Capacity Building Quotes & Sayings

All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal, but with a near infinite capacity for folly ... He draws blueprints for Utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand
his own part comic, part tragic, part cussed, but part glorious nature. — Robert S. McNamara

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. — Audre Lorde

The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary. — Adam Smith

I could not disagree more," said Ganesh, my father giving me a hidden wink. "If we build toward them they'll see it as hostile and we'll be pulled into a confrontation. Now, I agree that we've got to expand - these last few days in Bridewell have clearly shown that. Within a few years Bridewell and the towns against the sea will be at maximum capacity, and then what will we do? We have over ten miles between us and Ainsworth, which I think is a good healthy distance. We can't expand off the cliffs from Lathbury or Turlock, so those are dead ends. Bridewell is stuck in the middle with no place to grow. I think our best option is to start building two-and three-story buildings. Grow up instead of out. We could grow to twice our size if we just abolished the single-level rule. — Patrick Carman

Fair Trade is a market-based, entrepreneurial response to business as usual: it helps third-word farmers developing direct market access as well as the organizational and management capacity to add value to their products and take them directly to the global market. Direct trade, a fair price, access to capital and local capacity-building, which are the core strategies of this model, have been successfully building farmers' incomes and self-reliance for more than 50 years. — Paul Rice

It was never meant to be this way. All other dreams were meant to be subservient to God's dream. Yet in the pursuit of my "essential" dream, I have been slowly building my own personal tower to my own personal heaven. It has me. It defines me. It motivates me. It guides and directs me. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to press on. Every day I get out my mortar and trowel and put another few courses of bricks on my personal tower to the sky. I'm still going to church, and I haven't forsaken the faith, but in a profound and practical way, God is out of the picture. I am not in a place of overt rebellion to him, yet I am not serving him. I don't have time for the Lord because all of my daily time and energy is invested in my dream. I was given the capacity to imagine so that everyday my "eyes" would be filled with him, yet now another dream — Paul David Tripp

Certainly in order to understand the natural world one needs clarity, logic, and the capacity for theory building. But that understanding tends to improve because and to the extent that it is provisional, hypothetical, when it looks for disconfirmation in the particular rather than final proof as a universal. — Talal Asad

Manic depression - or bipolar disorder - is like racing up to a clifftop before diving headfirst into a cavity. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the psychic equivalent of an extreme sport. The manic highs - that exhilarating rush to the top of the cliff - make you feel bionic in your hyper-energized capacity for generosity, sexiness and soulfulness. You feel like you have ingested stars and are now glowing from within. It's unearned confidence-in-extremis - with an emphasis on the con, because you feel cheated once you inevitably crash into that cavity. I sometimes joke that mania is the worst kind of pyramid scheme, one that the bipolar individual doesn't even know they're building, only to find out, too late, that they're also its biggest casualty. — Diriye Osman

At its best, leadership development is not an "event." It's a capacity-building endeavor. It's a process of human growth and development. — Linda Fisher Thornton

We are adults undertaking a team-building activity in a professional capacity, so naturally we spend several minutes horsing around, striking poses with our paintball guns and making sound effects. Joshua and Sergeant Paintball watch us like orderlies at a mental facility. — Sally Thorne

The more people I am able to help, the more people are willing to help others. The more followers we have, the closer we are to a perfect world. — Akilnathan Logeswaran

I remember a cartoon depicting a chimney sweep falling from the roof of a tall building and noticing on the way that a signboard had one word spelled wrong, and wondering in his headlong flight why nobody had thought of correcting it. In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles - no matter the imminent peril - these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from common sense and its logic, that we know the world to be good. — Vladimir Nabokov

Let us never lose sight of the fact that education is a preparation for life - and that preparing for life is far more than knowing how to make a living or how to land on the moon. Preparing for life means building personal integrity, developing a sound sense of values, increasing the capacity and willingness to serve. Education must have its roots in moral principles. If we lose sight of that fact in our attempt to match our educational system against that of the materialists, we shall have lost far more than we could possibly gain. — Ezra Taft Benson

The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory. — Joshua Foer

Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense. — Mark Twain

By the way, Payne is spelled with a y and an e - not with an i," he told them, coming to a stop before a rickety shack slapped together from warped boards and cracked stones, perhaps the only building in town not covered in ivy. The priest turned and eyed the two of them carefully, then sighed. "Doesn't matter, I suppose. Neither of you is literate, correct?" "Wrong," Royce said. "Really?" Pastor Payne pushed up his lower lip. "Down here, only those in the clergy know their letters. I would have assumed that - your sort - wouldn't." "Our sort?" Royce asked. "Paid killers," Payne explained. "That's what you are, correct? I was informed that at least one of you has worked in that capacity for the Black Diamond Thieves Guild. Isn't that right?" "And for that reason you assumed we're ignorant?" Royce said. The priest nodded with enthusiasm. "People who — Michael J. Sullivan

We call ourselves a "capacity building" organization; self-motivated and self-initiated capacity building. For example, in 30 years, I don't think I have signed a check for the company. — Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity. — John Abizaid

Concrete experiences serve as the primary building blocks from which we extend our capacity for thought and give rise to more abstracted concepts.

We understand the new in terms of the known. — Nick Sousanis

The U theory suggests that the central integrating thought ... will emerge from building three integrated capacities: a new capacity for observing that no longer fragments the observer from what's observed; a new capacity for stillness that no longer fragments who we really are from what's emerging; and a new capacity for creating alternative realities that no longer fragments the wisdom of the head, heart and hand. — Betty Sue Flowers

There should be evidence that there is demand for your ministry that exceeds the capacity of your current geographical location or facilities. If there isn't enough demand for your ministry to fill one building, who are you kidding? There won't be more demand on the other side of town either. — Scott McConnell

Capacity building originally meant helping people to help themselves. Now it means required training to deliver imposed policies. — Andy Hargreaves

Nothing gets transformed in your life until your mind is transformed. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

We are not a country that subscribes to policing any part of the world. The areas we are comfortable with are capacity building, intelligence sharing, exchange of ships, call on each other's ports, joint training and exercises. — Salman Khurshid

If something is at stake, the human mind gets ignited and the working capacity gets enhanced manifold. This is one of the techniques of building talent. It is important to work hard towards your chosen path - success is more a function of effort than anything else. A — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

One expect summed it up by saying: "Trying to cure traffic congestion by building more roads is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt." One study of 30 California counties over several decades found that, for every 10% increase in road capacity, traffic increased by 9% within four years. — David B. Sandalow

A sensible climate policy would emphasize building resilience into our capacity to adapt to climate changes - whether cooling or warming; whether wholly natural, wholly man-made, or somewhere in between. — Steven F. Hayward

Nothing - really, absolutely nothing - says more about Victorian Britain and its capacity for brilliance than that the century's most daring and iconic building was entrusted to a gardener. — Bill Bryson

It supported participatory governance in both friendly and adversarial countries; it played a leading role in articulating new humanitarian principles, and since 1945 it has, in five wars and on several other occasions, spent American blood to redeem them in distant corners of the world. No other country would have had the idealism and the resources to take on such a range of challenges or the capacity to succeed in so many of them. American idealism and exceptionalism were the driving forces behind the building of a new international order. — Henry Kissinger

First let me report that the art in the Barnes Collection has never looked better. My trips to the old Barnes were always amazing, but except on the sunniest days, you could barely see the art. The building always felt pushed beyond its capacity. — Jerry Saltz

In a fragment of a second you can understand: Things you know, things you don't know, things you don't know that you don't know, conscious, unconscious, things which in a fragrant of a second you can react to: we can all imagine why this capacity was given to us as human beings - I guess to survive. Architecture to me has the same kind of capacity. It takes longer to capture, but the essence to me is the same. I call this atmosphere. When you experience a building and it gets to you. It sticks in your memory and your feelings. I guess thats what I am trying to do. — Peter Zumthor