A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Quote Topics

Ability Excuse Imagine Imagine That Impossible More Often Ourselves Power Than Things Will Will Power

Quote Author

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
French - Writer
September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We'll have a public power authority, which will also have the ability to build power or finance power. And more importantly, we'll have more power than our economy provides. All of that will give us leverage we don't have today.

Gray Davis

This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you - the ability to imagine.

Michael Crichton

We are more than we imagine ourselves to be. It's what we tell our children, our parents, our friends. But how often do we tell it to ourselves? And if we do, how often do we prove it? How often do we challenge ourselves to do something new?

Veronica Chambers

It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will is a shapeless world.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine.

Napoleon Bonaparte

In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.

James Baldwin

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

J. K. Rowling

Of course, this is one of the really important things about art, that you can make more than you can understand at the moment the thing is being made. But the gap between what we recognize inside ourselves - our feelings- and our ability to trust ourselves and to trust exposing ourselves to those ideas, can be great.

Emmet Gowin

Somehow proper prayer must put more trust in God’s will than in human wants; otherwise failure to get the things we want will force us to doubt either the power of prayer or the ability of God.

Bryan Chapell

There are studies that have shown that we make decisions, ethical and otherwise, based on the way we imagine ourselves as characters in the stories of our lives. In other words, if we imagine ourselves brave or crazy or open, we're more likely to make decisions in a given situation based on how we imagine ourselves, whatever the facts may be.

Aleksandar Hemon

[Her message to women and girls of the world] You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. And it is incumbent upon you to use that power - not only for yourself, but for everyone else around you.