Ability 

1. …But I know a man who can.
   Advertising slogan: Automobile Association, 1980s
2. Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study.
   Francis Bacon 1561–1626 English lawyer, courtier, philosopher, and essayist: Essays (1625) ‘Of Studies’
3. If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbour, tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
   Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–82 American philosopher and poet: attributed to Emerson in Sarah S. B. Yule Borrowings (1889); the quotation was the occasion of a long controversy owing to Elbert Hubbard's claim to its authorship
4. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
   Erasmus c.1469–1536 Dutch Christian humanist: Adages bk. 3, century 4, no. 96
5. This very remarkable man
   Commends a most practical plan:
   You can do what you want
   If you don't think you can't,
   So don't think you can't think you can.
   
    
   Charles Inge 1868–1957: ‘On Monsieur Coué’ (1928); see Coué
6. He was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.
   Rudyard Kipling 1865–1936 English writer and poet: Just So Stories (1902) ‘How the Whale got his Throat’
7. Yes, we can.
   Barack Obama 1961–  American Democratic statesman, 44th President from 2009: presidential campaign slogan, 2007–8; the slogan is also associated with the children's television character Bob the Builder (1999–)
8. dumbledore: It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
   
   J. K. Rowling 1965–  English novelist: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
9. Non omnia possumus omnes.
   
    
   We can't all do everything.
   Virgil 70–19 bc Roman poet: Eclogues no. 8, l. 63; see Lucilius