Capacity

Famous quotes containing the word capacity:

“Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

“There is also something excellent in every audience,—the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories of his excellence.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)