Ability Quotes - page 99
The slightest study of business conditions will satisfy anyone capable of forming a judgment that the personal equation is the most important factor in a business operation; that the business ability of the man at the head of any business concern, big or little, is usually the factor which fixes the gulf between striking success and hopeless failure.
Theodore Roosevelt
None of these strictures, however, should inhibit any one of us, in his individual capacity, from declaring himself on the issues of the trial and its fairness ... So in spite of my insistence on the limits of my official capacity, I personally want to say that I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass in this country that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States. In large part this atmosphere has been created by police actions and prosecutions against the Panthers in many parts of the country. It is also one more inheritance from centuries of racial discrimination and oppression.... The first contribution to the fairness of the trial which anyone can make is to cool rather than heat up the atmosphere in which the trial will be held.
Kingman Brewster, Jr.
"Prosthetic Morality Enforcement. The idea is that by analogy, if a part of your body is deficient or missing, you can use a prosthetic limb or artificial organ. Well, our ability to make moral judgements is hard-wired, but it's been so far outrun by the demands of complex civilization that it can't keep up. For example...have you ever wondered why discussions in chat rooms or instant messaging turn nasty so easily? Or wander off topic? It's because the behavioural cues we use to trigger socially acceptable responses aren't there in a non-face-to-face environment. If you can't see the other primate, your ethical reasoning is impaired because you can't build a complete mental image of them-a cognitive frame. It's why identity theft and online fraud are such a problem: There's no inhibition against robbery if the victim is faceless. So we need some kind of prosthetic framework to restore our ability to interact with people on the net as if they're human beings we're dealing with in person.
Charles Stross
The emergence of this high-tech scientific medicine may be a prime example of what William Blake denounced as 'single vision', the kind of myopia which (literally and metaphorically) comes from looking doggedly down a microscope. Single vision has its limitations in explaining the human condition; this is why Coleridge called doctors 'shallow animals', who 'imagine that in the whole system of things there is nothing but Gut and Body'. Hence the ability of medicine to understand and counter pathology has always engendered paradox. Medicine has offered the promise of 'the greatest benefit to mankind', but not always on terms palatable to and compatible with cherished ideals. Nor has it always delivered the goods. The particular powers of medicine, and the paradoxes its rationales generate, are what this book is about.
Roy Porter
It's a big mistake when encyclopedias say "loyal" - this dog, this breed has this ability to be loyal, to be a one person dog. I don't agree with that. I think all dogs are honest, all dogs have integrity, all dogs are loyal and they're all capable of loving you. It doesn't come from the breed. It comes from the dog.
Cesar Millan
The monks of the earliest days had not counted on the human ability to generate a new cultural inheritance in a couple of generations if an old one is utterly destroyed, to generate it by virtue of lawgivers and prophets, geniuses or maniacs; through a Moses, or through a Hitler, or an ignorant but tyrannical grandfather, a cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired. But the new "culture" was an inheritance of darkness, wherein "simpleton" meant the same thing as "citizen" meant the same thing as "slave."
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
