Sunday 27 February 2011

Quotes about Ability

Here is the first selection of quotes from my book 1000 Great Quotations for Business, Management & Training.

Whether you believe you can, or whether you believe you can’t, you’re absolutely right.
Henry Ford, US automobile manufacturer, engineer (1863-1947)

Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else – and usually it’s reading his own handwriting.
J Norman Collie, Scottish mountaineer (1859-1942)

If a man is to called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
Martin Luther King Jr, US civil rights leader (1929-1968)


 
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, programme a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects.
Lazarus Long, character in a novel by Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)

Talent never asks, ‘Will they like it?’ Talent pleases itself. That’s the difference between talent and ordinary.
Larry King, US talk show host (b.1933)

People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.
Albert Bandura, US psychologist (b.1925)

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