Attention Quotes

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Hundreds of other cult leaders have gathered far more followers than Jones by promising new psychological and spiritual utopias. They have succeeded by combining various ages-old psychological and social persuasion techniques in an atmosphere os Madison Avenue soft-sell approaches. Because most of the followers have been youthful or poor, little attention and credence has been given to reports from ex-members, families and friends who report the effects of the techniques of manipulation used by the groups.

Margaret Singer

As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Shouldn't someone give a pep talk or something?" Minho asked, pulling Thomas's attention away from Alby. "Go ahead," Newt replied. Minho nodded and faced the crowd. "Be careful," he said dryly. "Don't die.

I have a more fractal way of working, if you like, it is more like the way most people's minds actually work. They don't work in any linear way. When your mind wanders if you ever pay attention to some of the paths it takes, you generally find it's these paths of association that can link all over the place. …The movements of the mind don't follow any linear pattern, they can't be explained with a mechanistic, clockwork view. You could find quantum models of how the mind works that might fit.

These children... well, they have no concept. None. All they want to do is win. That is your culture. America spoils chess, as it spoils all things. Art? What art? Winning, all you Americans can think of is winning. Winning and getting rich. Your country is too young to have so much power. Too immature. Yet, because of your power, everybody pays attention. Everybody. You are teaching the world that only one thing matters!

Stephen L. Carter

As the Presocratic philosophers bow out and Plato arrives to direct the next drama in the series, the Sophists make an astounding final act. All singing, all dancing, they ask society to question its raison d'être, its political beliefs, its moral values, its religious beliefs, its educational system, its legal codes, and its codes of etiquette. They draw attention to the power of the media and ask us to consider whether, without the media, there would be any truth at all. The antagonism that they generate, as portrayed by the Socrates imagined in Plato's dialogues, starts the ball rolling for some of the most exacting philosophical endeavours the world has ever seen.

Catherine Rowett

By constantly moving the flashlight of your attention to the perimeter of your understanding, you enlarge your sense of the world.

There may be many things wrong with the United States but only a blind fool who hasn't been paying attention for the last twenty years would hold up Europe as the alternative.

He was an admirer of the bullfight, and had once drawn my attention to the fact that only cricket and bullfighting had inspired any appreciable literature.

Pain and suffering are only the body and the mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body you must be healthy; to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

To truly live without regrets, pay attention. Ask yourself hard questions and see where they lead. Do I really want this job? Is this relationship right for me? If I could do anything, would it be what I'm doing today... or something different?

Chris Guillebeau

No detail of your life is too insignificant for your heavenly Father's attention.

When environmentalists are wrong, it is frequently technology that they are wrong about, and they wind up supporting parochial Green goals at the cost of comprehensive ones. That happened with space technology, nuclear technology, and genetic engineering. If your default position on a new technology is suspicion, you forfeit the ability to deploy it for your own purposes. "The environmental movement has so far concentrated its attention upon the evils that technology has done rather than upon the good that technology has failed to do," says Freeman Dyson. But focusing on Green technological opportunity requires a shift in attitude toward novelty.

I believe politics is the finest form of entertainment in the state of Texas: better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball. Becoming a fan of this arcane art form will yield a body endless joy—besides, they make you pay for it whether you pay attention or not.

With the respectability of the senses and feelings established, textbooks written by the Scottish philosophers began to include such topics as perception, memory, imagination, association, attention, language, and thinking. Such a textbook was written by Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), titled Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792), and was used at Yale University in 1824.

Baldwin R. Hergenhahn

Discussions without end have been devoted to the subject of peace, and the efforts to obtain a general and lasting peace have been frequent through many years of world history. There has been success temporarily, but all have broken down, and with the most tragic consequences since 1914. What I would like to do is point our attention to some directions in which efforts to attain peace seem promising of success.

George Marshall

Our Congress passes laws that subsidize corporations, farms, oil companies, airlines, and houses for suburbia, but when they turn their attention to the poor they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on funds for Head Start.

Coretta Scott King

Now and then sprays of rain flew over and misted our faces. Every time I refused to wipe away the wetness. It made the world seem so alive to me. I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention.

Do not pay too much attention to the advice or suggestions of those around you.

Wallace Wattles

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?

I'd like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven't. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy..... Today, probably 50 or more states have schools that are teaching jihad, preaching, recruiting, and training. We have absolutely no successful programs even begun to remediate against those efforts..... Nobody paid attention. Presidents in four administrations put their arms around Saudi ambassadors, ignored the Wahhabi jihadism, and said these are our eternal friends.

While in general use for centuries, one good result of the recent development of mental healing has been to call attention to its great value as a measure to be carefully and scientifically applied in suitable cases. My experience has been that of the unconscious rather than the deliberate faith healer. Phenomenal, even what could be called miraculous, cures are not very uncommon. Like others, I have had cases any one of which, under suitable conditions, could have been worthy of a shrine or made the germ of a pilgrimage.

I can quite understand the effort he is making; it is a very good thing not to want to go on repeating oneself. But he has concentrated all his attention on line; the figures stand out against each other without any sort of relationship, and so the whole thing is meaningless. Renoir is no draughtsman, and without the lovely colours he used to use so instinctively, he is incoherent.

Camille Pissarro

How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice.

We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.

Robert Sheckley