I Believe In My Ability Quotes & Sayings

I had done my best, and it wasn't good enough. I doubted, I pined, I prayed, and I was still me. I was a gay woman, inspired by Jesus in ways beyond my ability to communicate, who failed to live up to the expectations of all that a Christian was supposed to agree with, believe in, and reenact. I was certain I could no longer be the standard-bearer of an institutionalized religion, but I couldn't escape the fact that my faith seeped into my art. — Jennifer Knapp

Basically, I get paid to be crazy. I get paid to believe I'm someone else, live in a completely false reality, and believe it's real. And that's a little scary. And I do it to the best of my ability. But it's kind of like swimming out to sea. You have to leave enough energy to swim back, and sometimes you get scared you swam too far. — Rachel Miner

I have been learning a great deal about the need to let go of our fears and truly trust the Lord. When we hold on to fear we let false beliefs (and Satan) be in control. When we trust, we give the control back to God. When we give Him the control we open up our connection to Him so that He can inspire us with the actions we need to take to receive the blessings we desire. I think it comes down to believe, listen, trust, and act.
Faith is the ability to believe something enough that you are to act upon the belief. Do I believe God when He says everything will be OK? Do I believe Him enough to trust Him and am I willing to give Him the control and listen to His prompting to do things that He says will make my situation better? — Laura Lane

I believe in, and will to the best of my ability fight for, equal rights and freedom of opinion for everyone, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, orientation - you know the rest. — Binyavanga Wainaina

I believe that virtually everyone has the ability to either grow some food at home, or to find an appropriate location to start a garden. I may sound like a kook who plants my landscape with cucumbers instead of carnations, peppers instead of petunias, and fruit trees rather than ficus, but I am convinced that wherever you go, you can grow food! Now is the time for us to join together and plant the seeds that will transform the places in which we live. — Greg Peterson

Juliana?" the words were low and far - too calm for her husband, who had found that he rather enjoyed the full spectrum of emotion now that he had experienced it.
"Yes?"
"What are you doing twenty feet in the air?"
"Looking for a book."
"Would you mind very much returning to the earth?"
"What are you thinking, climbing to the rafters in your condition?"
"I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes."
"You do indeed - particularly your extreme ability to try my patience - I believe, however, that you mean extremities. — Sarah MacLean

If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife. — Tim Minchin

If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next. — Lady Gaga

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.
THerei s nothing else that so kills the ambitions ofa person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my appreciation and lavish in my praise — Charles Schwab

This powerful question - "Am I standing in my power or am I trying to please another?" - challenges us to believe in ourselves and make the daring choice to trust in our innate ability to know what's in our highest and best interest. — Debbie Ford

Be persistent and never give up. I had to deal with facing stereotypes and had a lot of people doubt me and my ability to drum, but I didn't let it phase me. You just have to believe in yourself. And of course, PRACTICE. — Jess Bowen

I have the ability and to have access to and to learn more in different areas in wellness and health because I have the door open to me to any doctor, any scientist, any hospital, any study around the world. I believe it's my responsibility to share that information with others. — Montel Williams

I never stopped believing in my ability or what I was doing. I want to pass that sense of faith and perseverance on to others. — Vantile Whitfield

My husband and I believe that if you treat a child well and nurture his talent and physical ability, in a healthy environment, the child will succeed no matter what. — Dominique Moceanu

There is a growing interest in examining the point at which the political and the spiritual intersect. Service to others is a spiritual value, and the overt recognition of this can be part of the development of our wholeness. My hope is to add my voice to the chorus of other women who are calling for a bridge between the secular and the spiritual. Our effectiveness in building this bridge will depend on how well we connect to each other in every interaction. That means taking the time to listen to those who come from points of view that are different from our own. If we listen well, learn from one another, and find the ability to empathize with one another's experiences, I believe the split will have served us well. When a broken bone mends, it becomes stronger along the break. When we strengthen our connections to one another, we become whole. And when we are whole, we are empowered an can empower others. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

Whenever I eat at a restaurant I never put the napkin in my lap. People say, 'Hannibal, why don't you put the napkin in your lap?' Because I believe in myself. I believe in my ability to not spill food in my pants 'cause I'm a goddamn adult. And I've mastered the art of getting food from my plate to my mouth without messing up my jeans. You need to believe in yourself, too and get your life together, that's for babies. Have some confidence in your eating abilities and hand/eye coordination. — Hannibal Buress

I believe in my God-given athletic ability and the coaches that have been blessed around me. I believe I can do the job as a quarterback in the NFL. — Tim Tebow

At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, 'Jesus is cool, it's just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.' This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force - not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man's comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus? — Mark Scandrette

I believe in living each day as it comes, to the best of my ability. When it's done, I put it away, remembering that there will be a tomorrow to take it's place. If I have any philosophy, that's it. To me it's not a fatalistic attitude. — Ginger Rogers

[W]hat people truly desire is access to the knowledge and information that ultimately lead to a better life
the collected wisdom of the ages found only in one place: a well-stocked library.
To the teachers and librarians and everyone on the frontlines of bringing literature to young people: I know you have days when your work seems humdrum, or unappreciated, or embattled, and I hope on those days you will take a few moments to reflect with pride on the importance of the work you do. For it is indeed of enormous importance
the job of safeguarding and sharing the world's wisdom.
All of you are engaged in the vital task of providing the next generation with the tools they will need to save the world. The ability to read and access information isn't just a power
it's a superpower. Which means that you aren't just heroes
you're superheroes. I believe that with all my heart. — Linda Sue Park

Ultimately, our lives hinge on the ability to make right choices and decisions. By God's grace, I made the most important decision a person can ever make. I invited Jesus Christ to be Lord of my life and made a commitment to follow Him. God offers each of us the free gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus by "confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead" (Romans 10:9). It is a wonderful and peaceful feeling to serve a God who loves me and cares about every detail of my life. — R.A. Dickey

They didn't have very far to fall--I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board. My childhood visits to the family doctor were stressful events for that reason. He'd ask me gentle questions: How was I feeling? How would I describe the pain? Was it more sharp or more spread out? I'd just look at him with desperation. I needed to be told, that was the whole point of going to the doctor. To take a test, be put through a machine that would comb my insides with radiated precision and tell me what the truth was. — Emma Cline

I believe in my heart I'm the best player in the world. I'm just a scorer. I try to put the ball in the basket for my team. I'm just confident in my ability to play ball. — Allen Iverson

I do feel there are countless people on earth who do not believe in the inner power, the inner life. They feel that the outer strength and the outer life are everything. I do not agree with them. There is an inner life; there is spirit, and my ability to lift these heavy weights proves that it can work in matter as well. — Sri Chinmoy

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. — Ann Patchett

I believe that box lacrosse gives young people many more opportunities to excel in our game. If I had my choice, I would have every player under the age of twelve play box lacrosse exclusively or at least a majority of the time. The number of touches of the ball and the ability to develop better stick skills in a game of box lacrosse, far surpasses what happens to young people on a 110 x 60 yard field. Learning how to pass and catch in traffic, understanding how to shoot, and developing a sense of physicality are all positive traits developed by the box game. — Bill Tierney

You know this has really affected my ability to trust myself. No matter what happened in my life, I was always able to trust myself. My instincts. Two men in a row carrying on indiscretions makes me feel like I made up some story. Almost like a fiction, I
wrote in my mind that had a beginning, middle and end. It feels like I manufactured some ideal life that was a made-up invention that I needed to believe was the truth. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours.
Keeping faith with those who serve must always be a core American value and a cornerstone of American patriotism. Because America's commitment to its servicemen and women begins at enlistment, and it must never end. — Barack Obama

You have this novel idea of the world, like it's made up of ladder hunting and test taking and framed plaques, all of which mean nothing to your current position. I know enough to know that you are dumb enough to believe in your ability, and that my friend is why you are given the opportunities to rise. — J.M. August

As people who make things, we have the ability to think of the most vile, awful things we can imagine, but it doesn't mean we believe those things. I allow myself to go places in my videos that I would never go in my real life.And I think that there has to be that place where you can create and not have to be living it in real life. — Laurel Nakadate

I guess my faith in Jesus Christ is what kept me going day by day. I just trusted in him and I believe that he's the one who gives me the strength and ability to overcome struggles and problems day to day. I'm just grateful for him, as he has blessed me with just an amazing family that has supported me through every step of the way. — Bethany Hamilton

I had to free myself from my devotion to him... to us... without losing my ability to believe in love. — Jennifer Harrison

In my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: "My Lord and My God!" Was it the miracle that made him believe? Most likely not, but he believed first and foremost because he wished to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even as he was saying: "I will not believe until I see. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

For I am - or I was - one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all - a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named - but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well - by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. — James Baldwin

When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no. — Max Brooks

I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been only a question of improving it, and learning more and more and there is almost no end. As you go through you just keep finding more and more. It's very interesting, it's fascinating. — Ayrton Senna

My idea of literature, as I have often said, is that it should save lives. My idea of literature is that it once did save lives, and was of consequence in that way. I believe it can do so again. With every book, to the best of my ability, I try to put this belief in action, even if, as in some of the recent books, the best way to save lives is to cause laughter. Bring on your problems, and I will listen, and bear witness, and when the occasion permits, I will respond, according to certain general rules, on this page, in this hope that here too words may be redemptive. — Rick Moody

I believe my most important skill is an ability to perceive patterns in the market. I think this aptitude for pattern recognition is probably related to my heavy involvement with music. — Linda Bradford Raschke

The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command.
... I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and willingly becomes the bearer of teh work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary.
As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her; she had not lost her child's creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world. We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss. — Madeleine L'Engle

Yes, being gay is just one of a thousand traits that make up my character, no more remarkable than my love of M&M's or my ability to mess up a room in fifteen seconds flat or my failure to understand the appeal of Luke and Owen Wilson.
But I believe that the desire to love and be loved is the strongest force on earth. And in that way, being gay affects every interaction in which straight people take part. Every human motive is in the end a yearning for companionship, and every act of every person on this planet is an effort not to be alone. — Joel Derfner

I opened my eyes and then slammed them shut because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The fire was all around us. We were in the fire. We should be dead. We would have been dead. My heart began to beat out of control before I felt his fingers on my face. Just be right here with me. Don't think about that. This is going to let me save you. I gasped. I don't want to have hope if it won't work - Ava, he chuckled, look at us. We're standing in fire. I'm getting you out of here. I can feel it. My ability. But — Shelly Crane

I believe less in my ability & more in the ability of the one who comes to meet me. That's the speciality of my work style. — Narendra Modi

I learned that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is MY point of view, (my truth), and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak THE truth are very silencing of others. When we realize and recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way. Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person "I" form. The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak. Miscommunication is always a two way street. — Sheryl Sandberg

1983:
To my generation has now come the challenge. In the days to come we will be tested on whether we have the moral courage, the realism, the idealism, the tenacity, and the ability to sacrifice some of the current comfort to invest in the future ... I believe that this generation will rise to the challenge ... The experts believe that, like the Democratic Party itself, the less than forty-year-old voters are prepared to sell their souls for some security, real or illusory. They have misjudged us. Just because our political heroes were murdered does not mean that the dream does not still live, buried deep in our broken hearts. — Joe Biden

I believe in God. Maybe not the Catholic God or even the Christian one because I have a hard time seeing any God as elitist. I also have a hard time believing that anything that created rain forests and oceans and an infinite universe would, in the same process, create something as unnatural as humanity in its own image. I believe in God, but not as a he or she or an it, but as something that defines my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand. — Dennis Lehane