Ramez Naam Quotes

But when you are embodied in a location, in a physical plant, in a set of people, and in a common history, that constrains your evolution and your ability to evolve in certain directions.

Your physicality is this great thing, but it is also the thing that makes you clumsy and limits you in the world, so to speak.

I used to think it was good to kind of work within your limitations.

The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.

Crunches only go so deep.

If you were to plot my success or failure, it goes, it very seldom stays on a high plateau.

I don't want to peak too early. The worry is that you never know until it's all over whether you peaked at all - and then you're finished and it's too late.

There is nothing to be said for being crippled. You don't see the world better or clearer, nor do you develop some special set of skills by way of compensation.

There is just so very much I can't do. I don't drive, for one.

You have to know when you're at the top of your particular mountain, I guess. Maybe not the summit, but as high as you can go.

Yes, I can play. I can play. I can't play as long as I did and as hard, but I don't think I have to.

Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

It's quite highly possible that I have peaked. I mean, I just can't imagine what else I could do beyond this. It's really a bittersweet kind of feeling.

At least I have precluded the possibility of peaking too early.

I just think age is meaningless. It's a system we've all agreed to that supposedly signals when we should develop, reach our peak and go downhill, as they say. It interferes with our natural growth.

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

I can tell you for sure: people who are at their peak right now will not sustain that. You can't. It's against the law of nature.

Your body's really only meant to compete at the highest levels of combat sports for a few years.

The flesh and bone leg is just beautiful. It's elegant. You know, when it's working, it's incredible. But if it's not working, well, you know, your life is certainly far from over.

There is no role I cannot play except a midget.

The human body has limitations. The human spirit is boundless.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

I acknowledge freely the great power of education and social influences in developing the active powers of the mind, just as I acknowledge the effect of use in developing the muscles of the blacksmith’s arm, and no further. Let the blacksmith labour as he will, he will find that there are certain feats beyond his power that are well within the strength of a man of herculean make, even although the latter may have led a sedentary life..

I have this ridiculous chip on my shoulder, having been a dancer, that I feel like I really ought to be able to do everything myself - but there are some things I very clearly cannot.

The body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can't do, shouldn't do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known.