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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• Emotion is not opposed to reason. Emotions guide and manage thought in fundamental ways and complement the deficiencies of thinking.

  Les Greenberg

  Inspirational, Thinking, Fundamentals

  "Should You Feel or Flee Your Emotions?" by Lisa Firestone, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 26, 2016.

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• Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

  William Hazlitt

  Real, Humility, Modesty

  William Hazlitt (1848). “The Miscellaneous Works”, p.108

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• I like to do projects in which you can see statistical results. I am very happy for all these small children, who have been the biggest group of victims of iodine deficiency.

  Anatoly Karpov

  Children, Iodine, Groups

  "Anatoly Karpov speaks his mind". Interview with Hartmut Metz, en.chessbase.com. July 6, 2005.

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• Bulgaria is the first state that has been awarded for its excellent fight against iodine deficiency by UNICEF.

  Anatoly Karpov

  Fighting, Iodine, Firsts

  "Anatoly Karpov speaks his mind". Interview with Hartmut Metz, en.chessbase.com. July 6, 2005.

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• Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap

  Jacques Barzun

  Swings, Intellectual, Privilege

  Jacques Barzun (1959). “The House of Intellect”

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• It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Real, Faults, Individual

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (2012). “The Philosophy of History”, p.36, Courier Corporation

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• In all nations an exceptional man exists that compensates the deficiencies of the remainder. In those moments, when humanity is found collectively in a state of decadence, there always remain those exceptional beings as point of reference.

  Augusto Roa Bastos

  Men, Humanity, States

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• In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?

  Mary McCarthy

  Class, Humanity, Suffering

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• The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

  David Antin

  Memories, Anxiety, Greek

  "A Conversation with David Antin". Book by David Antin, Charles Bernstein, 2002.

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• As a matter of fact, you have deficiencies in all religions, but you have truth in all religions.

  Hans Kung

  Matter, Facts, Matter Of Fact

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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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• It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it be a hundred and one different things, God has always one sufficient answer, His Son Jesus Christ, and he is the answer to every need.

  Watchman Nee

  Jesus, Son, Doe

  Watchman Nee (2009). “The Normal Christian Life”, p.143, CLC Publications

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

  Wayne Dyer

  Gratitude, Appreciate, Who You Are

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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