Ability

 

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field.

– Niels Bohr

 

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Nothing is too small to know, and nothing too big to attempt.

– William Van Horne

 

Nerds don’t just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.

– Paul Graham

 

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

– Helen Keller

 

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor, magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and 20 or 30 billion dollars and, vroom! There he is, up on a rock, a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.

– Russell Baker

 

The best is the enemy of the good.

– Voltaire

 

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

– Georgia O’Keeffe

 

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

– Mahatma Gandhi

 

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion 20 years later.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

They do not even need a medical certificate. There are no credentials. They need not be sound either in body or mind. They only require a certificate of birth – just to prove they are first of the litter. You would not choose a Spaniel on these principles.

– David Lloyd George (On aristocracy)

 

The trouble with specialists is that they tend to think in grooves.

– Elaine Morgan

 

Be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved or untrained to stand the test.

– Daniel Akst