Incapable Quotes - Page 25

• Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.

  Walter Scott

  Dog, Animal, Toil

  Sir Walter Scott (1871). “The Talisman. Chronicles of Canongate (1st series)”, p.258

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

  Blaise Pascal

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Desire

  "Pensées" by Blaise Pascal, (Ch. 72), 1669.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Someone who does not draw strength from himself and who is incapable of finding the meaning of his life within himself will...seek the map to his own orientation somewhere outside himself-in some ideology, organization, or society, and then, however active he may appear to be, he is merely waiting, depending. He waits to see what others will do, or what roles they will assign to him, and he depends on them-and if they don't do anything or if they botch things, he succumbs to disillusion, despair, and ultimately, resignation.

  Vaclav Havel

  Inspirational, Strength, Organization

  8 Copy quote

• The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

  Frank Chodorov

  Peace, Giving Up, War

  19 Copy quote

• Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable, precisely, the balance and wisdom that come from long perspectives and broad foundations

  George Santayana

  Funny, Wisdom, Long

  George Santayana, James Seaton (2014). “Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States: And Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.143, Yale University Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it.

  Barbara Jordan

  Women, Believe, Compassion

  100 Copy quote

• Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ignorance, Government, Self

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Tired, Entering

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.

  James Frey

  Believe, Years, Punishment

  7 Copy quote

• One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.

  John Berger

  Life, Doctors, Knowing

  11 Copy quote

• Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes -love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself -and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others -should we call it joy?

  Andrea Dworkin

  Love, Running, Art

  16 Copy quote

• The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Power, Simple, Men

  Edgar Allan Poe (2006). “The Best of Poe”, p.29, Prestwick House Inc

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without him (Jean-Christophe) I would never have understood the splendour of taking free andindependent action as an individual. Up until this stolen encounter with brains had been incapable of graspingthe notion of one man standing up against the whole world...................To me it was the ultimate book: once youhad read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.

  Sijie Dai

  Book, Men, Brain

  4 Copy quote

• We are standing face to face with the barbarians. The enemy is no longer outside but inside the City, and the ruling ideology, paralysed, is incapable of spotting him. It stammers, overcome by its own moral disarmament, and is giving up: this is the time to seize the reins. Present society is an accomplice to the evil that is devouring it.

  Guillaume Faye

  Giving Up, Cities, Evil

  Guillaume Faye, Michael O'Meara (2010). “Archeofuturism”, p.18, Arktos

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• People who are incapable of having any kind of intimate relationship have to turn to feeling this incredible hunger and void, have to turn to some quantifiable external product to make them feel whole.

  Jennifer Connelly

  Intimate Relationships, People, Feelings

  7 Copy quote

• We have been educated to such a fine - or dull - point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

  Henry Miller

  Criticism, Dull, Way

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.166, New Directions Publishing

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whosoever does not know how to recognize the faults of great men is incapable of estimating their perfections.

  Voltaire

  Men, Perfection, Doe

  16 Copy quote

• Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou.

  Akhenaton

  Character, Men, Rely Upon

  21 Copy quote

• Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.

  St. George Tucker

  Two, Rights, Government

  St. George Tucker (1990). “A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

  Voltaire

  Men, Virtue

  Voltaire (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)”, p.4224, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. The tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than dynamic, and this tendency is made into a propulsion by civilization, where the obvious only is seen, and the unexpected rarely happens. When the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish. They do not see what is not obvious, are unable to do the unexpected, are incapable of adjusting their well-grooved lives to other and strange grooves. In short, when they come to the end of their own groove, they die.

  Jack London

  Simple, Civilization, Adjusting

  Jack London, black Horse Classics (2017). “Jack London: The Complete Novels [Classics Authors Vol: 6] (Black Horse Classics)”, p.1689, Jack

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so prodigiously surpasses man in friendship, and nail him down to a table, and dissect him alive to show you the mezaraic veins... Answer me, Machinist, has Nature really arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering?

  Voltaire

  Inspirational, Motivational, Dog

  11 Copy quote

• I think that what happened is that we grew up with the Holocaust within us. It turned us into harsh, emotionally incapable people who have become blind to what they are doing to other people. A lot of times, Holocaust abuse justifies terrible things done to the Palestinians. And you have to realize that what is going on is terrible, and that we are responsible, and we have to take responsibility - even if we are not completely responsible.

  Eytan Fox

  Responsibility, Thinking, People

  "Exploring Masculinity and Modern Views of Israeli’s, Eytan Fox Discusses 'Walk on Water'". IndieWire Interview, www.indiewire.com. March 3, 2005.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consumer: A person who is capable of choosing a president but incapable of choosing a bicycle without help from a government agency.

  Herbert Stein

  Agency, Government, Decision

  1979 Washington Bedtime Stories.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character.

  Charles Grandison Finney

  Character, Men, Agents

  Charles Grandison Finney, George REDFORD (D.D.) (1851). “Lectures on systematic theology, embracing moral government, the atonement, etc. Revised, enlarged, and partly re-written by the Author ... Edited ... by G. Redford”, p.29

  132 Copy quote

  Show source