Willingness Quotes

I'm a secular priest ordained by training, experience, and, most important, the willingness to accept the mantle of command. That willingness encompasses the realization that failure is easy, and such failure could kill me or, worse, kill someone else. ~ Laurence Gonzales

If we have a heart to learn and a willingness to follow the example of children, their divine attributes can hold a key to unlocking our own spiritual growth. ~ Jean A. Stevens

Without effort and willingness to experience pain and anxiety, nobody grows, in fact nobody achieves anything worth achieving. ~ Erich Fromm

Our willingness to acknowledge that we only see half the picture creates the conditions that make us more attractive to others. The more sincerely we acknowledge our need for their different insights and perspectives, the more they will be magnetized to join us. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

Logic has rid us of the absurdity of our clothes. That's progress, no irony, only now we are cold. Hale and ill trade bodies with unusual willingness, while in midair souls tangle. The young start out disgusted and Poetry is left to the memo-writers. ~ Odysseus Elytis

Open your hearts to the Lord. The Lord is waiting for you and the Church will welcome you if your willingness to serve good is as clear and public as your choice to serve evil was. ~ Pope Francis

Zionist willingness to compromise met by Palestinian rejection and Jew hatred. ~ Sol Stern

I do believe I am special. My special gift is my vision, my commitment, and my willingness to do whatever it takes. ~ Anthony Robbins

I believed I could change the world, and the weight of that belief almost crushed me. But guess what - apart from God, I can do nothing. I can't get anywhere... My ability to accomplish anything good is dependent on my willingness to dwell in the current of God's will. ~ Phil Vischer

Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty. ~ Sharon Salzberg

The efficiency of most workers is beyond the control of the management and depends more than has been supposed upon the willingness of men to do their best. ~ Sumner Slichter

After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness to stand and let people say things with which we disagree, and which do weary us considerably. ~ Zechariah Chafee

Whether or not you get what you're looknig for depends entirely on one things and one thing only. It depends on your willingness to do something different. ~ Wyatt Webb

It is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish Nation. ~ Thomas Davis

I would go one step further and say that the willingness to challenge professional economists - and other experts - should be the foundation of democracy. When you think about it, if all we have to do is to listen to the experts, what is the point of having a democracy at all? Unless we want our societies to be run by a body of self-elected experts, we all have to learn economics and challenge professional economists ~ Ha-Joon Chang

After decades as a Buddhist committed to nonviolence, he had watched police officers running past him in the streets, moving toward and not away from the place of greatest danger. He now understood that his ability to practice nonviolence without risking his life had been predicated on the willingness of the state – in the form of police officers and soldiers – to use violence to protect him, Batchelor recognized that our relationship with violence is considerably more complicated than we might wish. ~ Kate Braestrup

Someone has said,"Education is going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of one's ignorance."..No one has a corner on wisdom. All the name-dropping in the world does not heighten the significance of our character. If anything, it reduces it. Our acute need is to cultivate a willingness to learn and to remain teachable. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers. Chronos is time at her worst. Chronos keeps track ... Chronos is the world's time. Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred. Kairos is intimacy with the Real. Kairos is time at her best ... Kairos is Spirit's time. We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That's our duality. Chronos requires speed so that it won't be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we're allowed to be ... It takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment. All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

She was afraid of us moving in together. With Mark, domestic intimacy had become domestic claustrophobia; and had riddled romance (though she never quite said this) like woodworm. It wasn't that she was resistant to the glamourlessness of stray toenails and washing up and underpants and mug-rings and hoovering and boredom; on the contrary: it was that she was horrified by her own willingness to sink so deeply into the comfort of such details. A no nonsense streak in her identified the ordinary with truth, the exotic with delusion. She and Mark had delighted in dehumbugging their own romance, had (she confessed) Larkinized themselves into mundanity addicts. In Mark's case (she suspected) because he knew deep down he had no magic in him; in her own because she knew deep down that she had too much (no nonsense streak or not), and that to release it would be to lose him - and perhaps herself. Therefore they had wallowed together in cosiness, both suffering, Mark for fear of her leaving him, her for fear (certainty, actually) that the romantic inside her would rise up and smash their deadening familiarity to pieces. ~ Glen Duncan

Love is the source and goal, faith is the slow process of getting there, and hope is the willingness to move forward without resolution and closure. And these are indeed, 'the three things that last' (1 Corinthians 13:13). People who have these gifts - faith, hope, and love - are indestructible. ~ Richard Rohr

God is a person [in Christ]. A person can be known only by personal understanding, not impersonal understanding. Personal understanding takes place through love, caring, willingness, intimacy, and relationship. ~ Peter Kreeft

In a market economy, a main determinant of social standing is participation in the labor market and the associated willingness to 'self-commodify' (e.g., Esping-Andersen 1999), the latter term nicely emphasizing how market economies render all forms of worth, even self-worth, a function of market valuation. When individuals fail to self-commodify, they fall outside the most fundamental institutions of the society, thereby reducing them to nonentities and social ciphers. This is why a mere transfer of income to the underclass... is inconsequential in relieving feelings of social exclusion. If anything, such a transfer only draws attention to the initial failure to self-commodify. although a class map also embodies distinctions of social standing among those who have an enduring commitment to the labor market, the social divide between the underclass and all other classes looms especially large because it captures this fundamental insider-outsider distinction. ~ Ravi Kanbur

The mark of the Christian is the willingness to look for the Divine in the flesh of a babe in a crib, the continuing Christ under the appearance of bread on an altar, and a meditation and a prayer on a string of beads ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Humor simultaneously wounds and heals, indicts and pardons, diminishes and enlarges; it constitutes inner growth at the expense of outer gain, and those who possess and honestly practice it make themselves more through a willingness to make themselves less. ~ Louis Kronenberger

A man's interest is only perceived by his willingness to stay focused. ~ Justin Bienvenue

What do you call the animal that, finding the hunter, offers itself to be eaten? A martyr? A weakling? No, a beast gaining the rare agency to stop. Yes, the period in the sentence - it's what makes us human, Ma, I swear. It lets us stop in order to keep going.
Because submission, I soon learned, was also a kind of power. To be inside of pleasure, Trevor needed me. I had a choice, a craft,
whether he ascends or falls depends on my willingness to make room for him, for you cannot rise without having something to rise
over. ~ Ocean Vuong

Compassion is the willingness to play in the field of dreams even though you are awake. ~ Matthew Flickstein

So do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another's lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power and a holy willingness to spend their power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors. And then, together, make something of the world. ~ Andy Crouch

This again was the curious thing about Ambrosio, his willingness to live fully inside the moment, whatever its virtue or folly, without regard for the future. ~ Michael Paterniti

Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives. ~ Brennan Manning

[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy. ~ Jared Diamond

The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone's race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail. ~ Ali Wong

The willingness to change one's mind in the light of new evidence is a sign of rationality not weakness. ~ Stuart Sutherland

The laws of nature tell us there's a finite amount of any substance on the face of the earth, and at some point, that's going to run out. And if we're smart and we have some grace and we have some willingness about our destiny, then we will take ourselves into the renewable world. ~ Mark Ruffalo

The primary factor that enables our government to peddle economic snake oil is the dollar's unique role as the world's reserve currency, and our creditors' willingness to preserve its status. By buying up dollars and loaning them back to us through Treasury debt, productive countries give American politicians cart blanche to play Santa Claus. ~ Peter Schiff

Sometimes the path to a more beautiful relationship with people we love requires a willingness to accede to non-evil requests that we do not consider to be wise. Why? Since we have authority to grant the request, a withholding of the request can be misinterpreted and damage the relationship irreparably. The decision to put aside our misgivings and grant the non-evil request can, however, enable the other person come to a realization of the wisdom of our opinion and our love for them, resulting in the most beautiful relationships we can imagine. ~ Oghenovo Obrimah

I think what we (as a society) need from artists of all kinds is courage, a willingness to explore, and a really big sense of possibility. ~ Sharon Salzberg

I tend to connect most easily with two kinds of people, those who are creating something and those who are easily vulnerable. Both trees grow from the same root, I think, and that's the willingness to take risks. ~ Donald Miller

Sometimes, impossibility isn't about defying reason,
but simply lack of willingness to believe in otherwise. ~ Toba Beta

I like the scientific spirit - the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine - it always keeps the way beyond open - always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake - after a wrong guess. ~ Walt Whitman

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to have been overshadowed by the upheavals in the region. I have followed events there for almost 40 years. I am convinced that what is needed for a solution is not only the willingness to negotiate in good faith but also to take into account the needs and sensibility of the negotiating partner. I, for one, just cannot believe that the value of settlements for Israel is bigger than the damage these settlements do as an obstacle to peace. ~ Heinz Fischer

It is impossible to stand upright when one plants his roots in the shifting sands of popular opinion and approval. Needed is the courage of a Daniel, an Abinadi, a Moroni, or a Joseph Smith in order for us to hold strong and fast to that which we know is right. They had the courage to do not that which was easy but that which was right.
We will all face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition. Let us
all of us
have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God's approval. Courage becomes a living and an attractive virtue when it is regarded not only as a willingness to die manfully but also as the determination to live decently. As we move forward, striving to live as we should, we will surely receive help from the Lord and can find comfort in His words ~ Thomas S. Monson

Walking with someone through grief, or through the process of reconciliation, requires patience, presence, and a willingness to wander, to take the scenic route. ~ Rachel Held Evans

The willingness of America's veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude. ~ Jeff Miller

The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief. ~ Fred Saberhagen

The greatest reward for a student is not a good grade. It is the willingness of his teacher to listen to him. ~ Nikolay Konstantinov

In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself. ~ Vaclav Havel

Do you know what courage is? Not a willingness to fling oneself into danger without proper thought – that is nothing, nothing. There is cowardice in all impulse. Real courage lies in thinking things through, seeing all the risks, and taking them anyway. Lady Tamarind has courage. ~ Frances Hardinge

To me, patriotism means dedication to the principles on which the country was founded and a willingness to stand firm and fight for these principles regardless of what the government says or does ~ Richard J. Maybury

Delegation requires the willingness to pay for short term failures in order to gain long term competency. ~ Dave Ramsey

One thing is clear to me: we, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves. ~ Barbara Jordan

Be honest with God and ask Him to give you a willingness to do the work of prayer. ~ David Jeremiah

I love the thought of not knowing how things will turn out but the willingness to invest anyway. ~ Kristin Armstrong

The story also pointed out that most big cities and towns have chambers of commerce and economic development offices, but what makes Itasca unique, participants say, is a commitment to hard data and McKinsey-style analysis, as well as a willingness to depart from the script that drives many private sector lobbies. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

You must be willing to take whatever pieces of life come your way and arrange them so that they work with and for you rather than against you. The key is to be willing. The willingness to arrange rather than complain or make excuses will pay off. ~ Wayne Dyer

Overcoming limiting beliefs depends on a person's willingness to challenge and replace their beliefs with contrasting ones which feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and, potentially, threatening to their sense of self. ~ Kain Ramsay

Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain. (23) ~ Sheldon B. Kopp

Stupidity is not at all lack of intelligence, it is the willingness of repeating the actions which crosses the boundaries of common sense. We all misplace our common sense at some point in life, but the champions of the act never realize that the sense which is uncommon should not be carried along all the time. ~ Shahenshah Hafeez Khan

Men will work hard for money. They will work harder for other men. But men will work hardest of all when they are dedicated to a cause. Until willingness overflows obligation, men fight as conscripts rather than following the flag as patriots. Duty is never worthily performed until it is performed by one who would gladly do more if only he could. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. ~ George Orwell

Thomas Stanley has not only found no correlation between success in school and an ability to accumulate wealth, he's actually found a negative correlation. 'It seems that school-related evaluations are poor predictors of economic success,' Stanley concluded. What did predict success was a willingness to take risks. Yet the success-failure standards of most schools penalized risk takers. Most educational systems reward those who play it safe. As a result, those who do well in school find it hard to take risks later on. ~ Richard Farson

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

I'm glad that my willingness to be vulnerable about my life encourages other people to be more open and honest about their own. ~ William P. Smith

Success depends on a willingness to change. ~ Debasish Mridha

success and failure is like two sides of coin depends on your willingness. ~ Wasim Malik

You have as much as you create. You create as much as you are willing to create. ~ Meir Ezra

He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The ~ Rene Girard

I've maintained old friendships, like with people I knew in the nineteen-seventies, but have lost the knack for meeting new people. This has a lot to do with my writing schedule. I don't want to be disturbed, and the willingness to be disturbed is, I think, part of being a good friend. ~ David Sedaris

I guess I have a certain willingness for audacity. ~ Sally Mann

To know one's self requires a fierce and courageous willingness to explore the many layers of one's inner landscape. ~ Pamela McLean

The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right ~ Donella Meadows

One of the greatest glories of growing older is the willingness to ask why and, getting no good answer, deciding to follow my own inclinations and desires. Asking why is the way to wisdom. Why are we supposed to want possessions we don't need and work that seems beside the point and tight shoes and a fake tan? Why are we supposed to think new is better than old, youth and vigor better than long life and experience? Why are we supposed to turn our backs on those who have preceded us and to snipe at those who come after? When we were small children we asked 'Why?' constantly. Asking the question now is more a matter of testing the limits of what sometimes seems a narrow world. One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating conformity. ~ Anna Quindlen

Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma. Jefferson had a remarkable capacity to marshal ideas and to move men, to balance the inspirational and the pragmatic. To realize his vision, he compromised and improvised. The willingness to do what he needed to do in a given moment makes him an elusive historical figure. Yet in the real world ... his creative flexibility made him a transformative leader. ~ Jon Mecham

Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever you want. It's the willingness to do whatever you want. ~ Seth

A commitment to growth is a commitment to risk, courage, faith, strength, hope, and a willingness to make mistakes, get back up and try again. ~ Christine Caine

It's not about money or connections. It's the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone. ~ Mark Cuban

I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Truly, from a very early age, I started distancing myself from other kids, not out of willingness, but just out of the nature of my energy. I liked to do things solely, and I already had a taste of the quest for perfection, which is unusual in a little kid. ~ Philippe Petit

[Donald] Trump has threatened to withhold investment in Scotland in response to the calls to ban him from the UK. Over the years Mr Trump has made a number of statements about the different scale of his investment in the UK and his willingness to maintain them. ~ James Brokenshire

Augustus gradually increased his powers, taking over those of the senate, the executives and the laws. The aristocracy received wealth and position in proportion to their willingness to accept slavery. The state had been transformed, and the old Roman character gone for ever. Equality among citizens was completely abandoned. All now waited on the imperial command. ~ Tacitus

God-given prayer and praise have as their essence a waiting on God, a willingness to be wrought upon by the hammer and the fire of the Almighty, until the chains of self-centered desires fall away from the personality, and the love of Christ become the deepest hunger of the inner life. ~ C. John Miller

We are respectable females. Of course we have delicate sensibilities." "No, Matty, what professional secretaries must possess in abundance are the qualities of intelligence, common sense and a willingness to do whatever is required to extricate one's person from potentially outrageous situations before they become outrageous. There are no knights in shining armor hanging about waiting to rescue us. We must deal with the world on our own. Which is, of course, why I make certain that all of my secretaries wear hats with large, sturdy hatpins. ~ Amanda Quick

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances. ~ Madeleine Peyroux

That word is 'willing.' It's an attitude and spirit of cooperation that should permeate our conversations. It's like a palm tree by the ocean that endures the greatest winds because it knows how to gracefully bend. ~ Stephen Kendrick

Faith must be definite, specific; an unqualified, unmistakable request for the things asked for. It is not to be a vague, indefinite, shadowy thing; it must be something more than an abstract belief in God's willingness and ability to do for us. It is to be a definite, specific, asking for, and expecting the things for which we ask. ~ E.M. Bounds

Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught. ~ Bertrand Russell

Challenged by the surge of nationalisms in many parts of the former Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks showed a great deal of political skill and flexibility. Their apparent willingness to make significant concessions to the nationalities, in sharp contrast to the White forces' uncompromising dedication to a "one and indivisible Russia," was a contributing factor to their victory in the Civil War. ~ Per Anders Rudling

Finally, the tern 'asceticism' is also susceptible to being misunderstood by those who view Buddhism from the outside. Evola reminds his readers that the original meaning of the term asceticism is "practical exercise," or 'discipline' - one could even say 'learning.' It certainly does not mean, as some are inclined to think, a willingness to mortify the body that derives from the idea of penance, and even leads to the practice of self-flagellation, since it is believed that one must suffer in order to expiate one's sins. Asceticism is rather a school of the will, a pure heroism (that is, it is disinterested) that Evola, a real expert in this subject, compares to the efforts of a mountain climber. To the layman, mountain climbing may be a pointless effort, but to the climber it is a challenge in which the test of courage, perseverance, and hero-ism is its only purpose. In this we recognize an attitude that Brahmanism knew under certain forms of yoga and Tantrism.

In the spiritual domain, the procedure is the same. Buddha, as we know, was tempted early in his life by a form of asceticism that was similar to that of a hermit living in the desert. This approach involved prolonged fasts and techniques aimed at breaking the body's resistance. Siddhartha, however, realized himself and achieved the Awakening only when he understood this type of asceticism to be a dead end. Turning away from the indignant protests of his early companions, he stopped mortifying his body, ~ Jean Varenne

Have you thought that your willingness to forgive is really your affirmation of the power of God to do you good? ~ Paula Rinehart

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. ~ H.L. Mencken

But, as in American Sniper, the effect of depicting violence in such a gruesome, realistic way amplifies the sense of awe around masculinity: a man is defined by his willingness to use violence when he must, an even more serious duty when such violence is shown in an unsanitized, realistic, gruesome way. ~ Anonymous

How I admired Natalie for the simple, but hard-won irreplaceable things she'd created and fostered by having a little trust and an ounce of faith in the world. The willingness to take leaps in spite of knowing how fragile it all is, how easily everything can break - how it can fall and shatter like broken glass in an instant. ~ Christine Carbo

Willingness to be damned for the glory of God. ~ Samuel Hopkins

Bloomberg's $50 million is not going to revolutionize the electric power industry. But his willingness to fight is already inspiring others to see Big Coal differently. ~ Jeff Goodell

My true potential had more to do with my willingness to struggle than with my past and present circumstances. ~ Hope Jahren

There is no accountability today ... no willingness to focus on big ideas. ~ Michael Bloomberg

Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now. ~ Brad Warner

Determination and willingness can change the situation when we are distructed ~ Kishore Bansal

It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy; for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Involvement requires not only being able to give, but also being able to take from others--there must be [a] willingness to give the other [person] the pleasure of giving to you. ~ John Stewart