223 Potential Quotes

According to Buddhism, individuals are masters of their own destiny. And all living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them. So our future is in our own hands. What greater free will do we need?

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man.

The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.

Anybody can do anything, it's up to themselves. All it takes is the right intentions.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

I love the whirling of the dervishes. I love the beauty of rare innocence. You don't need no crystal ball, Don't fall for a magic wand. We humans got it all, we perform the miracles.

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development.

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life.

I'm the best. I just haven't played yet.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise, we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire?

Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.

Somehow, you need to cling to your optimism. Always look for the silver lining. Always look for the best in people. Try to see things through the eyes of a child. See the wonder in the simplest things. Never stop dreaming. Believe anything is possible.

He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.

Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.

It was a world which granted privileges to some and imposed prohibitions on others...Endowed with strength and eager to learn, one had to drag himself in a narrow prison cell when he could see an open field, a vast horizon in the distance; when he could feel the beatings of a heart; and when he believed himself entitled to enjoy the beauty of a dream.

What the job really boils down to is this - the fullest realization of man's possibilities, whether by the individual, by the community, or by the species in its processional adventure along the corridors of time. Every man-jack of us begins as a mere speck of potentiality, a spherical and microscopic egg-cell. During the nine months before birth, this automatically unfolds into a truly miraculous range of organization: after birth, in addition to continuing automatic growth and development, the individual begins to realize his mental possibilities - by building up a personality, by developing special talents, by acquiring knowledge and skills of various kinds, by playing his part in keeping society going.

The personality may grievously fail in attaining any real wholeness. One thing is certain, that the well-developed, well-integrated personality is the highest product of evolution, the fullest realization we know of in the universe.

We are beginning to realize that even the most fortunate people are living far below capacity, and that most human beings develop not more than a small fraction of their potential mental and spiritual efficiency. The human race, in fact, is surrounded by a large area of unrealized possibilities, a challenge to the spirit of exploration.

Men can do all things if they will.

Every soldier carries a marshal's baton in his pack.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

Had he lived, I truly believe he'd have been one of the greatest guitar players that ever walked the earth. He was when he was here.

I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment. But if you snuff out that spark of learning, it is the cruelest and most shortsighted thing a nation can do. Too many children see that spark of learning snuffed out.

Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone has the potential to give something back.

No one knows what he can do till he tries.

'Whether some people like it or not, Fiji is already a multiracial society. We have different races, but that does not mean we should only work for the good of our own race. We have to truly understand one another, learn each other's languages, and truly work together. There is huge potential in Fiji, and we would be amazed to see what we will achieve, if we work together.'

Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!

'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's 'potential'? That's also in someone's mind!

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.

The true end of Man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal and immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.

'The great thing is that he's always looking to improve. How good can he be? Well, we're talking about a guy who is Hall of Fame caliber.' --Lou Piniella

We tested a lot of people and when Heath came along, he had the same manly qualities Mel Gibson had as a young man. They're never really boys; they already have it

...men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

The first thing that the human species has to do to prepare itself for the cosmic office to which it finds itself appointed is to explore human nature, to find out what are the possibilities open to it (including, of course, its limitations, whether inherent or imposed by the facts of external nature)... The great men of the past have given us glimpses of what is possible in the way of personality, of intellectual understanding, of spiritual achievement, of artistic creation. But these are scarcely more than Pisgah glimpses. We need to explore and map the whole realm of human possibility, as the realm of physical geography has been explored and mapped. How to create new possibilities for ordinary living? What can be done to bring out the latent capacities of the ordinary man and woman for understanding and enjoyment; to teach people the techniques of achieving spiritual experience (after all, one can acquire the technique of dancing or tennis, so why not of mystical ecstasy or spiritual peace?); to develop native talent and intelligence in the growing child, Instead of frustrating or distorting them?