Competence Quotes

The principle of democracy is all about delegation of power by the vast majority of citizens through a few chosen representatives chosen on merit and competence. ~ N. R. Narayana Murthy

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

We are by the river bank. The river is very, very low. Almost dry. But mostly is wet stones. Grey on the outside. We walk on the stones for awhile. You pick up a stone and crash it onto the others. As it breaks, it is quite wet inside and is very colorful, very pretty. I pick up a stone and break it and run toward the pieces to see the colors. They are beautiful. I laugh and bring the pieces back to you and you are doing the same with your pieces. We keep on crashing stones for hours, anxious to see the beautiful new colors. We are playing. The playfulness of our activity does not presuppose that it is a particular form of play with its own rules. Rather the attitude that carries us through the activity, a playful attitude, turns the activity into play. Our activity has no rules, though it is certainly intentional activity and we both understand what we are doing. The playfulness that gives meaning to our activity includes uncertainty, but in this case the uncertainty is an openness to surprise. This is a particular metaphysical attitude that does not expect the world to be neatly packaged, ruly. Rules may fail to explain what we are doing. We are not self-important, we are not fixed in particular constructions of ourselves, which is part of saying that we are open to self-construction. We are not worried about competence. We are not wedded to a particular way of doing things. While playful we have not abandoned ourselves to, nor are we stuck in, any particular 'world.' We ar ~ María Lugones

I have no idols. I respect hard work, dedication and competence ~ Ayrton Senna

Our feelings are not there to be cast out or conquered. They're there to be engaged and expressed with imagination and intelligence. ~ T.K. Coleman

The reasons for Emma's illness and for her decision to allow life in, rather than die, are intertwined and involve the beginnings of her feelings of belonging, of safety and of competence to be in the world. ~ Carol Lee

But still, it was not the desire to 'write' that was his real motive. To get out of the money-world - that was what he wanted. Vaguely he looked forward to some kind of moneyless, anchorite existence. He had a feeling that if you genuinely despise money you can keep going somehow, like the birds of the air. He forgot that the birds of the air don't pay room-rent. The poet starving in a garret - but starving, somehow, not uncomfortably - that was his vision of himself.

The next seven months were devastating. They scared him and almost broke his spirit. He learned what it means to live for weeks on end on bread and margarine, to try to 'write' when you are half starved, to pawn your clothes, to sneak trembling up the stairs when you owe three weeks' rent and your landlady is listening for you. Moreover, in those seven months he wrote practically nothing. The first effect of poverty is that it kills thought. He grasped, as though it were a new discovery, that you do not escape from money merely by being moneyless. On the contrary, you are the hopeless slave of money until you have enough of it to live on - a 'competence', as the beastly middle-class phrase goes. ~ George Orwell

Kevyn, I'm promoting you from Tech Sergeant to Munitions Commander. I want you to take responsibility for all Company weapons.
Munitions Commander? Why me?
I don't know. Call it "suspicion of extreme competence" on my part.
-Captain Tagon & Commander Kevyn Andreyasn ~ Howard Tayler

Is there life before death? That's chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup,
We hug our little destiny again. ~ Seamus Heaney

Briefly summarising, we can express the proposed law thus: consciousness is bound up with learning in organic substance; organic competence is unconscious. Still more briefly, and put in a form which is admittedly rather obscure and open to misunderstanding: Becoming is conscious, being unconscious. ~ Erwin Schrodinger

I do love competence in a man. ~ Katharine Weber

My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker. ~ Thomas Hardy

They looked more like day laborers than seamen. ~ Erik Larson

This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees
Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was deja-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.
Is there a life before death? That's chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup:
we hug our little destiny again.
-Whatever You Say Say Nothing ~ Seamus Heaney

How is it that you can read this book? An obvious answer is because you know English. An equally obvious answer is because the light is on. These two explanations for an apparently trivial ability can illuminate a fundamental dichotomy: the difference between our knowledge of language and our use of that knowledge; between our competence and our performance. Your knowledge of grammar and vocabulary of English, your competence as a speaker of English, is prerequisite to your understanding this sentence; the exercise of this competence is made possible by the fact, among many others, that the light is on. ~ Neilson Voyne Smith

The good name of the United Nations is one of its most valuable assets - but also one of its most vulnerable. The Charter calls on staff to uphold the highest levels of efficiency, competence and integrity, and I will seek to ensure to build a solid reputation for living up to that standard. ~ Ban Ki-moon

The heroic "hands-on" leader whose personal competence and force of will dominated battlefields and boardrooms for generations has been overwhelmed by accelerating speed, swelling complexity, and interdependence. Even the most successful of today's heroic leaders appear uneasy in the saddle, all too aware that their ability to understand and control is a chimera. ~ Stanley McChrystal

All too often people pretend to be professional. "Professionalism" is sometimes a facade for fraud. Be pro, but be real. Honesty and transparency combined with character, competence and real results is the key to being a true pro. ~ Richie Norton

Listening (the first competence of leadership) is not a skill, it is a discipline. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut. ~ Peter Drucker

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense,
Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence.
But Health consists with Temperance alone,
And Peace, oh Virtue! Peace is all thy own. ~ Alexander Pope

Two men for example, of precisely the same physical age, of precisely the same physical condition, will be in completely different states of mind, of competence, of effectiveness and of strength, as a direct result of their inner beliefs as to their relative freedom within the framework of the physical system in which they exist. The man who does not realize his basic independence from the physical system will not have the same freedom within it. ~ Jane Roberts

It's not uncommon for people to overvalue the importance of demonstrating their competence and power, often at the expense of demonstrating their warmth. ~ Amy Cuddy

Law students are famous for busting their buns to make high grades, sometimes at the expense of health and relationships, thinking, 'Later I'll be happy, because the American dream will be mine,' " said Lawrence S. Krieger, a law professor at Florida State University and an author of the study. "Nice, except it doesn't work." The problem with the more prestigious jobs, said Mr. Krieger, is that they do not provide feelings of competence, autonomy or connection to others - three pillars of self-determination theory, the psychological model of human happiness on which the study was based. Public-service jobs do. ~ Anonymous

The cloud is still really just a bunch of servers, owned by someone or something, whose decisions and competence must be trusted. This applies to everything from Google Docs to Gmail: Putting our data out there really means putting it 'out there.' ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

all of whom radiated level-headed competence, physical fitness and pride in appearance, and lived on a different planet from the one defined by general weak tittering, the oxygen levels of which I was more used to. ~ Simon Winder

four stages of learning: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. ~ Tony Jeary

Most curable sickness can now be diagnosed and treated by laymen. People find it so difficult to accept this statement because the complexity of medical ritual has hidden from them the simplicity of its basic procedures. It took the example of
the barefoot doctor in China to show how modern practice by simple workers in their spare time could, in three years,
catapult health care in China to levels unparalleled elsewhere. In most other countries health care by laymen is considered a
crime. A seventeen-year-old friend of mine was recently tried for having treated some 130 of her high-school colleagues for
VD. She was acquitted on a technicality by the judge when expert counsel compared her performance with that of the U.S. Health Service. Nowhere in the U.S.A. can her achievement be considered "standard," because she succeeded in making retests on all her patients six weeks after their first treatment. Progress should mean growing competence in self-care rather than growing dependence. 5 ~ Ivan Illich

All the decisive blows are struck left-handed. ~ Walter Benjamin

That's how I approach just about everything. I spend my life getting ready to play "Rocket Man." I picture the most demanding challenge; I visualize what I would need to know how to do to meet it; then I practice until I reach a level of competence where I'm comfortable that I'll be able to perform. It's what I've always done, ever since I decided I wanted to be an astronaut in 1969, and that conscious, methodical approach to preparation is the main reason I got to Houston. I never stopped getting ready. Just in case. ~ Chris Hadfield

All three elements - assessment, challenge, and support - should be part of your plan to increase your ethical competence. ~ Inc SAGE Publications

It's instructive to consider the more spectacular and well-known falls from grace of leaders in the public eye ... In the main, the issues behind these falls could be grouped under a lack of competence, a lack of support or loyalty from those they sought to lead, and a lack of failure of integrity. Of all these the last is the most egregious, the most fatal. We so much want our leaders to be unfailingly decent that an obvious or perceived flaw in integrity can be the toxin which kills them off. ~ Peter Cosgrove

And it makes you wonder - how can a people incapable of selecting their own lightbulbs and toilets possess enough competence to vote for their own rulers and fill out complicated tax returns? ~ Mark R. Levin

Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing. ~ George Stillman Hillard

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight. ~ James Thurber

I have reached far beyond my competence and have probably secured for good a reputation for flamboyant gestures. But the times still crowd me and give me no rest, and I see no way to avoid ambitious synthetic attempts; either we get some kind of grip on the accumulation of thought or we continue to wallow helplessly, to starve amidst plenty. So I gamble with science and write. ~ Ernest Becker

We pass judgements as to merits in areas we have no competence ~ Benson IV

Experiment: To replace negative character labels, try the following steps:

1. Pick a new, positive character label that you would prefer. For example, if your old belief is "I'm incompetent," you would likely pick "I'm competent."

2. Rate how much you currently believe the old negative character label on a scale of 0 (= I don't believe it at all) to 100 (= I believe it completely). Do the same for the new positive belief. For example, you might say you believe "I'm incompetent" at level 95 and believe "I'm competent" at level 10 (the numbers don't need to add up to 100).

3. Create a Positive Data Log and a Historical Data Log. Strengthening your new, positive character label is often a more helpful approach than attempting to hack away at the old, negative one. I'm going to give you two experiments that will help you do this.

Positive Data Log. For two weeks, commit to writing down evidence that supports your new, positive character belief. For example, if you are trying to boost your belief in the thought "I'm competent" and you show up to an appointment on time, you can write that down as evidence.

Don't fall into the cognitive trap of discounting some of the evidence. For example, if you make a mistake and then sort it out, it's evidence of competence, not incompetence, so you could put that in your Positive Data Log.

Historical Data Log. This log looks back at periods of your life and finds evidence from t ~ Alice Boyes

* Intelligence is quickness to learn. Ability is the skill to apply what is learned. Competence is the ability and the desire to apply what is learned. Desire is the attitude that makes a skillful person competent. Many skillful people are incompetent. Ability without the right attitude is wasted. ~ Shiv Khera

Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller. ~ Kristin Cashore

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with. ~ John Cleese

Our confidence ... is not in the competence of our own knowing, but in the faithfulness and reliability of the one who is known. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

It seems a miracle that young children easily learn the language of any environment into which they were born. The generative approach to grammar, pioneered by Chomsky, argues that this is only explicable if certain deep, universal features of this competence are innate characteristics of the human brain. Biologically speaking, this hypothesis of an inheritable capability to learn any language means that it must somehow be encoded in the DNA of our chromosomes. Should this hypothesis one day be verified, then lingusitics would become a branch of biology. ~ Niels Kaj Jerne

We now operate in a world in which we can assume neither competence nor good faith from the authorities, and the consequences of this simple, devastating realization is the defining feature of American life at the end of this low, dishonest decade. ~ Christopher L. Hayes

They all have excellent resumes ... So what I'm trying to find out is how they will behave under pressure. ~ Hyman G. Rickover

If I could get one message to you it would be this: the future of this country and the welfare of the free world depends upon our success in space. There is no room in this country for any but a fully cooperative, urgently motivated all-out effort toward space leadership. No one person, no one company, no one government agency, has a monopoly on the competence, the missions, or the requirements for the space program. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Honoring the value of competence and steadfastness requires a generosity of spirit and a curbing of the passion for envy, traits that few people value and fewer still cultivate and acquire. Not until there is more of Smith and less of Hobbes in the human heart, will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim ~ Thomas Szasz

The best defense against partisanship is expertise. ~ Roger Angell

The only irreplaceable capital an organization possesses is the knowledge and ability of its people. The productivity of that capital depends on how effectively people share their competence with those who can use it. ~ Andrew Carnegie

I would rather you consider me as a physician, not a lady."
"Why must you be one or the other?" Ransom asked reasonably. "You're both. I have no difficulty carrying a lady's bag while at the same time respecting her professional competence. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The takeaway here is simple but powerful: just because you're great at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. Unfortunately, this fact is routinely ignored by those who engage in - take a deep breath - ultracrepidarianism, or the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge or competence. ~ Steven D. Levitt

We godless lack that certainty, and we know the world is a complex place that requires compromise and is not ruled by a moral force - virtue is subject to negotiation, and is found in working together with others to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Good is not absolute, it is an emergent property that arises from successful networks of individuals. It is also something that is measured by evidence: we look at the good that people do, not the promises that they make and never keep, or the lies that dovetail nicely into dogma. Competence is a virtue. Intent is meaningless without action. ~ PZ Myers

Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he dominates someone or something in order to feel powerful. Men refuse to feel the paralyzing and humbling horror of uncertainty, a horror that could drive them to trust, a horror that could release in them the power to deeply give themselves in relationship. As a result, most men feel close to no one, especially not to God, and no one feels close to them. Something good in men is stopped and needs to get moving. When good movement stops, bad movement (retreat or domination) reliably develops. ~ Larry Crabb

All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence. ~ Deborah Tannen

Doing what others have done is skill.
Dong what few have done is talent.
Doing what none have done is genius.
Going where others have gone is competence.
Going where few have gone is excellence.
Going where none have gone is transcendence. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The leaders of the Pahlavi regime, in an attempt to forestall the rising tide of the Islamic revolutionary movement, were hard at work to cast doubt on the question of the Imam Khomeini's position as a Marja'a (a top religious authority) and in this way, undermine public faith in his academic, political and religious competence. ~ Yousef Saanei

The collective benefits of higher education will not be asserted unless the public can be engaged in defining them. A student's future returns on his or her personal investment of time and money will seem more critical than the public benefits to be derived from ensuring that all students become people of character as well as of competence. An institution's prowess in potentially lucrative lines of scientific research will seem more essential to its mission than its participation in the development of an aesthetically engaged and broadly humane society. Unless there is public discussion that can help support the balancing of public and private priorities, colleges and universities will dance only to the private ambitions that ensure continuing high levels of enrollment and high ratings in the various surveys of satisfaction that give institutions a boost in national rankings. ~ Ellen Condliffe Lagemann

Familiarity with the brand requires some experience of it (via advertising, word of mouth, internet publicity), Confidence comes with the perception of competence in the brand itself (which is why new brands really need to work hard for people to experience them first) and Trustworthiness refers to the sense of whether the brand is going to live up to its promise of reliability for the price paid. ~ David Amerland

That myth
that image of the madonna-mother
has disabled us from knowing that, just as men are more than fathers, women are morethan mothers. It has kept us from hearing their voices when they try to tell us their aspirations ... kept us from believing that they share with men the desire for achievement, mastery, competence
the desire to do something for themselves. ~ Lillian B. Rubin

I don't want to be expected to fall in passively someone else's plans for me. That's what I don't want. I don't want it assumed that I simply don't have any personal goals or wishes of my own. Or any basic competence of my own. That's what I don't want! ~ Nora Roberts

Ability does catches my attention, but its a politeness in the person that I remember. ~ Amit Kalantri

Look for competence not claims. ~ Anthony De Mello

There is a great need for a new approach, new methods and new tools in teaching, man's oldest and most reactionary craft. There is great need for a rapid increase in the productivity of learning. There is, above all, great need for methods that will make the teacher effective and multiply his or her efforts and competence. Teaching is, in fact, the only traditional craft in which we have not yet fashioned the tools that make an ordinary person capable of superior performance. In this respect, teaching is far behind medicine, where the tools first became available a century or more ago. ~ Peter Drucker

In short, professional competence is not enough to be a good leader; good leaders must truly care about those entrusted to their care. ~ Simon Sinek

As Stephen Krashen and Joanne Ujiie (2005) assert, "Many people are fearful that if children engage in 'light reading,' if they read comics and magazines they will stay with this kind of reading forever, that they will never go on to more 'serious' reading. The opposite appears to be the case. The evidence suggests that light reading provides the competence and motivation to continue reading and to read more demanding texts" (p. 6). ~ Donalyn Miller

A genuine approach to budget cutting - knowing exactly what you're cutting and why, and with what real-life consequences - is beyond my competence, and probably beyond the competence of any politician in America. ~ George Packer

Competence is a great creator of confidence. ~ Mary Jo Putney

Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

For many activities, people cannot rely solely on themselves in evaluating their ability level because such judgments require inferences from probabilistic indicants of talent about which they may have limited knowledge. Self-appraisals are, therefore, partly based on the opinions of others who presumably possess evaluative competence ~ Albert Bandura

Don't strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else.

Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn't make a leader less effective.

Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone's opportunity.

Leadership is not always about getting things done "right." Leadership is about getting things done through other people.

The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault.

As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses.

There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination.

Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing.

My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor.

A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don't show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor).

In my world, it is my communication ~ Andy Stanley

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything. ~ Peggy Noonan

Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us
through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner

Having never had dealings with Bow Street, Lady Fieldhurst was not quite certain what to expect: perhaps a stout fellow past his prime, befuddled with sleep or spirits, with a bulbous red nose - the same sort as might be found in any number of watchmen's boxes across the metropolis. The individual who entered the room in [the footman's] wake, however, was very nearly her own age. To be sure, his nose was somewhat crooked, as if it had been broken at some point, but it was far from bulbous, and it was certainly not red. He was quite tall, almost gangly, with curling brown hair tied at the nape of his neck in an outmoded queue. He wore an unfashionably shallow-crowned hat and a black swallow-tailed coat of good cloth but indifferent cut; indeed, his only claim to fashion lay in the quizzing glass which hung round his neck from a black ribbon, and which he now raised, the resulting magnification revealing his eyes to be a warm brown. Julia might have been much reassured as to his competence, had it not been for the fact that his mouth hung open as from a rusty hinge. ~ Sheri Cobb South

Competence is a big word. It is important. I almost want to nuance it with the idea of giftedness because sometimes you can teach a lot of skills on exposition but a person may not have the competence or the giftedness to do it. Therefore, it is very important to have that. ~ Ravi Zacharias

A damsel in complete distress was a burden to her protectors; one familiar with self defence, not as much. ~ Grace Draven

No competence is required to be a scarecrow! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Illusion of competence is Ignorance in reality. ~ Talees Rizvi

As Christians, we are all engaged in the business of discerning and obeying God's call, and this usually means that soon enough we find ourselves out beyond our own competence, frightened at what God demands and feeling cosmically abandoned, left in the lurch with a job for which our own resources are completely inadequate…Sooner or later, the panic touches each one of us who accepts God's call and heads, eyes wide open, straight into some difficult and mysterious work - like pastoring a church, teaching a class, going back to school, learning a language, creating a work of art. The panic descends on everyone who accepts God's call to do something that engages our heart and wracks our soul - like making a marriage proper through better and worse, raising a child and letting her go into adulthood, enduring a terrible illness, growing up, growing old. In fact, being called out far beyond our own competence is part of our regular experience with God. ~ Ellen F. Davis

People value honesty. They value integrity. They value competence and courage and all those kinds of things. ~ Richard A. Kidd

For the social phobic, any kind of performance - musical, sporting, public speaking - can be terrifying because failure will reveal the weakness and inadequacy within. This in turn means constantly projecting an image that feels false - an image of confidence, competence, even perfection. ~ Scott Stossel

I don't think this is a good idea. We all live on one planet so we cannot segregate the genders. If the Holy Mosque in Makkah, which is the holiest place on earth, does not segregate women, then why would the Ministry of Health want to segregate them?"
She also went on to object to the selection of a physician based only on gender and not competence, expressing her disdain as follows: "I prefer doctors who are professional in studying my situation and solving my problem, regardless of whether they are male or female. I cannot imagine a men's hospital without female nurses and doctors, and I also cannot imagine women's hospitals without men playing a role in them. ~ Qanta A. Ahmed

If we conducted ourselves as sensibly in good times as we do in hard times, we could all acquire a competence. ~ William Feather

Our all-volunteer force continues to prove itself with a great level of professionalism, personal commitment and a technical competence that is quite remarkable. ~ Geoff Davis

Modern children were considerably less innocent than parents and the larger society supposed, and postmodern children are less competent than their parents and the society as a whole would like to believe ... The perception of childhood competence has shifted much of the responsibility for child protection and security from parents and society to children themselves. ~ David Elkind

As expected, the effect of facial competence on voting is about three times larger for information-poor and TV-prone voters than for others who are better informed and watch less television. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Emotional intelligence, more than any other factor, more than I.Q. or expertise, accounts for 85% to 90% of success at work ... I.Q. is a threshold competence. You need it, but it doesn't make you a star. Emotional intelligence can. ~ Warren G. Bennis

An organization's success has more to do with clarity of shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability or management competence, important as they may be. ~ Dee Hock

SDT, by contrast, begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs - competence, autonomy, and relatedness. ~ Daniel H. Pink

It is their usual reaction; they employ not words and reasoned conversation or discourse to resolve problems, but the truncheon, the jackbooted foot, or the gun. Sophistication requires more competence and skill than mere thuggery. It is a harder, loftier charge to be civilised than to let the beast in man devour man. The enlightened mind knows that all is challengeable, questions all, and thus, learns and grows. The weak, narrow mind makes its beliefs – whatever form they take – sacrosanct, defending them with violence if necessary. Political extremists, much like religious zealots, are the latter. They destroy what they cannot convert. They annihilate those they cannot control or make conform. They have found no peace in life, no love, and so promote war and division, as emotional cripples – inflicting their own pain and misery and malignant stupidity on the world. Their language binds people together, but only by stirring the darkest excesses of the soul; language of hate, and intolerance, fear and conspiracy, and the need for vengeance. In war-scarred Europe, these cripples direct mass-psychology, and would make the world in their own likeness; mutilated by violence and tribalism and hate.
They use language in its most evil, twisted form. They appeal to the lowest form of understanding, on a level I hesitate to allow for the term 'human intelligence' to be associated.

Children, fertile minds ripe for molestation. Now they will be taught what to think, not ~ Daniel S. Fletcher

It is undeniable that a woman's ability to stretch and pursue her total competence outside the home and get paid what she's worth for it makes for happier and more fulfilled women. ~ Kyle D. Pruett

I was hell-bent on being an effective humanitarian in Cambodia and Somalia. But a naïve fog is finally lifting. Revealed is a train wreck of illusions, the depravity of someone else's war, the futility of a competence stillborn there. To understand this you have to become this. ~ Kenneth Cain

Ordinary men wonder why those of only average intelligence so often rise to the highest levels of power, while highly intelligent people generally do not. They fail to understand that reaching the highest levels of power has nothing to do with admired attributes such as intelligence and competence. The predominant characteristic of those who rise to the highest levels of power is a total disregard for the consequences – including death – that will befall thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human beings if it is deemed necessary to attain his (or her) goals. Generally speaking, it is this total disregard for humanity that has distinguished 'rulers' throughout history. ~ Dave Champion

Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent. ~ Alan Watts

I will believe in students' competence and intelligence. I will keep faith...that they have stories to tell, things to explain, and the language with which to do those things. I will reject any notion that places in my mind a belief in students' deficits -- whether those deficits be genetic, cultural, or behavioral. I will treat them as people who can get important things done for important reasons. ~ Randy Bomer

Social prejudice is a strong force, but no match for simple competence when skill is in urgent demand and short supply. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Switch from a Performance Focus to a Mastery Focus

There's a way to keep your standards high but avoid the problems that come from perfectionism. If you can shift your thinking from a performance focus to a mastery focus, you'll become less fearful, more resilient, and more open to good, new ideas. Performance focus is when your highest priority is to show you can do something well now. Mastery focus is when you're mostly concerned with advancing your skills. Someone with a mastery focus will think, "My goal is to master this skill set" rather than "I need to perform well to prove myself."
A mastery focus can help you persist after setbacks. To illustrate this, imagine the following scenario: Adam is trying to master the art of public speaking. Due to his mastery goal, he's likely to take as many opportunities as he can to practice giving speeches. When he has setbacks, he'll be motivated to try to understand these and get back on track. His mastery focus will make him more likely to work steadily toward his goal. Compare this with performance-focused Rob, who is concerned just with proving his competence each time he gives a talk. Rob will probably take fewer risks in his style of presentation and be less willing to step outside his comfort zone. If he has an incident in which a talk doesn't go as well as he'd hoped, he's likely to start avoiding public speaking opportunities.
Mastery goals will help you become less upset about individual instances of fa ~ Alice Boyes

I mistrust total competence. I've always felt life is a series of small disasters we try to get through. ~ Michael Palin

Fostering cultural competence as conceived by Ladson-Billings (1994) is not problematic if mainstream U.S. culture reflects and resonates with students' cultural identities. In the instances in which students' cultural identities and mainstream U.S. culture are not in sync and students' cultural identities are marginalized, this cultural competence "uses student culture in order to maintain it [student culture] and to transcend the negative effects of the dominant culture" (Ladson-Billings 1994, p. 17). ~ Lisa Scherff

I've reached the age where competence is a turn-on. ~ Billy Joel

We cannot expect in the immediate future that all women who seek it will achieve full equality of opportunity. But if women are tostart moving towards that goal, we must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe in us; we must match our aspirations with the competence, courage and determination to succeed. ~ Rosalyn Sussman Yalow