Acumen Quotes

Forty of Paracelsus's theological manuscripts still survive, as well as sixteen Bible commentaries, twenty sermons, twenty works on the Eucharist, and seven on the Virgin Mary. Half of these have never been properly edited, let alone printed in modern form. There is no question that Paracelsus thought long and hard about Christianity, and by styling himself a professor of theology (without, it seems, any official academic sanction) he implies that he regarded this component of his output to be the equal of his medical and chemical theories. That his role in the history of science and medicine has received far more attention than his theological oeuvre is, however, understandable and probably apt, for it cannot be said that he had much influence even on the religious debates of his day. In theology he never aspired to be a Luther, and that would in any case have been a futile aspiration for one so lacking in political acumen or the ability to foster disciples. ~ Philip Ball

Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. ~ Chuck Klosterman

There's a need to understand, but that doesn't require knowledge. The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing ... Give a man a highly simplified model of the world and interpret every event on the basis of this simple model. This approach requires no knowledge. A few rote formulas, plus some so-called intuition, some so-called practical acumen, and some so-called common sense. ~ Arkady Strugatsky

When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom. ~ Herman Melville

Within a few months Mitch Bush, head veterinarian at the National Zoo, and David Wildt, a young reproductive physiologist working as a postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, were on a plane bound for South Africa. Bush is a towering, bearded, giant of a man with a strong interest and acumen in exotic animal veterinary medicine, particularly the rapidly improving field of anesthetic pharmacology. Wildt is a slight and modest Midwestern farm boy, schooled in the reproductive physiology of barnyard animals. His boyish charm and polite shy demeanor mask a piercing curiosity and deep knowledge of all things reproductive. Bush and Wildt's expedition to the DeWildt cheetah breeding center outside Pretoria would ultimately change the way the conservation community viewed cheetahs forever. ~ Stephen J. O'Brien

Tell me, now, fairy as you are, - can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added,"a loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty." Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the presnt instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling-he shed it over me now. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Senior faculty nowadays similarly squirm when former 'dunderheads' return to campus to lecture on their prizewinning screenplay or to cut the ribbon for a building funded by their entrepreneurial acumen. How did such dullards metamorphose into geniuses? ~ Mark C. Carnes

The idea that IT professionals don't need business acumen is a destructive myth. ~ Al Kuebler

My business acumen is definitely growing. ~ Kevin Hart

Scarcity of common sense makes it a philosophy. ~ Amit Kalantri

The other guys did not feel the need to understand themselves that in me was so compelling: they could carry out their personality with the greatest naturalness, while I had to play a part, and this required a considerable acumen and study ~ Yukio Mishima

As you study computer science you develop this wonderful mental acumen, particularly with relational databases, systems analysis, and artificial intelligence. ~ Frederick Lenz

But when that information travels only to a privileged few, when it is used to profit at the expense of the investing public, when that information comes by way of favored access rather than by acumen, insight or diligence, we must ask, 'Whose interest is really being served?'. ~ Arthur Levitt Jr

Oswaldo was flummoxed by the fact that his friend could be so quiet, almost embarrassed, about his academic acumen, yet so damn loud and proud of his status as a premier campus drug dealer.

"I've never met anyone so smart but so fucking dumb," he told Rob. ~ Jeff Hobbs

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they were men, or not rather that they are bones? ~ Henry David Thoreau

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith. ~ Criss Jami

I have to think that I think it's always been a horse race between this administration's temporary political acumen and their completely, utterly, totally bankrupt policies. And they're coming home to roost. It was always a question of time. These guys aren't conservative. These guys are radicals. ~ Bradley Whitford

Thus it is a very serious lapse in scholarly competence and/or intellectual integrity for someone like Dawkins, an Oxford don who sees fit to pour scorn on the scholarly acumen and intellectual honesty of others, to treat the Five Ways as if they constituted Aquinas's complete case for God's existence, to ignore Aquinas's responses to various objections, and to tell his readers that Aquinas gives "absolutely no reason" for certain claims that, as I have said, he actually devotes many hundreds of pages to defending. ~ Edward Feser

Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

If you doubt your insight, you will doubt your information.
If you doubt your awareness, you will doubt your intellect.
If you doubt your acumen, you will doubt your perception.
If you doubt your intelligence, you will doubt your judgments.
If you doubt your understanding, you will doubt your aptitude.
If you doubt your wisdom, you will doubt your actions.

If you believe in knowledge, you believe in learning.
If you believe in learning, you believe in education.
If you believe in education, you believe in illumination.
If you believe in illumination, you believe in wisdom.
If you believe in wisdom, you believe in enlightenment.
If you believe in enlightenment, you believe in bettering the world. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The unexamined life is eminently worth living, were anyone so fortunate. It would be the life of an animal, brave and alert, with instincts instead of opinions and decisions, loyalty to mate and cubs, to the pack. It might, for all we know, be a life of richest interest and happiness. Dogs dream. The quickened spirit of the eagle circling in high cold air is beyond our imagination. The placidity of cattle shames the Stoic, and what critic has the acumen of a cat? We have used the majesty of the lion as a symbol of royalty, the wide-eyed stare of owls for wisdom, the mild beauty of the dove for the spirit of God. ~ Guy Davenport

We were learning that all the training and all the caring in the world were not going to solve every problem. This wasn't medical school. We weren't going to ace every exam. Silver-haired professors weren't going to pat us on the head and marvel at our intellectual acumen. We weren't going to win every battle. ~ Michael J. Collins

Common sense implies a cup of wisdom, a dash of discernment, and a dollop of intellectual acumen that's blended clean and translucent. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

A true generous heart can never revolve majorly with monetary skills nor business acumen nor cunning mind. ~ Angelica Hopes

As both developed and developing nations search for alternative sources of energy in response to the growing energy crisis, we at Acumen Fund believe that investing in entrepreneurs who provide innovative energy solutions is an increasingly critical part of the solution. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The rich fertility of China's plains and a culture of uncommon resilience and political acumen had enabled China to remain unified over much of a two-millennia period and to exercise considerable political, economic, and cultural influence - even when it was militarily weak by conventional standards. Its comparative advantage resided in the wealth of its economy, which produced goods that all of its neighbors desired. Shaped by these elements, the Chinese idea of world order differed markedly from the European experience based on a multiplicity of co-equal states. ~ Henry Kissinger

For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt

Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

My wisdom absent of God's wisdom is nothing more than a best-guess. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I believe being a good senator requires two things. Number one, acumen. Number two, interest. ~ Trey Gowdy

Vigilance of the wisest kind is to incessantly remain open to the reality that what I 'see' is but a single thread and solitary shard of what 'is', for to assume otherwise is to surrender the wisdom of vigilance to the decay of ignorance. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Says the Cardinal: "Freethought leads to Atheism, to the destruction of social and civil order, and to the overthrow of government." I accept the gentleman's statement; I credit him with much intellectual acumen for perceiving that which many freethinkers have failed to perceive: accepting it, I shall do my best to prove it, and then endeavor to show that this very iconoclastic principle is the salvation of the economic slave and the destruction of the economic tyrant.
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Hence the freethinker who recognizes the science of astronomy, the science of mathematics, and the equally positive and exact science of justice, is logically forced to the denial of supreme authority. For no human being who observes and reflects can admit a supreme tyrant and preserve his self-respect. No human mind can accept the dogma of divine despotism and the doctrine of eternal justice at the same time; they contradict each other, and it takes two brains to hold them. The cardinal is right: freethought does logically lead to atheism, if by atheism he means the denial of supreme authority. ~ Voltairine De Cleyre

She had no business being a housewife, really. She probably had a mind built for the world's leading criminal investigator. She could be out in the world tracking down society's most heinous criminals or cracking enemy codes. Instead she was stuck in the house, focusing all her intellectual acumen and perspicuity on piecing together exactly what her husbad had been up to that evening. ~ Heather O'Neill

Every time I go into a new venture, I find a "rabbi" who has the business acumen to help me understand the mechanics of that industry, the costs involved in developing a product, and what you need to do in order to make a profit. ~ Russell Simmons

Fools, as it has long been said, are indeed separated, soon or eventually, from their money. So, alas, are those who, responding to a general mood of optimism, are captured by a sense of their own financial acumen. Thus it has been for centuries; thus in the long future it will also be. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Instinct is all of our humanity being deliberately honest with all of life. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul. ~ Robert McKee

At the inception of this writing project, I considered the wisdom of executing a purposeful slaughtering of my egotistical self. If I do screw up the temerity to commence with an autopsy of a soulful self, I might lack the fortitude to stay the course to dissect the nature of my being. Without deep-seated faith, I risk faltering at the operating table and never rising again. Will I suffer from a desertion of boldness? Alternatively, will a stunning lack of talent and criminal absence of cognitive insight, perception, and discernment along with a paucity of intellectual and practical acumen betray me when I attempt to whisk up incomplete mental fragments previously abandoned to simmer in the deepest recesses of my animalistic being? Overwrought by a hovering sense of terror concerning what filthy rubbish I might discover lurking within the hallways of my afflicted soul, I am hesitant to descend into the labyrinth of the unknown. I might not endure to write about what fate awaits me when I attempt to harpoon protean personal thoughts steeped in fear and disgust. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't often think of Donald Trump, but his daughter is very smart. She's a woman working in real estate, which is predominantly men, and she's both savvy and articulate about her business and her business acumen. ~ Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Through the Fellows Program, Acumen Fund prepares future global leaders with the tools necessary to drive significant social change. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

First, those who disagree with market efficiency simply assert that it stands to common sense that greater effort to get facts and greater acumen in analyzing those facts will pay off in better performance somehow measured. (By this logic, cure for cancer must have been found by 1955). ~ Paul Samuelson

The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love without any acumen of normalcy. There is no "normal," because everyone is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. You can't compare your relationship with the playful couple who lives next door because they're probably modeling themselves after Chandler Bing and Monica Geller. ~ Chuck Klosterman

More accustomed to relying upon himself to shape events, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination, displaying a fierce ambition, an exceptional political acumen, and a wide range of emotional strengths, forged in the crucible of personal hardship, that took his unsuspecting rivals by surprise. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

My father was a middle manager at an oil company, but I never knew anything about his work. Whatever business acumen I have just got gleaned over the years. ~ Donna Mills

Dont eat to be fool,eat to be strong ... ~ YUSUF OLATUNJI ACUMEN

The common theme of common sense is that it's commonly rejected as uncommonly demanding. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Leaders are people who can discern the inevitable and act accordingly. When people talk about business acumen, discernment is a big part of it. It's a bit like gut instinct, but a little more developed. ~ Donald Trump