Quotes About Obliviousness

When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, the precious possession he brought with him from home was his personal feather pillow. The theme of the Bush years was obliviousness. He was famously unavailable for debate and dialogue. He was deaf to countervailing voices. He hit the sack early and always got a good night's sleep.

They have been in prison so long that, if the prison door stands open, they would no longer notice!

I'm starting to realize that being born into this social world is a little like being born into clean air. You take it in as soon as you breathe, and pretty soon you don't even realize that while you can walk around with clear lungs, other people are wearing oxygen masks just to survive.

Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness.

I picked up a book on wilderness survival by Laurence Gonzalez and found in it this telling sentence: The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits. His point is that when the two seem incompatible, we often hang onto the plan, ignore the warnings reality offers us and plunge into trouble. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. (Woolf's Darkness)

This is why I pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege's form of deprivation.

I coined a term a while ago, privelobliviousness, to try to describe the way that being the advantaged one, the represented one, often means being the one who doesn't need to be aware and, often, isn't.

It was willful inanity, perhaps gleaned from a lifetime of obliviousness about the lives of nobodies; or perhaps it was an insistence that truth, like women, can be bullied into behaving.

Is it 'good' to go on doing the same old oblivious thing, to still enjoy it no matter what? Does perseverance steady the world?

This is one of Travis's greatest gifts: the ability to make all unpleasantness and worry disappear simply by not paying attention. He's like a goldfish with a head injury.

The major force in world history is sheer dumbness.

I guess I forgot we were going out tonight.""We always go out on Fridays.""It's Thursday, Alvis.""You are so tied to routine.

But it's the same basic problem: What keeps us from seeing the obvious? Douglas puts his hand to the brass bull's horn. And? What does? Mostly other people.

getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ~ but like lemmings running headlong to the sea, we are oblivious.

THE END IS NOT NEAR IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED WE JUST DIDN'T CARE

one of the few things I've learned is that humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn—when they do, which isn't often—on their own, the hard way.

Individuals who have come to recognize and own their biased beliefs and prejudices, their roles in perpetuating racism, the pain their obliviousness has inflicted on people of color, and their privileged and advantaged position in society may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem.

If indeed, he or she has unwittingly engaged in racist behaviors and has unknowingly allowed systems of injustice to flourish, the pain and suffering inflicted upon people of color is partly due to his or her own complicity in a racist system. This proves to be a frightening and uncomfortable realization for many White Americans. Blinders of naïveté, innocence, and obliviousness become removed when awareness of racism and its dynamics increases.

We are so used to the elephant in the room that sometimes we forget it is there

knew nor cared what a hearing dog was,

Man] literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same.

What have you learned?" She wanted to tell him that he was a peculiar and infuriating young man. "That people don't listen." "Precisely. Just because you can see the problems of an elliptical problem doesn't mean that others will listen. And that's what we do.

There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.

I guess that's the secret. It would never have occurred to Lia to want to escape -- but then she gets kicked out. Best thing that ever happened to her? I'm not sure she would say yes, because obliviousness tends to be rather pleasant, but once you realized you've been bolivious, there's no turning back. You can't un-know what you know. You know?