Inattention Quotes - Page 2

• There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Progress, Events

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.14, Verso

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• The only thing that is not art is inattention

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Art Is

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• I'm one of the many people for whom coffee helps but often, inattention is a symptom of something else: for example, that you're not getting six to eight hours of sleep.

  Marty Nemko

  Coffee, Sleep, Eight

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.

  Dean Koontz

  Quality, Inability, Details

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Fear Nothing: A Novel”, p.169, Bantam

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• The true distinction ... between what is called a fine Regiment, and an indifferent one will ever, upon investigation, be found to originate in, and depend upon the care, or the inattention, of the Officers belonging to them.

  George Washington

  Care, Fine, Found

  George Washington, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1931). “The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799”

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• Applaud us when we prevail, correct us when we fail; but, above all, do not let this indispensable, irreplaceable institution wither, languish or perish as a result of Member States' indifference, inattention or financial starvation.

  Kofi Annan

  Financial, Indifference, Failing

  Kofi Atta Annan (1998). “The quotable Kofi Annan: selections from speeches and statements by the Secretary-General”, United Nations

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• There is always great beauty, not of images, feeling or thought. Beauty is neither thought nor feeling; it has nothing whatsoever to do with emotion or sentiment. There is fear. Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Fear, Facts, Flight

  "Krishnamurti's notebook".

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• Through our inattention, we have wasted the years that we might have used to prepare for lessened oil supplies. The next ten years are critical.

  Kenneth S. Deffeyes

  Oil, Years, Might

  Kenneth S. Deffeyes (2006). “Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak”, p.12, Macmillan

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• Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice.

  Laurie R. King

  Daughter, Distance, Eye

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• A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchisin g them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Mean, Survival

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• If it so happened that I had once written a best-seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naivete, and I would take very good care never to do the same again. If I had a message for my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.

  Thomas Merton

  Cost, Care, Shapes

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

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• The art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Taste, Firsts

  "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Thomas Jefferson, p. 30, 1904.

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• There were many good years. Good decades, good centuries. We believed we were living in paradise. Perhaps that was our downfall. We wanted our lives to be perfect, so we ignored imperfections. Problems were magnified through inattention and war might have become inevitable if the Bore hadn't ever made.

  Robert Jordan

  War, Years, Perfect

  Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson (2013). “A Memory of Light”, p.144, Macmillan

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• But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God...is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach.

  Michel Faber

  Divorce, Eye, Two

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• I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention.

  Twyla Tharp

  Attention, Survived

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• What is the difference between attention and inattention? What is attention and what is concentration? ...Attention has no centre.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Differences, Attention, Concentration

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• Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that.

  Mark Twain

  Doe, Silent, Wilson

  Mark Twain (2015). “The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson”, p.171, Library of Alexandria

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• The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.

  Howard Zinn

  Book, People, Mountain

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.560, Pan Macmillan

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• Economists who adhere to rational-expectations models of the world will never admit it, but a lot of what happens in markets is driven by pure stupidity - or, rather, inattention, misinformation about fundamentals, and an exaggerated focus on currently circulating stories.

  Robert J. Shiller

  Expectations, Focus, Stupidity

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• Tell me about yourself, Miss Russel." I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at him. "Why don't you tell me about myself, Mr. Holmes?

  Laurie R. King

  Air, Giving, Missing

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• Reverie is commonly classified among the phenomena of psychic detente. It is lived out in a relaxed time which has no linking force. Since it functions with inattention, it is often without memory. It is a flight from out of the real that does not always find a consistent unreal world.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Time, Memories, Real

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• In a civilization like ours, I feel that everyone has to come to terms with the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life, or else be guilty of inattention or of evading the question.

  C. S. Lewis

  Jesus, Civilization, Guilty

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• But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church.

  Edward Gibbon

  Hands, Law, Omnipotence

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.84

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• There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from anothe quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.

  Daniel Webster

  Powerful, Men, People

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