Quotes About Attention

Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.

Is it that the eye finds what the mind is seeking?

The secret to winning a woman is calculated neglect.

If each one of us can give full attention to what is actually 'blocking' communication while he is also attending properly to the content of what is communicated, then we may be able to create something new between us, something of very great significance for bringing to an end the at present insoluble problems of the individual and of society.

Over the past century, researchers have studied business entrepreneurs extensively.. In contrast, social entrepreneurs have received little attention. Historically, they have been cast as humanitarians or saints, and stories of their work have been passed down more in the form of children's tales than case studies. While the stories may inspire, they fail to make social entrepreneurs' methods comprehensible. One can analyze an entrepreneur, but how does one analyze a saint?

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

When there is no news, we will give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.

The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.

Blue and Gray veterans led the way in focusing public attention on the minute details of each battle, a move that tended to distract attention from larger questions of meaning. Few if any other wars have created among the public such a strange fascination with the concrete details of military tactics and strategy, and thus pride in knowing where and when General Daniel Sickles lost his leg at Gettysburg, but not in knowing when slaves were freed in the District of Columbia.

If you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say 'no' to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say 'yes' to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.

What Your Speed Means

Some say this evanescence helps focus our attention. They claim that we listen more closely when we know we only have one chance, one fleeting moment to grasp something, and as a result our enjoyment is deepened.

We'll never get them to notice us if we say ordinary things in an ordinary way.

You're raising a kid and you give it food and shelter and, most importantly, you give it the feeling that it's special. I think people react to celebrities like that - I mean, they treat celebrities like children.

in almost no instance can artificial-rational systems be built and left alone. They require continued attention, rebuilding, and repair. Eternal vigilance is the price of artificial complexity." He noted too, that in a technological age we should ask not who governs, but what governs: `government becomes the business of recognising what is necessary and efficient for the continued functioning and elaboration of large-scale systems and the rational implementation of their manifest requirements.

Can we, then, set aside the impatience that the Internet tends to breed, and the habits of being distracted which our highly compacted modern lives create, in order to focus on what really matters?

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

Prayerful paying attention is not scrunching up our willpower and tightening our focus, but simply opening our self to what we encounter. This makes it much more an act of release than effort. We release any attempt to control attention and instead allow it to be absorbed by our present experience.

Pilgrimage always involves both an exterior and interior journey. Any travel can be a pilgrimage, regardless of the destination or whether or not there even is a destination. The difference between a pilgrim and a tourist is the intention of attention and openness to God. This transforms a trip into a pilgrimage, and the result is that the self that sets out on pilgrimage will not be the same as the self that returns.

The prayer conversation always begins with God. It does not begin with us. Prayer is our response to a divine invitation to encounter. The prayer conversation has already begun because God has already reached out, seeking our attention and response. Until we learn to attend to the God who is already present and communicating, our prayers will never be more than the product of our minds and wills.

By one estimate, your five senses take in 11,000,000 bits of information per second, of which you consciously process about 40 (Wilson, 2002).