Quotes About Attention

If we are paying attention to something, it's important. That's how we decide to pay attention. But a communicator can reroute our attention to something that isn't important, but make it seem important as a consequence.

You have to rise up to that state of thoughtless awareness where you grow spiritually. If you are not in thoughtless awareness, you cannot grow in your spirituality. So it's very important to see where is your attention. Where are you putting your attention? If the attention could be controlled then things will be all right.

Your own attention is important, not the attention of others or your attention on others.

I ain't got no problem in Boston, I especially like the attention. I know that I'm one of the top guys in this game and all the attention is on me, I got a lot of people on my shoulder but I'm human. I like to go. I like to have fun. I like to do this and that but I gotta represent Boston and the Red Sox in every way that I do outside this game. ... Like I said I get paid to play baseball no [matter] where I go to play I still gotta go and perform even if I like it or not.

Mindfulness means being aware of how you're deploying your attention and making decisions about it, and not letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

[The internet has] already had a huge impact in the sports world, and the play-by-play guys that are not paying attention to it are losing out. They're losing out on getting the real pulse of a game that they're covering. My point with blogs and with podcasts is that it can't be the basis of your prep work, there has to be much more. We understand that. But, it has to be at least a part of what you're doing. If you're not paying attention to it, then you're not seeing the full picture.

The way to plan the family is natural family planning, not contraception...This (use of contraceptives) turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gift of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows easily . . . And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome.

Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than to what the other person is saying, and none at all to what really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words and the mind. Of course, you cannot feel someone else's Being except through your own. This is the beginning of the realization of oneness, which is love. At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is.

I don't look at polls, I pay no attention to them. I pay attention to the public, and the sense of where the public is on certain things, but you have to lead.

Arthur Miller said one of my favorite lines ever, that he had the mother say to her two sons about a very unstable father in Death of a Salesman. She said, "Attention must be paid." It's one of the most resonant lines that I think he ever wrote, and I think attention must be paid to the truth.

Most of the time, if you're not really paying attention, you're someplace else. So your child might say, "Daddy, I want this," and you might say, "Just a minute, I'm busy." Now that's no big deal-we all get busy, and kids frequently ask for attention. But over your child's entire youth, you may have an enormous number of such moments to be really, fully present, but because you thought you were busy, you didn't see the opportunities these moments presented. . . . People carry around an enormous amount of grief because they missed the little things.

He was making a very serious point. Donald Trump has a way of talking to get people's attention, and it's drawn attention to a very important issue.There was a time when a Democrat president knew where the buck stopped in the White House. And the responsibility for the failed policies in the Middle East that created the environment where ISIS developed belongs to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the American people know that.

I came at a time where male artists where dominating, so I had to do something quick to get people's attention. I wanted to let people know that women artists can hold their own compare to the men. Sex got their attention, while I open the road for the other female artists.

Although your time and attention are finite, the demands on your time and attention are infinite.

The greatest gift that you could ever give to another is your own happiness, for when you are in a state of joy, happiness, or appreciation, you are fully connected to the stream of pure, positive Source Energy that is truly who you are. And when you are in that state of connection, anything or anyone that you are holding as your object of attention benefits from your attention.

One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.

Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding.

I do not find illness an eminence, and I do not understand how people can use it to draw attention to themselves since the attention they draw is nearly always reluctantly given and unpleasantly carried out.

I tried to pay attention, but attention paid me.

I think there's a danger with any great art, that if you begin to test your ideas on other people, and get their opinions before making decisions, or if you pay too much attention to what other people say about what you create, that it really pollutes your expression. I think that I'm much more about pure art and honesty and expressing exactly what I feel, and not caring so much what anyone says. However, I do respect, and I do pay attention to everyone's comments. And I do take them into consideration. But I don't base my decisions by it

I keep trying to find ways to shift the viewer's attention away from the object they are looking at and toward their own perceptual process in relation to that object. The question for me always is: how can I make you aware of your own activity of looking, instead of losing your attention to thoughts about what it is that you are looking at?

There is a sense in which, like, it could be the case that the incentives of running for president and the incentives of getting maximum attention for yourself, sometimes align, and at a certain point, they stop aligning, and you just keep going with the incentives for maximum attention for yourself.

If you want more money, don't pay attention to the money. Pay attention to the thing that makes the money.

What struck me most in England was the perception that only those works which have a practical tendency awake attention and command respect, while the purely scientific, which possess far greater merit are almost unknown. And yet the latter are the proper source from which the others flow. Practice alone can never lead to the discovery of a truth or a principle. In Germany it is quite the contrary. Here in the eyes of scientific men no value, or at least but a trifling one, is placed upon the practical results. The enrichment of science is alone considered worthy attention.

Attention is the mind's feet; if you do not control your attention strictly, it runs into misleading pathways.

I tried too much and too hard to get people to pay attention to what I was doing, and so paying less attention to what I actually wanted to do. It's something you see a lot with very young bands who are desperate to get a record deal so they're trying to sound like something else.

The Procrastinator has the opposite problem. He can’t selectively focus his attention and might endure frequent accusations about his laziness. In truth, he’s so distracted by stimuli that he can’t figure out where or how to get started. Sounds, smells, sights and the random wanderings of his thoughts continually vie for his attention.

Human beings are not so in harmony with the dharma. That is why they suffer so much. But you as an individual can reach a plane of attention and can become attention itself.

The Confucians paid a great deal attention to ritual, highlighting the ones that expressed the sorts of affective attitudes one wants to cultivate, engaging in them with keen awareness of their value for shaping and reshaping the self, and insisting on the need to be emotionally present to their significance for one's relationship to others. If we Americans want to rebuild our capacities for a shared life, we would do well to pay attention to all this.

I think all of the attention of the world, to include the attention of the Arab world, should be on Saddam Hussein and whether or not he is prepared to give up the weapons of mass destruction that he has used to terrorise the region.

We usually do pay attention to our outer appearance, typically noticing whatever part of our bodies we are unhappy about. It behooves us, however, to get on very good terms with more than just the surface of our bodies as we grow older; for if we don't listen to our bodies and pay attention to our physical needs and pleasures, this vehicle that we need to be running well to take us into a long and comfortable life, will limit what we can do and who we become.

The real value in everything you do is in the details. I just like that quote. A very similar way to say the same thing. If you're washing dishes you pay attention to washing dishes. If you're driving a car, you're paying attention to driving the car.

So give your complete attention to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be intensely alert. At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes, observe it but don’t act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present - present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.

I try to impress upon my students the importance of looking, listening... paying attention, in other words. You must pay attention.

Nearly all spiritual practices are based on attention. In fact, whenever you think you have lost the path, or whenever you feel confused by esoteric terminology or technique, remember that all these techniques or teachings are various ways to help you learn to pay attention.

Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values

Concentration, itself, is nothing but a matter of control of the attention! Learn to fix your attention on a given subject, at will, for whatever length of time you choose, and you will have learned the secret passage-way to power and plenty! This is concentration!

I think Google is the most successful attention merchant - profitable attention merchant in the history of the world, most successful advertising-only based company - most profitable. They started a very idealistic, beautiful company in many ways, but they didn't have a business model.

What you pay attention to grows. If your attention is attracted to negative situations and emotions, then they will grow in your awareness.

I have enough attention already. More, I don't really need.

Here's the thing - the accent is cool. It's like a girl with big breasts - they get your attention first.

... a mysterious intersection of chance and attention that goes well beyond the existential surrealism of the 'decisive moment'.

What celebrities are useful for is bringing attention to the public and making them more aware. They can be unbelievably effective.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

During meditation, if we can concentrate all our attention on one point, and put all problems in front of it, then they can be solved immediately. Our power is great, but we never use it. If we do not use our power by concentrating on it, then it seems we do not have any power at all.

Love is effortless attention.