Incapable Quotes - Page 18

• ...from schools to universities to research institutes, we teach about origins in disconnected fragments. We seem incapable of offering a unified account of how things came to be the way they are.

  David Christian

  School, Offering, Research

  David Christian (2011). “Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History”, p.2, Univ of California Press

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• Unfortunately the student often feels guilt for not living the type of life that their Teacher suggested, or they feel that they are intrinsically bad and incapable of leading a higher life.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Buddhism, Guilt

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• Lord Beaverbrook was fundamentally a lonely man, with a low sense of his own self-worth, who was incapable of forming a stable, loving relationship with anyone. He could charm or he could bully; he could give or he could take; he was glad to see his guests arrive and pleased to see them go. Although many people genuinely loved him, he was incapable of believing that this was either possible or true. No wonder he was so restless, so impatient, so vindictive, so quick to lose his temper, so eager to stir things up.

  David Cannadine

  Lonely, Believe, Self Worth

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• The reason territorial monarchs failed time after time against maritime powers was not that absolutist, non-consensual governments were incapable of building great fleets in peace - quite the reverse - but that they were unable to fund them in the crises of war. Mainly this was because they were forced to divert resources from the fleet to their armies, to fight territorial rivals frequently financed by their maritime enemy from the profits of sea trade.

  Peter Padfield

  War, Army, Fighting

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• Theism is so confused and the sentences in which "God" appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.

  A.J. Ayer

  Confused, Atheism, Impossible

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• The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer.

  A. A. Gill

  Cheating, Sex, Children

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• Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a binge but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.

  George William Foote

  Atheist, Ideas, Insulting

  "Who Are the Blasphemers? (June 1882)". "Flowers of Freethought". Book by George William Foote, p. 112, www.ftarchives.net. 1893.

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• There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of contrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men's conjectures into dogmas.

  C. E. M. Joad

  Believe, Men, Atheism

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• My personal life absolutely goes down the drain when I start working; that's something that I'm incapable of doing.

  Joaquin Phoenix

  Drains, Personal Life

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• People are great. But there's people who you get together with and you talk and you go away feeling energized, you feel inspired. And then there's people who you talk with and you go away feeling horrible, feeling drained, feeling like you're incapable of doing anything. Those people are psychic vampires and I now stay away from them.

  John Zorn

  Psychics, People, Feelings

  "At 60, 'Challenges Are Opportunities' For John Zorn". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, wbaa.org. September 3, 2013.

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• Any preacher who preaches beyond that which he has experienced is incapable of preaching with conviction.

  Billy Graham

  Conviction, Preacher, Preaching

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• 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

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Fear Nothing: A Novel”, p.169, Bantam

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• What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend.

  George Washington

  Wise, Taken, Character

  Letter to John Jay, August 15, 1786.

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• If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Government, Reform

  B. L. Rayner, Thomas Jefferson (1834). “Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait”, p.349

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• A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom. Just like right now with the whole mortgage crisis, I want to help people get back into their homes.

  Magic Johnson

  Home, Self, People

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• I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.

  William S. Burroughs

  Crazy, Thinking, Mind

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Nobody has ever been able to experience what they have thoroughly understood - or understand what they have experienced until they have achieved a detachment that renders them incapable of repeating the experience.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Understanding, Experience, Able

  Zelda Fitzgerald (1992). “The Collected Writings”, New York : Collier Books ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International

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• When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.

  Leigh Hunt

  Courage, Moral, Daring

  Leigh Hunt (1870). “Table-talk: To which are Added Imaginary Conversations of Pope and Swift”, p.63

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• Those who are incapable of shining out by dress would do well to consider that the contrast between them and their clothes turns out much to their disadvantage.

  William Shenstone

  Clothes, Shining, Dresses

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• If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied.

  Robert Graves

  Unexpected, Should, Found

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• I wish my life and decisions to depend upon myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not other men's, acts of will. I wish to be the subject, not an object...I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer - deciding, not being decided for, slef-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Men, Animal, Goal

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• Despite the fact that there's billions of dollars sitting in the Iraqi government reserves, somehow they are incapable of getting it out to the people. There are a very large number of people here who are on the edge of starvation. For those sort of people - a sizable chunk of people - that service makes them regard Muqtada as a sort of god.

  Patrick Cockburn

  Government, Numbers, People

  "Who Is Iraq’s 'Firebrand Cleric'?". Interview with Justin Elliott, www.motherjones.com. March 31, 2008.

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• I think the condition of imperial denial is a handicap because if you do not recognize that you are essentially performing the functions of an empire, you are incapable of learning from the mistakes of past empires.

  Niall Ferguson

  Mistake, Past, Thinking

  "Imperial Denial". Interview with Nonna Gorilovskaya, www.motherjones.com. May 21, 2004.

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• I have often felt as though I had inherited all the defiance and all the passions with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history. And at the same time I always felt so helpless and incapable of expressing these ardent passions even by a word or a poem.

  Sigmund Freud

  Passion, Sacrifice, Temples

  Sigmund Freud, Ernst L. Freud (1960). “Letters of Sigmund Freud”, p.202, Courier Corporation

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• Those who constantly qualify everything and have no opinions of their own are ultimately just as incapable of tolerance.

  Wolfgang Schauble

  Tolerance, Opinion

  "SPIEGEL Interview with Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble: 'We Have No Relationship to our Diverse Muslim Society'". Interview with Jan Fleischhauer and Holger Stark, www.spiegel.de. September 20, 2006.

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