Possibility Quotes - Page 11

• Possibilities are completely different. When you ask 'what is possible?' you must stretch your imagination out of the confines of the familiar. To live a life beyond the mediocre, ask not 'what are my options?' but 'What is possible?'

  Nicholas Lore

  Imagination, Different, Mediocre

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• Everyone has options. They are a fixed set of predetermined scenarios, points of view, perceived limitations that already reside in your data bank. If you depend on your options to formulate your future, that future will be no more than a rearrangement of your past. Then he says, “Possibilities are completely different. When you ask ‘what is possible?’ you must stretch your imagination out of the confines of the familiar. To live a life beyond the mediocre, ask not ‘what are my options?’ but ‘What is possible?’

  Nicholas Lore

  Past, Views, Data

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• Without the possibility of death,
  adventure is not possible.

  Reinhold Messner

  Adventure

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• There is no formula. We all must become spirited inventors. There's no single answer - not even a single starting point. Even the 'teachers' ... don't offer us the answer. They do offer us approaches, ways of thinking, possibilities we can adapt, and hope that might generate in us wholly new ideas.

  Frances Moore Lappé

  Teacher, Simple, Thinking

  Frances Moore Lappé, Paul Martin Du Bois (1994). “The quickening of America: rebuilding our nation, remaking our lives”, Jossey-Bass

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• No "natural" resource is more precious and to be used more wisely than time. These mortal moments matter more than we know. There are no idle hours; there are only idle people. In true righteousness there is serenity, but there is an array of reminders that the "sacred present" is packed with possibilities which are slipping by us, which are going away from us each moment.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  People, Serenity, Balance

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• In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.

  Simone Weil

  Stars, Lying, Moon

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.121, Psychology Press

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• Let me tell you what is coming.... Your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded at the point of the bayonet... You may, after the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and of thousands of lives, as a bare possibility, win Southern independence...but I doubt it.

  Sam Houston

  Brother, Husband, War

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• God is the original, master forgiver. Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Imagination, Miracle

  Lewis B. Smedes, Jeff Crosby (2007). “Days of Grace Through the Year”, InterVarsity Press

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• In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of human nature.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Issues, Curiosity

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.171, Oxford University Press

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• It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Statistics, Refutation, One Thing

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “The City and the Stars”, p.22, RosettaBooks

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• It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.

  Robert Musil

  Men, Average, Ideas

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.18, Pan Macmillan

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• Some string theorists prefer to believe that string theory is too arcane to be understood by human beings, rather than consider the possibility that it might just be wrong.

  Lee Smolin

  Believe, Might, Theory

  Lee Smolin (2007). “The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next”, p.269, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For though we stubbornly cling, believing in our moment of hunger that there is no other possibility of love, we only have to let go of what we want so badly and our life will unfold. For love is everywhere.

  Mark Nepo

  Letting Go, Believe, Love Is

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• If we live with possibilities we are exiles from the present which is given us by God to be our own, homeless and displaced in a future or a past which are not ours because they are always beyond our reach. The present is our right place, and we can lay hands on whatever it offers us.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Past, Hands

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.231, Shambhala Publications

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• What I think about when I frequent the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan [Museum of Art], and I look at these artifacts that are taken out of context and how we're forced to view them as objects, as relics, as sculpture- static. But what's interesting is what it allows me to do in my head in terms of imagining what the possibilities are or imagining the role in which they played within a particular culture which I'm fascinated by.

  Nick Cave

  Art, Taken, Thinking

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• No episode is a priori condemned to remain an episode forever, for every event, no matter how trivial, conceals within itself the possibility of sooner or later becoming the cause of other events and thus changing into a story or an adventure. Episodes are like land mines. The majority of them never explode, but the most unremarkable of them may someday turn into a story that will prove fateful to you.

  Milan Kundera

  Adventure, Land, Forever

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• To be successful in business and life, spot the possibilities while others look for problems.

  Robin Sharma

  Successful, Looks, Problem

  FaceBook post by Robin Sharma from Sep 10, 2012

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• In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin colour and hence the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility.

  Cheikh Anta Diop

  Practice, Doubt, Skins

  Cheikh Anta Diop, E. Curtis Alexander, Mwalimu Imara Mwadilifu (1984). “Cheikh Anta Diop: an African scientist : an axiomatic overview of his teachings and thoughts”, Eca Assoc

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• What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Paradox, Eternal, Hereafter

  Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo (1989). “The Supramental Manifestation, and Other Writings”, Lotus Press (WI)

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• In the field of knowledge is all possibility.

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

  Fields

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• That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.

  Joseph Glanvill

  Inquiry, Matter, Belief

  Joseph Glanvill (1979). “Collected Works of Joseph Glanvill”, Georg Olms Verlag

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• Scott Fitzgerald said famously that "he who invented consciousness would have a lot to be blamed for." But he also forgot that without consciousness, he would have no access to true happiness or even the possibility of transcendence.

  Antonio Damasio

  Brain, Scott Fitzgerald, True Happiness

  "The quest to understand consciousness". TED Talk, www.ted.com. March 2011.

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• The function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Opening Up, Entrepreneur, Reform

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.132, Routledge

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• We who hold his (Wolfe Tone) principles believe that any movement which would successfully grapple with the problem of national freedom must draw its inspiration not from the mouldering records of the past, but from the glowing hopes of the living present, the vast possibilities of the mighty future.

  James Connolly

  Believe, Inspiration, Past

  James Connolly (1987). “Labour in Irish history ; The re-conquest of Ireland ; Socialism and nationalism”

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• A man who knows a thing, recognizes a given danger, and sees with his own eyes the possibility of a remedy, damned well has the duty and the obligation not to work 'silently', but to stand up openly against the evil and for its cure. If he does not do so then he is a faithless, miserable weakling who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and incompetence....Every last agitator who possesses the courage to defend his opinions with manly forth-rightness, standing on a tavern table among his adversaries, accomplishes more than a thousand of these lying, treacherous sneaks.

  George Lincoln Rockwell

  Lying, Eye, Men

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