden

  Government, India, Emergencies

  Richard Cobden (1870). “Speeches on Questions of Public Policy”, p.392

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