A Quote by Iain Banks

Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.

Iain Banks

Quote Topics

Achievement Exercise Feeling Human Intellectual Skill

Quote Author

Iain Banks
Scottish - Writer
February 16, 1954 - June 9, 2013

Conservation is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence and caution.

Aldo Leopold

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

Bertrand Russell

The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.

Anna Garlin Spencer

You can exercise vigorously and eat junk and get by. But you can't eat perfectly and not exercise. Look at many athletes today; they are human garbage cans. They eat anything, but they exercise so hard they burn it up. But why not exercise and put the right fuel in too?

Jack LaLanne

In one African myth the word for God is even identical with skill and capacity. The Godhead is defined as that thing which appears in man as the mystery of an unusual skill or capacity. It is something divine, a spark of the divinity in him, not his own possession or achievement, but a miracle.

Marie-Louise von Franz

To set aside one’s prejudices, one’s present needs, and one’s own self interest in making a decision as a director for a company is an intellectual exercise that takes constant practice. In short, intellectual honesty is a journey and not a destination.

Mervyn King

The best aphorisms are.... portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.

William Rounseville Alger

Positive health requires a knowledge of man's primary constitution and of the powers of various foods, both those natural to them and those resulting from human skill. But eating alone is not enough for health. There must also be exercise, of which the effects must likewise be known. The combination of these two things makes regimen, when proper attention is given to the season of the year, the changes of the wind, the age of the individual, and the situation of his home. If there is any deficiency in food or exercise, the body will fall sick.

Hippocrates

The basic skill of an actor is, in fact, empathy, and that's maybe not a skill, it's a disposition. I am an assistant storyteller. I enjoy feeling useful to a team effort. It's my way of finding a use for myself, a utility in this world.

Harrison Ford

In my experience, the skill of success breaks down into three things. The skill of marketing. The skill of sales. And the skill of leadership.

Michael Ellsberg

[... Dance] involves every possible feeling (as potential), because it is of the body, which is lived (inescapably) as a body of feeling. Some of these feelings we can name, and some we cannot, since we associate feelings with language only when we name them. The body lives sentience on a preverbal level. Dance exists first on this primordial level, not on an intellectual plane (even though it requires skill and intelligence). Its inmost substance cannot be reasoned, only experienced.

Sondra Horton Fraleigh

Every human actions becomes dangerous when it is deprived of human feeling. When they are performed with feeling and respect for human values, all activities become constructive.

Dalai Lama

The greatest barrier to achievement and success is not lack of talent or ability but rather the feeling that achievement and success, above a certain level, are outside our self-concept-our image of who we are and what is appropriate to us.

Nathaniel Branden

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

Twyla Tharp

The feeling of being accepted and acknowledgement and recognition and fame - I'm vain like everybody else. The feeling of achievement that I've helped the poor or somebody in need far outweighs the money.