Able quotes
3.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Modern conquerors can kill, but do not seem to be able to create. Artists know how to create but cannot really kill. Murderers are only very exceptionally found among artists."
"Beware of those who say: "I know this too well to be able to express it." For if they cannot do so, this is because they don't know it or because out of laziness they stopped at the outer crust."
"Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it."
"Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim."
"Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn."
"They should rule who are able to rule best."
"As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after."
"The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards."
"I'm able to be very effective because I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. So, I'm not tied, and I'd never want to be tied to anything, to some constituency that I would have to answer to."
"Everything that you are against works against you. Everything that you are against can be restated in a way that puts you in support of something. When you are able to state what you are for rather than what you are against, you are focusing on the potential for positive change. Once that is in place, you will find whatever you are focusing on expanding."
"The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them."
"Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation."
"Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language."
"It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning."
"You need to be happy with yourself or you'll never be able to be happy in a relationship."
"I feel like if I ever got into some sort of rumble on the street, I will actually be able to defend myself."
"No one smiled at me, or looked at me twice; shopping has become my time of reckoning; I will never be able to purchase the stardom I have lost."
"I always say that, like a scientist or anyone, you always want to be the problem-solver. You feel like, if you solve the greatest mystery or the greatest problem, then that makes you brilliant. It's the same thing with an actress. You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny and all the things that a person could be."
"To make ideas effective, we must be able to fire them off. We must put them into action."
"I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't been able to hear."
