Definition of Inability

Inability

The quality or state of being unable; lack of ability; want of sufficient power, strength, resources, or capacity.

Related Definitions:

Ability, Being, Capacity, Lack, Of, Or, Power, Quality, State, Strength, Sufficient, The, Unable, Want

Inability Quotations

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.
Sigmund Freud

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
John Stuart Mill

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don't think the press has understood me.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
H. P. Lovecraft

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Depression is the inability to construct a future.
Rollo May

Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
John Updike

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.
Norman Borlaug

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra Pound

Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.
William Temple

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
Audre Lorde

Today, many companies are reporting that their number one constraint on growth is the inability to hire workers with the necessary skills.
William J. Clinton

I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge.
Mikhail Bakunin

The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter's unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings.
Gene Tierney

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia.
Hideki Tojo

Our inability to relate to one another is very, very, very important. When we don't have it, we get situations like Bosnia.
Edward James Olmos

The dog is almost human in its demand for living interest, yet fatally less than human in its inability to foresee.
Robert Falcon Scott

We have lost that which has made us great over the generations, and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up, we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation, by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true.
Jon Huntsman, Jr.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
Jean de la Bruyere

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
Walter Bagehot

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.
Eric Alterman

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.
David Kay

Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process.
Lawrence Lessig

It's a little bit like my inability to read a guide book before I go anywhere. I can read it after I've been there and by the same logic I refuse to accept any technical stunts from anybody. I refused to learn more than I knew and I confess I missed a great deal.
Ben Shahn

The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.
Jurgen Habermas

Umpires, like players, are expected to show constant improvement each season and at each level. Inconsistent plate work and the inability to handle situations are probably the two biggest problems that minor league umpires face.
Jim Evans

Many people in the world today are not starving because there is an inherent inability to produce food, they are starving because they are caught in the middle of political fights and blockades that have been used as weapons.
Ralph Merkle

More Inability Quotations

Inability Translations

inability in French is impuissance
inability in Norwegian is manglende evne
inability in Spanish is incapacidad

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