Innate Capacity Quotes

We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think - only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.

Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.

Talent is something that comes from within; it has nothing to do with age.

I was born with the gift.

An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge.

We are just not made up to be middle distance runners.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously.

Natural talent is a questionable phenomenon. Inclination perhaps, but innate ability is extremely rare.

There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities.

Genius must be born, and never can be taught.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

All progress and power are already in every man; perfection is man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course.

Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced.

Some innate capacity - some part of the human genetic endowment - enters into language acquisition. That much is uncontroversial among those who believe that humans are part of the natural world. If it were not true, would be a miracle that my granddaughter reflexively identified some elements of the blooming buzzing confusion as language-related and went on to acquire capacities of the kind that you and I are now exercising, while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, bee...), presented with exactly the same data, could not take the first step, let alone the later ones.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.

God has given each normal person a capacity to achieve some end. True, some are endowed with more talent than others, but God has left none of us talentless.

Competence is a big word. It is important. I almost want to nuance it with the idea of giftedness because sometimes you can teach a lot of skills on exposition but a person may not have the competence or the giftedness to do it. Therefore, it is very important to have that.

Minds that are stupid and incapable of science are in the order of nature to be regarded as monsters and other extraordinary phenomena; minds of this sort are rare. Hence I conclude that there are great resources to be found in children, which are suffered to vanish with their years. It is evident, therefore, that it is not of nature, but of our own negligence, we ought to complain.

Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality.

And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

Every person has seeds of greatness within, even though they may currently be dormant.

I was loaded with sheer ability, spelled i-n-h-e-r-i-t-a-n-c-e.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.

Is the capacity for cruelty inherent in all of us?