Competent Quotes

An American, a soldier of fortune by profession. Wherever there is trouble in the world the Dwights of all nations foregather. There are not very many of them, thirty or forty perhaps, and they are all supremely competent men because the others have been killed. ~ Nevil Shute

No man is competent to manage another. ~ Edmund A. Opitz

In fact any good mind properly taught can think like Euclid and like Walt Whitman. The Renaissance, as we saw, was full of such minds, equally competent as poet and as engineers. The modern notion of "the two cultures," incompatible under one skull, comes solely from the proliferation of specialties in science; but these also divide scientists into groups that do not understand one another, the cause being the sheer mass of detail and the diverse terminologies. In essence the human mind remains one, not 2 or 60 different organs. ~ Jacques Barzun

The operational word in every competent defense is attack. If you're explaining and defending, you're losing. ~ Gerry Spence

He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer's benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office. ~ Ayn Rand

Even if I disagree with Obama on many, many things, he is certainly qualified to be president. He is certainly competent to be president. ~ Penn Jillette

Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it's a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner. ~ Jeff Lindsay

In my experience, if you are a competent and informed early retiree who enjoys helping others, you will never want for ways to produce income, if necessary. The ~ Darrow Kirkpatrick

Service makes men competent. ~ Lyman Abbott

One competent go-getter is worth One Hundred incompetent do-nothings. - Kailin Gow, On Hiring a Winning Team ~ Kailin Gow

When you have some skills but don't fully understand your environment, there is no way you can be plus one. At best, you can be a zero. But a zero isn't a bad thing to be. You're competent enough not to create problems or make more work for everyone else. And you have to be competent, and prove to others that you are, before you can be extraordinary. There are no short-cuts, unfortunately. ~ Chris Hadfield

An incompetent lawyer can delay a trial for months or years. A competent lawyer can delay one even longer. ~ Evelle J. Younger

The most important thing she had learned so far - and it was something to know, after only twelve hours - was that she need not pretend, always, to be competent or at home in a strange atmosphere. Other people, she had learned, were frequently uneasy and uncertain, lost their way or their money, were nervous at being approached by strangers or wary of officials. ~ Shirley Jackson

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Excellent," said Cinder, standing up and brushing off her hands. "I was beginning to worry we wouldn't have a pilot for when it's time to take Kai back to Earth. Now I just have to worry about not having a competent one. ~ Marissa Meyer

Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe. ~ Friedrich Hayek

Each man judges correctly those matters with which he is acquainted; it is of these that he is a competent critic. ~ Aristotle.

Inevitably, this is how Christianity has come to be understood by a great many good people who have no better instruction in it than they receive from ranters and politicians. Under such circumstances, it is only to their credit that they reject it. Though I am not competent to judge in such matters, it would not surprise me at all to learn in any ultimate reckoning that these "Nones" as they are called, for the box they check when asked their religion, are better Christians than the Christians. But they have not been given the chance even to reject the beautiful, generous heritage that might otherwise have come to them. The learned and uncantankerous traditions seem, as I have said, to have fallen silent, to have retreated within their walls to dabble in feckless innovation and to watch their numbers dwindle. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Today any successful and competent businessman will employ the latest and best-tested methods in production, distribution, and administration. Many are discovering that one of the greatest of all efficiency methods is prayer power. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

My wife thinks I think I'm such hot stuff. She's wrong. I don't think I'm such hot stuff.

My hero George Bernard Shaw, socialist, and shrewd and funny playwright, said in his eighties that if he was considered smart, he sure pitied people who were considered dumb. He said that, having lived as long as he had, he was at last sufficiently wise to serve as a reasonably competent office boy.

That's how I feel. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Being competent means the ability to control and operate the things in the environment and the environment itself. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

In any honest analysis, change is the basis of fear, the idea of something new, of some paradigm that is unfamiliar, that is beyond our experiences so competent that we cannot even truly predict where is will lead us. ~ R.A. Salvatore

I know you're competent and your thesis advisor knows you're competent. The question in our minds is are you really serious about what you're doing?"

This was said to a young woman who had already spent five years and over $10,000 getting to that point in her Ph.D. program. ~ Joanna Russ

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles. ~ Anne Lamott

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [ ... ] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president. ~ William Kristol

If people are failing, they look inept. If people are succeeding, they look strong and good and competent. That's the 'halo effect.' Your first impression of a thing sets up your subsequent beliefs. If the company looks inept to you, you may assume everything else they do is inept. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Learning how to do psychotherapy is a complex process, much of which is transacted in the relationship between the beginning therapists and experienced supervisors. When the beginning therapists encounter problems that are beyond their range of experience, the supervisors usually assist in several ways. First, the supervisors offer an intellectual
framework in which to understand the problem. References to the professional literature are often suggested. Second, the supervisors offer practical, problem-solving help with the strategies of therapy. Third and most important, the supervisors help the less experienced therapists to deal with feelings of their own that have been evoked by the patients. With the support of competent supervisors, the therapists are usually able to master their own troubled feelings and put them in perspective.
This done, the therapists are better able to attend to patients with empathy, and with a confidence in their ability to offer help. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

People tend to be overconfident in their abilities, and the most overconfident also tend to be the least competent ~ Steven Gacovino

There's always, I guess, a philosophy that if you come in, you want to change all the parts, you want to change everything over. I've always tried to preach that consistency and continuity are very, very important. So if I know the baseball people, and I know they're competent and could do the job, I don't see any reason to replace them. ~ Pat Gillick

We select such investments on a long-term basis, weighing the same factors as would be involved in the purchase of 100% of an operating business: (1) favorable long-term economic characteristics; (2) competent and honest management; (3) purchase price attractive when measured against the yardstick of value to a private owner; and (4) an industry with which we are familiar and whose long-term business characteristics we feel competent to judge. ~ Warren Buffett

Each one of these decisions, even when they were ultimately reversed, set recovery efforts back further. Is this all a masterful conspiracy to make sure Puerto Ricans are too desperate, distracted, and despairing to resist Wall Street's bitter economic medicine? I don't believe it's anything that coordinated. Much of this is simply what happens when you bleed the public sphere for decades, laying off competent workers and neglecting basic maintenance. Run-of-the-mill corruption and cronyism are no doubt at work as well.

But it's also true that many governments have deployed a starve-then-sell strategy when it comes to public services: cut health care/transit/education to the bone until people are so disillusioned and desperate that they are willing to try anything, including selling off those services altogether. And if Rosselló and the Trump administration have seemed remarkably unconcerned about the nonstop relief and reconstruction screw-ups, the attitude may be at least partly informed by an understanding that the worse things get, the stronger the case for privatization becomes. ~ Naomi Klein

A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo

I think if you're a competent actor with a good imagination, and if it's on the page, it makes your job a lot easier. ~ Miguel Ferrer

There was nothing I could do but squirm faster and try to trust Adrian, who was surely one of the most competent mere mortals I'd met in years. He had a (small, girlie) gun, he had his wits, and he had ... I don't know. Maybe a silver bikini under his commando-wear, for all I knew. ~ Cherie Priest

The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is written and rehearsed. ~ Albert Murray

Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about. ~ Barney Frank

Find people who are competent and really bright, but more importantly, people who care exactly about the same things you care about. ~ Steve Jobs

Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write -Tough and Competent- on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control. ~ Gene Kranz

In general children from low-income families are at risk of being failed by schools because of the erroneous belief that their parents lack ambition for them. A focus on the need for aspirations as widely set is necessary for closing the achievement gap between marginalized and privileged people. Yet an environment where students may not see themselves represented in person or on the page, what exactly are they inspiring to? Who sets those standards and are they achievable in the wider world without culturally sensitive and competent teachers? ~ Mikki Kendall

We're all competent in different ways, we've just got to find a way to push ourselves up more. ~ Benjamin Clementine

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change. ~ Leo Strauss

When you smile, you don't only appear to be more likable and courteous, you appear to be more competent. ~ Ron Gutman

In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker or technician or intellectual in a society of specialists. ~ Wendell Berry

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character - no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant - is a menace and should be adjudged "unfit to be a manager and a gentleman. ~ Peter F. Drucker

Seek advice from those who are competent through their own experience and success to give it. ~ George S. Clason

When a man devotes himself body and spirit to a single object, if he has training and aptitude, no matter how mediocre he may be in ordinary affairs, he will produce something so nearly akin to a work of genius as to deceive half the judges who think themselves competent to decide between genius and talent.
("The Phantom Model") ~ Hume Nisbet

It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for. ~ Sam Harris

More than half of all people filing income tax forms use someone else to prepare the forms for them. Then they have to sign under penalty of perjury that these forms are correct. But if they were competent to determine that, why would they have to pay someone else to do their taxes for them in the first place? ~ Thomas Sowell

After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age. ~ Thomas Szasz

You could have been killed." Reacher nodded. "Many times," he said. "But all long ago. Not today. Not by these guys." "You're crazy." "Or competent. ~ Lee Child

Why do otherwise sane, competent, strong men, men who can wrestle bears or raid corporations, shrink away in horror at the thought of washing a dish or changing a diaper? ~ Frank Pittman

Oh! Lovely!" said Nanny. "You are an old fashioned family, like us. We are four worthy orphans with a no-nonsense nanny."
"Like Mary Poppins?" suggested the man, with a pleased look of recognition.
"Not one bit like that fly-by-night woman," Nanny said with a sniff. "It almost gives me diabetes just to think of her: all those disgusting spoonfuls of sugar! None of that for me. I am simply a competent and professional nanny ... ~ Lois Lowry

I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women. ~ Hyman Rickover

For if we do not know even how we manage to be conscious and intelligent, it is most rash to assume that we know what the role of conscious intelligence will be, and still more that it is competent to order the world. ~ Alan W. Watts

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

The demand for good bookkeepers is at an all time high as more people make the leap into self-employment each year and need competent bookkeeping help. ~ Sylvia Jaumann

When I moved to Minnesota, I found there was a thriving and determined movement, a grassroots movement, to revitalize the Ojibwe language. And I've never come to be a competent speaker. I have to say that right now. But even learning the amount of Ojibwe that one can at my age is a life-altering experience. ~ Louise Erdrich

If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter. ~ Edmund Burke

Just imagine how terrible it might have been if we'd been at all competent. ~ Terry Pratchett

Literate, affluent, self-confident people do not like living under either dictatorship or chaos. As more nations move into modernity and find themselves populated with educated, competent citizens, leaders will find it harder to govern those citizens without providing them the democratic rights that they are going to insist on anyway. ~ Oliver H. Woshinsky

The more intelligent and competent a woman is in her adult life, the less likely she is to have received an adequate amount of romantic attention in adolescence. ~ Susan Jacoby

I look at Woody Allen's prolific career of 30 or 40 films, and I'm watching the clock. I'd love to work at a clip of a film a year. We don't get the benefit of the doubt, particularly black women. We're presumed incompetent, whereas a white male is assumed competent until proven otherwise. They just think the guy in the ball hat and the T-shirt over the thermal has got it, whether he's got it or not. For buzzy first films by a white male, the trajectory is a 90-degree angle. For us, it's a 30-degree angle. ~ Dee Rees

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine. ~ Isabel Paterson

The multitudinous substitutes for indigenous culture cannot grow. Having no roots, they can only age and decay. Studious, sincere youth retires, defeated. American youth, capable of becoming serious competent artists, under such pressure as this on every side, confused, try not to give up
or "fall in line." This is the nature of about all that can be called American education in the arts and architecture at this time. As for religion true to the teaching of the great redeemer who said "The Kingdom of God is within you"
that religion is yet to come: the concept true not only for the new reality of building but for the faith we call democracy. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

In business, integrity is just as important as in any of the great public offices ... but I believe one of the first and fundamental obligations of competent business leadership is above all to protect the reputation and integrity of the business - to that degree the integrity of the business is the integrity of the leader. ~ Peter Cosgrove

Christian growth does not involve becoming stronger and stronger, more and more competent every day. It involves becoming more and more aware of how weak and incompetent we are and how strong and competent Jesus was and continues to be for us. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

You have to have competent people evaluating the athlete, not the housewives! ~ Bela Karolyi

Rob Hall was, without doubt, the most competent guide in mountaineering. ~ Jon Krakauer

Then there rose up before her a vision of a parish saved, a village reformed, a county reorganised, and a triumphant election at the end, the recompense and crown of all, which should put the government of the country itself, to a certain extent, into competent hands. ~ Mrs. Oliphant

Writing is all about tents: sometimes you're competent, sometimes you're eloquetent. ~ Kevin Focke

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here's a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn't stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on "Bright Eyes."
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) ~ Pablo

Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a professional, even the pressures of the culture of mastery that expects you to heal your clients without fail. Never mind all of the variables over which you have no control, it is up to you, according to the canons of mastery, to control the health and well-being of those for whom you provide professional care. This potentiates a furthering alienation between you and your clients. You are at risk to become, if you have not already, the one who does to your clients; to be the one the active subject acting upon the passive and receptive objects, your clients; to be the one in possession of special knowledge, technique and mastery. All of this conspires to coax or coerce you into treating your client as reduced, a mere case. Unawareness to these influences gives you little chance to consider their influence on your practice in the clinical setting, much less give attentive efforts to resist or change them. ~ Scott E. Spradlin

Even if someone is competent, it's so damned easy to crucify him as long as he's only working on his father's account. So at the beginning I certainly wanted to prove myself to my father and the rest of society. That quickly turned into a greater challenge. My lifestyle hasn't changed as a result. ~ Stelios Haji-Ioannou

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists throughout the world with a general idea of the history and development of their particular science: there is none who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work ... ~ Simone Weil

It is such an agreeable feeling to be busy with something one is only half-competent to do that nobody should criticize the dilettante for taking up an art he will never learn, or blame the artist who leaves the territory of his own art for the pleasure of trying himself in a neighbouring one. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A free society, to be truly worthy of that name, owes healthy, competent individuals the right to end their lives on their own terms. ~ Jacob M. Appel

You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

The findings are in keeping with something called self-determination theory, which holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered "intrinsic" to human happiness and far outweigh "extrinsic" values such as beauty, money, and status. Bluntly ~ Sebastian Junger

Still, a part of me will never stop thinking of her as my sergeant. She's the toughest, most competent, and most evenhanded soldier I've known, and she runs her squad as a strict meritocracy. If only a tenth of the military consisted of people like Sergeant Fallon, we would have kicked the SRA off of every inhabited celestial body between Earth and Zeta Reticuli fifty years ago already. As things stand, we're weighed down by people like Major Unwerth, who coast through the system doing only the expected minimum. If a military is the reflection of the society it serves, it's amazing that the Commonwealth is still at the top of the food chain on Terra. Even with all the dead wood in our ranks, we have been able to hold the line against the SRA and the dozens of regional powers in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim that are short on resources and long on grievances with their neighbors. ~ Marko Kloos

Mind is absolutely competent to harvest anything, it is up to us what we wish to produce!! Illusion, Ignorance or Awareness. ~ Aditya Ajmera

Whether or not you employ humor in dealing with difficult subjects, the tone of the writing is of the utmost importance. Personally, I can read about almost any subject if I feel a basic trust in, and respect for, the writer. The voice must have authority. But more than that, I must know that the writer is all right. If she describes a suicide attempt or a babysitter's cruelty to her, or a time of acute loneliness, I need to feel that the writer, not the character who survived the experience, is in control of telling the story....The tone of such pieces may be serious, ironic, angry, sad, or almost anything except whiny. There must be no hidden plea for help - no subtle seeking of sympathy. The writer must have done her work, made her peace with the facts, and be telling the story for the story's sake. Although the writing may incidentally turn out to be another step in her recovery, that must not be her visible motivation: literary writing is not therapy. Her first allegiance must be to the telling of the story and I, as the reader, must feel that I'm in the hands of a competent writer who needs nothing from me except my attention. ~ Judith Barrington

Chronically awkward people can feel like everyone else received a secret instruction manual at birth titled "How to be Socially Competent." For the awkward person, this dreamy manual would provide easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to gracefully navigate social life, avoid embarrassing faux pas, and rid oneself of the persistent anxiety that comes with being awkward. ~ Ty Tashiro

We may have reached the point where cosmetics has replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control. ~ Neil Postman

I have just finished my sketch of my species theory. If as I believe that my theory is true & if it be accepted even by one competent judge, it will be a considerable step in science. I therefore write this, in case of my sudden death, as my most solemn & last request, which I am sure you will consider the same as if legally entered in my will, that you will devote 400£ to its publication & further will yourself, or through Hensleigh [Wedgwood], take trouble in promoting it. ~ Charles Darwin

Latin America can no longer tolerate being a haven for United States liberals who cannot make their point at home, an outlet for apostles too "apostolic" to find their vocation as competent professionals within their own community. The hardware salesman threatens to dump second-rate imitations of parishes, schools and catechisms
out-moded even in the United States
all around the continent. The traveling escapist threatens further to confuse a foreign world with his superficial protests, which are not viable even at home. ~ Ivan Illich

Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature. ~ Carl Sagan

We live in an age of equivocal competency: if you want, you can be a competent dictator, a competent self-promoter, a competent terrorist. Just because you can do something well does not mean you should be doing it. ~ Clifford Cohen

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth ... ~ Isaac Asimov

The art of the hero wasn't about being brave; it was about being so competent that bravery wasn't an issue. You ~ Christopher McDougall

You get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won't fall down or airplanes that won't suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don't want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. ~ Neal Stephenson

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

The trouble is, nobody knows exactly how the world really works. We are all fallible people with limited knowledge. It is only through Biblical revelation from the One who knows how the world really works because He made it and actively sustains it that anyone can come to a competent understanding of the world. ~ Gary North

About First Landing by Robert Zubrin: Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars. ~ James Nicoll

The Moralization Gap is part of a larger phenomenon called self-serving biases. People try to look good. "Good" can mean effective, potent, desirable, and competent, or it can mean virtuous, honest, generous, and altruistic. ~ Steven Pinker

The big lie of American capitalism is that corporations work in their own best interests. In fact they're constantly doing things that will eventually bring them to their knees. Most of these blunders involve toxic chemicals that any competent chemist should know to be dangerous. They pump these things into the environment and don't even try to protect themselves. The evidence is right there in public, almost as if they'd printed up signed confessions and sprinkled them out of aeroplanes. Sooner or later, someone shows up in a Zodiac and points to that evidence, and the result is devastation far worse than what a terrorist, a Boone, could manage with bombs and guns. All the old men within twenty miles who have come down with tumors become implacable enemies. All the women married to them, all the mothers of damaged children, and even those of undamaged ones. The politicians and the news media trample each other in their haste to pour hellfire down on that corporation. The transformation can happen overnight and it's easy to bring about. You just have to show up and point your finger. ~ Neal Stephenson

My primary pastoral work had to do with Scripture and prayer. I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer- helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer. This turned out to be slow work. From time to time, impatient with the slowness, I would try out ways of going about my work that promised quicker results. But after a while it always seemed to be more like meddling in these people's lives than helping them attend to God. More often than not I found myself getting in the way of what the Holy Spirit had been doing long before I arrived on the scene, so I would go back, feeling a bit chastised, to my proper work: Scripture and prayer; prayer and Scripture. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

You're suggesting the mysterious X. Where do we look for him?'

Poirot said:

'Obviously in a close circle. There were five people, were there not, whocould have been concerned?'

'Five? Let me see. There was the old duffer who messed about with his herb brewing. A dangerous hobby-but an amiable creature. Vague sort of person. Don't see him as X. There was the girl-she might have polished off Caroline, but certainly not Amyas. Then there was the stockbroker-Crale's best friend. That's popular in detective stories, but I don't believe in it in real life. There's no one else-oh yes, the kid sister, but one doesn't seriously consider her. That's four.'

Hercule Poirot said:

'You forget the governess.'

'Yes, that's true. Wretched people, governesses, one never does remember them. I do recall her dimly though. Middle-aged, plain, competent. I suppose a psychologist would say that she had a guilty passion for Crale and therefore killed him. The repressed spinster! It's no good-I just don't believe it. As far as my dim remembrance goes she wasn't the neurotic type.'

'It is a long time ago.'

'Fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose. Yes, quite that. You can't expect my memories of the case to be very acute. ~ Agatha Christie

What folks don't realize, I think, is that very often "good" just means "competent." I ~ Kameron Hurley