Quotes & Sayings About Resourcefulness

Hearts who struggled worst never gives up on possibilities when finding solutions reaching out for others' loss & despair. — Angelica Hopes

Begin to build up confidence and joy in your own richness. That richness is the essence of generosity. It is the essence of resourcefulness ; that you can deal with whatever is available around you and not feel poverty stricken. — Chogyam Trungpa

Sophistication is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop. — Edward Hoagland

Draw a cart with horses, or push it down a hill ... Both move the cart, aye?
Daerwin of Brannagh — Jordan MacLean

And from what we know, he truly saw each and every one of these obstacles as an opportunity to practice some virtue: patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, and creativity. The power he held never seemed to go to his head - neither did the stress or burden. He rarely rose to excess or anger, and never to hatred or bitterness. — Ryan Holiday

Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom - we all want something. Quest is elemental to the human experience. All road narratives are to some extent built on quest. If you're a woman, though, this fundamental possibility of quest is denied. You can't go anywhere if you can't step out onto a road ...
... (T)here is no female counterpart in our culture to Ishmael or Huck Finn. There is no Dean Moriarty, Sal, or even a Fuckhead. It sounds like a doctoral crisis, but it's not. As a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker, my survival depended upon other people's ability to envision a possible future for me. Without a Melvillean or Kerouacian framework, or at least some kind of narrative to spell out a potential beyond death, none of my resourcefulness or curiosity was recognizable, and therefore I was unrecognizable. — Vanessa Veselka

From my point of view, he can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting himself justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of others. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Sailing has given me some of the most pleasant and exciting moments of my life. It also has taught me something of the courage, resourcefulness, and strength of men who sail the seas in ships. — John F. Kennedy

Living with animals can be a wonderful experience, especially if we choose to learn the valuable lessons animals teach through their natural enthusiasm, grace, resourcefulness, affection and forgiveness. — Richard Pitcairn

Camping has become one of my most beloved pastimes. I take a fierce delight in swinging a pak o my back or into a canoe and heading for the hills or lakes. In my opinion, camping can be the greatest expression of free will, personal independence, innate ability, and resourcefulness possible today in our industrialized, urbanized existence. Regardless of how miserable or how splendid the circumstances, the sheer experience of camping seems a total justification for doing it. — Anne LaBastille

She is beautiful, soft hair nearly midnight in color, large eyes nearly as dark, and ivory skin like the petals of the lily, and she wore a fragrance of jasmine. But 'tis her willfulness that I enjoyed the most. And her resourcefulness. — Terry Spear

It is this kind of resourcefulness, I think, that explains how this hardy band of Vikings managed to survive more than one thousand years on an island that is about as hospitable to human habitation as the planet Pluto - if Pluto were a planet, that is, which it's not. — Eric Weiner

We can find a great sector or business, but we're investing so early that unless there's this tenacious grit, determination, resourcefulness, ability to evolve, it won't work. — Dan Levitan

If we were going to determine what was broken in the radios, we needed a power source. With no electricity, this meant batteries. [ ... ] we'd walk to the trading center and look for used cells that had been tossed in the waste bins. [ ... ]
First we'd test the battery to see if any juice was left in it. We'd attach two wires to the positive and negative ends and connect them to a torch bulb. The brighter the bulb, the stronger the battery. Next we'd flatten the Shake Shake carton and roll it into a tube, then stack the batteries inside, making sure the positives and negatives faced in the same direction. Then we'd run wires from each end of the stack to the positive and negative heads inside the radio, where the batteries normally go. Together, this stack of dead batteries usually contained enough juice to power a radio. — William Kamkwamba

There is nothing higher-class than real craftsmanship, diversity, originality and the service of skilled human hands. — Bryant McGill

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Suppressed I Rise is for anyone interested in a very personal, human view of the history of World War II. A mother's attempt to protect and raise her two young daughters in hostile NAZI Germany challenges her sensibilities and resourcefulness. — Hank Bracker

It's not the lack of resources that cause failure, it's the lack of resourcefulness that causes failure. — Tony Robbins

Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders. — John Holt

My grandmother and my two aunts were an exhibition in resilience and resourcefulness and black womanhood. They rarely talked about the unfairness of the world with the words that I use now with my social justice friends, words like "intersectionality" and "equality", "oppression", and "discrimination". They didn't discuss those things because they were too busy living it, navigating it, surviving it. — Janet Mock

The future belongs to us, because we have taken charge of it. We have the commitment, we have the resourcefulness, and we have the strength of our people to share the dream across Africa of clean water for all. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

The women of Afghanistan, left behind as their men fought, did what the women of World War II did - used their wits and resourcefulness to preserve some semblance of civilization. — Tina Brown

The defining factor [for success] is never resources; it's resourcefulness. — Tony Robbins

Addicts have incredible energy, it's just all directed toward one goal. But what incredible luck and grace addicts have. You hear about it all the time, getting into some kind of crazy situation in order to get drugs or to get money for drugs, pulling off something where they fall from a building and land on a truck full of pillows. It's incredible will, and if you learn to focus that will on getting better instead of getting worse it's amazing what you can do with that. You can use that strength and resourcefulness for something real instead of scoring dope in a desert. — Bucky Sinister

I do believe that out of adversity comes incredible resourcefulness. — Phil Keoghan

Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness. — Mark Steyn

You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness. — Stephen R. Covey

Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death. A man's horizon may become so completely dominated by the intense character of his hatred that there remains no creative residue in his mind and spirit to give to great ideas, to great concepts. — Howard Thurman

To you who answered the call of your country and served in its Armed Forces to bring about the total defeat of the enemy, I extend the heartfelt thanks of a grateful Nation. As one of the Nation's finest, you undertook the most severe task one can be called upon to perform. Because you demonstrated the fortitude, resourcefulness and calm judgment necessary to carry out that task, we now look to you for leadership and example to further exalting our country in peace. — Harry S. Truman

It's not resources but resourcefulness that ultimately makes the difference. — Tony Robbins

As your father, my instinct is to protect you ... Other people will want to protect you too. But remember that you are not a damsel in distress, waiting for some prince to rescue you. Forget the prince. With your brain and your resourcefulness, you can rescue yourself. — Brad Meltzer

Anybody who has doubts about the ingenuity or the resourcefulness of a plumber never got a bill from one. — George Meany

When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems. — Stephen E. Ambrose

Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness. — Naomi Wolf

A very good case can be made, on moral as well as economic grounds, for a system in which the individual is required to stand on his own feet, not to lean on the state for handouts. Character, resourcefulness, capacity are formed and developed in struggle with obstacles, not in waiting passively for benefits from outside. — William Henry Chamberlin

Then Rob looked back at Kait, slowly, and she knew that he was seeing her as an equal for the first time. An equal not just in brains or psychic powers or resourcefulness, but in every way, with exactly as much right to risk her life as he had to risk his.
Equal and separate. It was as if at that moment they split apart, became two independent creatures. If Rob had ever had a fault in their relationship, it was thinking he had to protect her. And Kaitlyn had encouraged it in a way, by thinking that she needed to be protected. Now, all at once, they were both realizing it wasn't true.
And once Kait knew that, she realized that in the last few minutes she had grown in his eyes. Rob respected her more, even loved her more than ever before ... in a different way. — L.J.Smith

Effective leaders know that resources are never the problem; it's always a matter or resourcefulness. — Tony Robbins

While there's no substitute for real experience, I believe it helps to hear and share stories of resourcefulness in action - almost like case studies in school. — Scott Weiss

Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning. — Aldous Huxley

Experience has taught me," said Peter ( ... ) "that no situation finds Bunter unprepared. That he should have procured The Times this morning by the simple expedient of asking the milkman to request the postmistress to telephone to Broxford and have it handed to the 'bus-conductor to be dropped at the post-office and brought up by the little girl who delivers the telegrams is a trifling example of his resourceful energy. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Tightwaddery without creativity is deprivation. When there is a lack of resourcefulness, inventiveness, and innovation, thrift means doing without. When creativity combines with thrift you may be doing it without money, but you are not doing without. — Amy Dacyczyn

It was hard to know which of Billy's qualities was most important to his team's success: his energy, his resourcefulness, his intelligence, or his ability to scare the living shit out of even very large professional baseball players. — Michael Lewis

WHY has no value, if you cannot rethink resourcefulness in a limited context. — Tony Dovale

Positive energy is unleashed when leaders give themselves permission to connect and express themselves from the core of who they are. When leaders practice authenticity, creativity, engagement, confidence, and a sense of inner resourcefulness emerge. — Henna Inam

The city (regardless which one it is) does provide a certain degree of sophistication and intellectualism. It offers the challenge of professional matters. It throws new and interesting people in one's path. There is a dynamic and an energy in cities which is diametric to the life-forces of the forest.
Still the cabin is the wellspring, the source, the hub of my existence. It gives me tranquility, a closeness of nature and wildlife, good health and fitness, a sense of security, the opportunity for resourcefulness, reflection and creative thinking ... — Anne LaBastille

Pride does not only come with great responsibility. It is buy one get one free. Great responsibility will require great resourcefulness. — Janna Cachola

The longer we stay in a violating situation, the more traumatized we become. If we don't act on our own behalf, we will lose spirit, resourcefulness, energy, health, perspective, and resilience. We must take ourselves out of violating situations for the sake of our own wholeness. — Anne Katherine

For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that, somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That's what has gotten you by — Rachel Reiland

You don't lack resources. You lack resourcefulness . — Tony Robbins

'The green beret' is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom. I know the United States Army will live up to its reputation for imagination, resourcefulness, and spirit as we meet this challenge. — John F. Kennedy

You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by. — Rachel Reiland

Coming up with a way to fix mistakes challenges your creativity and your critical thinking skills and your resourcefulness. Often you end up with something better than what you planned on in the first place. — Mark Frauenfelder

A charity which knows only how to give money is not yet Christian love. You will be free of guilt only when you also give your time, your energy, and your resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when you allow nothing that lies hidden in the storehouse of your Christian religion to remain unused against the cancer that is destroying the vitality of our society in such alarming ways. — Abraham Kuyper

Mal dragged the last few inches of the sword free of his flesh, wincing at the raw pain. She's stabbed him. She'd f**king pinned him to the wall like a bug. She'd fed from him and used his own blood and power against him. He hadn't seen that coming. He was both affronted by - and admiring of - her resourcefulness. — Eve Silver

They needed the numbers, so they directed their creativity and resourcefulness toward getting those numbers, rather than toward effective performance. — Edward L. Deci

Students are rewarded for memorization, not imagination or resourcefulness. — Sugata Mitra

If we examine the accomplishments of man in his most advanced endeavors, in theory and in practice, we find that the cell has done all this long before him, with greater resourcefulness and much greater efficiency. — Albert Claude

Now comes what I perhaps inflatedly call my philosophy of knitting. Like many philosophies, it is hard to express in a few words. Its main tenets are enjoyment and satisfaction, accompanied by thrift, inventiveness, an appearance of industry, and, above all, resourcefulness. — Elizabeth Zimmermann

However desperate the situation and circumstances, don't despair. When there is everything to fear, be unafraid. When surrounded by dangers, fear none of them. When without resources, depend on resourcefulness. When surprised, take the enemy by surprise. — Sun Tzu

The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity, self-sufficiency, and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead. — William C. Menninger

Because the development of inner calm & energy happens completely within & isn't dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful - and a huge relief. — Sharon Salzberg

The musical culture in the United States has no doubt suffered severe setbacks, especially in funding, since the early 2000's. However, I've been amazed at the resiliency of those involved with contemporary music in this country. I think composers and those dedicated to contemporary music have reacted with tremendous creativity and resourcefulness. — Michael Hersch

If capitalism worked as the socialists think an economic system ought to work, and provided a constant equality of living conditions for all, regardless of whether a man was able or not, resourceful or not, diligent or not, thrifty or not, if capitalism put no premiums on resourcefulness and effort and not penalty on idleness or vice, it would produce only an equality of destitution. — Milton Friedman

This is a hard truth for some to accept: that a lack of resources may not be their true constraint, just a lack of resourcefulness. — David Burkus

To achieve more and better results, more resourcefulness is as important as more resources. — Tony Alessandra

The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness. — Frank Herbert

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different
in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness. — Robert A. Heinlein

Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors. — Richard Armour

Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness. — Ron Suskind

You don't have to worry about burning bridges, if you're building your own — Kerry E. Wagner

I was alone, without a single cent, in an unknown country. If I'd learned anything from last year's ill-fated adventures, though, it was not to get overwhelmed by minor inconveniences. — Isabel Allende

All of us need to begin to think in terms of our own inner strengths, our resilience and resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt and to rely upon ourselves and our families. — Steven Pressfield

The body is an arrangement in spacetime, a patterning, a process; the mind is a process of the body, an organ, doing what organs do: organize. Order, pattern, connect ... an immensely flexible technology, or life strategy, which if used with skill and resourcefulness presents each of us with that most fascinating of all serials, The Story of My Life. — Ursula K. Le Guin

You want everything for your kids that you didn't have, but that that very desire can pollute and corrupt the good, basic American pluckiness, resourcefulness and down-to-earthness that we like to pride ourselves with, and result in aspirations of wealth and high culture. — Todd Haynes

It is certain that the Jew, if he desired-or if they were driven to it, as the antisemites seem to wish-could now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe; that they are not working or planning for that end is equally sure ... The resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer ... Law cannot save us from ourselves ... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again. — Philip K. Howard

Ability is the result of mental and physical toughness, resourcefulness, and powerful concentration. — Howard A. Tullman

Innovative leadership is essentially anchored on the leader's overall multifaceted resourcefulness and multidimensional competencies. — Pearl Zhu

It's not about the resources you have available. It's about the resourcefulness you have within you. — Tony Robbins

I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries. What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress. — David McCullough

I don't think I have ever been as inspired by any character that I have played. I was deeply moved by Temple's courage and her resourcefulness.. She is really pioneering in both the world of autism and animal rights. She has encouraged an incredibly positive change in the world. — Claire Danes

The Excellence Manifesto #1

I pledge myself to patience.
I pledge myself to boldness.
I pledge myself to kindness.
I pledge myself to prudence.
I pledge myself to cheerfulness.
I pledge myself to genuineness.
I pledge myself to goodness.

I commit to skilfulness.
I commit to diligence.
I commit to resourcefulness.
I commit to excellence.
I commit to perseverance.
I commit to brilliance.
I commit to transcendence. — Matshona Dhliwayo

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American - that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. — F Scott Fitzgerald

To get Firefox or Chrome, you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting the default, you take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better. And that act of initiative, however tiny, is a window into what you do at work. — Adam M. Grant

There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men ... Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest. — Ralph Moody

The resilience and the resourcefulness of people to make a better life, to survive, to give their children something better than they had, is so inspiring. I look at how hard it must be to get up every day and fight that battle and I think, Wow, anything I'm doing just has to be in service. — Kathy Calvin

It's not about your resources, it's about your resourcefulness . — Tony Robbins

Where's Nadine?" "She went out for a walk the other day and didn't come back." "Really." I tried to sound surprised. "No sweat," he said. "Pussy may well be the only true renewable resource, Leo. I've got another one lined up for when I get back." I had to admire a man with that kind of insight and planning. — G.M. Ford

Anyone who has ever canoed on the upper Missouri River knows what a welcome sight a grove of cottonoods can be. They provide shade, shelter, and fuel. For Indian ponies, they provide food. For the Corps of Discovery, they provided wheels, wagons, and canoes.
Pioneering Lewis and Clark scholar Paul Russell Cutright pays the cottonwoods an appropriate tribute: 'Of all the wetern trees it contributed more to the success of the Expedition than any other. Lewis and Clark were men of great talent and resourcefulness, masters of ingenuity and improvisation. Though we think it probable that they would hae successfully crossed the continent without the cottonwood, don't as us how! — Stephen E. Ambrose

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway. — Mary Kay Ash

If people maintain the belief systems that empower them, they'll keep coming back with enough action and enough resourcefulness to succeed eventually. — Tony Robbins

I didn't have a drill, so I had to make my own. First I heated a long nail in the fire, then drove it through a half a maize cob, creating a handle. I placed the nail back on the coals until it became red hot, then used it to bore holes into both sets of plastic blades. — William Kamkwamba

Really ingenious, he said. He had a Minnesotan's admiration for resourcefulness in the face of hardship, bred by generations of people one very bad winter away from starvation and cannibalism. I — Viet Thanh Nguyen