Preoccupation Quotes - Page 7

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality ?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about fascism and my fear of it.

Philip K. Dick

Reality, Political, Drug

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The rapid, sweeping deterioration of values is characterized by a preoccupation-even an obsession-with the procreative act. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity within it are openly scoffed at-marriage and parenthood ridiculed as burdensome, unnecessary. Modesty, a virtue of a refined individual or society, is all but gone.

Boyd K. Packer

Deterioration, Gone, Before Marriage

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...it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.

Wilkie Collins

Mother, Vegetables, Mind

Wilkie Collins (2016). “The Woman in White”, p.53, Wilkie Collins

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Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Renata Adler

Sleep, Blessing, Boredom

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It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.

Aldous Huxley

World, Regard, Mines

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…but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.

Simone de Beauvoir

Thinking, Long, Training

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I have always found that actively loving saves one from a morbid preoccupation with the shortcomings of society.

Alan Paton

Morbid, Found, Shortcomings

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The false self lives mainly through memory and anticipation. Past and future are its main preoccupation.

Eckhart Tolle

Memories, Past, Self

Source: www.qiwithoutborders.org

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I love work because it keeps sex in perspective. Otherwise, it can become a preoccupation.

Al Pacino

Sex, Perspective

Lawrence Grobel, Al Pacino (2008). “Al Pacino”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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The illusion that consumption - and its correlative, income - is desirable probably stems from too great preoccupation with what Knight calls "one-use goods," such as food and fuel, where the utilization and consumption of the good are tightly bound together in a single act or event. ... any economy in the consumption of fuel that enables us to maintain warmth or to generate power with lessened consumption again leaves us better off. ... there is no great value in consumption itself.

Kenneth E. Boulding

Knights, Together, Events

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Sometimes I tend to worry too much and at the end of all the preoccupation nothing goes wrong.

Ana Monnar

Worry, Too Much, Sometimes

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Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

Sydney J. Harris

People, Genealogy

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We believe that arithmetic as it has been taught in grade schools until quite recently has such a meagre intellectual content that the oft-noted reaction against the subject is not an unfortunate rebellion against a difficult subject, but a perfectly proper response to a preoccupation with triviality.

Lynn Steen

Believe, School, Intellectual

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Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Dream, Men, Thinking

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When grace begins to rule, then our preoccupation with ourselves begins to leave.

Alistair Begg

Grace

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When we let go of yearning for the future, preoccupation with the past, and strategies to protect the present, there is nowhere left to go but where we are. To connect with the present moment is to begin to appreciate the beauty of true simplicity.

Jack Kornfield

Letting Go, Past, Appreciate

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Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.

Cornel West

Justice, Reelection, Politician

"Dr. Cornel West’s Prognosis for the Country’s Prospects". Interview with Kam Williams, www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com.

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Our task is to strike a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Keys, Simplicity, Balance

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If rewards do not work, what does? I recommend that employers pay workers well and fairly and then do everything possible to help them forget about money. A preoccupation with money distracts everyone - employers and employees - from the issues that really matter.

Alfie Kohn

Issues, Doe, Pay

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Sometimes our preoccupation is on having friends. Perhaps we should focus on being a friend.

Elaine S. Dalton

Focus, Sometimes, Should

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The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of a mass movement unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice.

Eric Hoffer

Mean, Sacrifice, Self

Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done-these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence-because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.

E. F. Schumacher

Silence, Soul, Humanity

E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”

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The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.

Walter Lippmann

Idols, Society, Looks

Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.15, Transaction Publishers

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Why should you worry whether God wants you to reach the heavenly home by way of the desert or by the fields, when by the one as well as by the other one arrives all the same at a Blessed Eternity? Keep far from you excessive preoccupation which arises from the trials which the good God wishes to visit upon you.

Pio of Pietrelcina

Blessed, Home, Worry

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I felt sidelined by the industry, by the preoccupation with finding something newer, younger.

Tori Amos

Something New, Findings, Felt

"Portrait of the artist: Tori Amos, musician" by Nosheen Iqbal, www.theguardian.com. January 4, 2010.

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