110 Inattention Quotes

Following is our list of inattention quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about admitting failure.

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Famous Inattention Quotes

The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself. — William James

For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day. - Evelyn Underhill

For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day. — Evelyn Underhill

You don’t pay attention man/that’s why your money is the size of your attention span. — J Dilla

...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly. — Chinua Achebe

Do not give your attention to what others do or fail to do; give it to what you do or fail to do. — Buddha

Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing. — Robert Bresson

Attention, on the other hand, just is life: your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. — Oliver Burkeman

The saddest part about being human is not paying attention. Presence is the gift of life. — Stephen Levine

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. - Simone Weil

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. — Simone Weil

Attention-deficit disorders seem to abound in modern society, and we don't know the cause. — Marilyn vos Savant

Love is effortless attention. — Guy Finley

Multitasking divides your attention and leads to confusion and weakened focus. — Deepak Chopra

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way. - Keanu Reeves

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way. — Keanu Reeves

One great cause of failure of young men in business is lack of concentration. - Andrew Carnegie

One great cause of failure of young men in business is lack of concentration. — Andrew Carnegie

Distracted from distraction by distraction - T. S. Eliot

Distracted from distraction by distraction — T. S. Eliot

Short Inattention Quotes

  • Shrimp that falls asleep is carried away by the current. — Mexican Proverbs
  • When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one. — Helen Rowland
  • Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. — Amy Tan
  • Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention. — George Santayana
  • The only thing that is not art is inattention — Marcel Duchamp
  • I never knew any man cured of inattention. — Jonathan Swift
  • the apathy and inattention of the average citizen is beyond comprehension. — Abigail McCarthy
  • I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention. — Twyla Tharp
  • By being inattentive to the needs of others, inevitably we end up harming them. — Dalai Lama
  • Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that. — Mark Twain

Inattention Image Quotes

Admitting Failure Quotes

A group would rather keep living in the mythology of we were repressed than ever admit failure. — Naval Ravikant

A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it-will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?-because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue. — Atul Gawande

I'll admit, right away, that I am disappointed that we did not have a major trophy to show for our efforts. We were in four and we had a good side, but when you count second place as failure, then standards are becoming fantastically high. We never celebrate second place here. — Bob Paisley

I have witnessed boards that continued to waste money on doomed projects because no one was prepared to admit they were failures, take the blame and switch course. Smaller outfits are more willing to admit mistakes and dump bad ideas. — Luke Johnson

You learn nothing form your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again. — Dee Hock

Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving. — Caterina Fake

The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims up on them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure. — C. S. Lewis

The insolence of base minds in success is boundless; and would scarce admit of a comparison, did not they themselves furnish us with one in the degrees of their abjection when evil returns upon them. — Laurence Sterne

You want to ensure people can do it right 99 percent of time. When we have to fire one of our surgical trainees, it is never because they dont have the physical skills but because they dont have the moral skills - to practise and admit failure. — Atul Gawande

To accept grace is to admit failure, a step we are hesitant to take. We opt to impress God with how good we are rather than confessing how great he is. — Max Lucado

Being Disabled Quotes

Humans are not disabled. A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled. We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation. — Hugh Herr

There is a difference between broke and being poor. Being broke is a temporary economic condition, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind and a depressed condition of your spirit, and you must vow to never, ever be poor again. — John Hope Bryant

Let's stop 'tolerating' or 'accepting' difference, as if we're so much better for not being different in the first place. Instead, let's celebrate difference, because in this world it takes a lot of guts to be different. — Kate Bornstein

A large part of the present anxiety to improve the education of girls and women is also due to the conviction that the political disabilities of women will not be maintained. — Millicent Fawcett

You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers. — John Smith

Women would be disproportionately affected by the privatization of social security. It is one of the most important safety nets for American women in old age, or in times of disability, to insure financial income for their families. — Barbara Mikulski

Online learning can be a lifeline to those who have obstacles, such as geographical distances or physical disabilities. — Paul Levinson

Being disabled should not mean being disqualified from having access to every aspect of life. — Emma Thompson

It is a lonely existence to be a child with a disability which no-one can see or understand, you exasperate your teachers, you disappoint your parents, and worst of all you know that you are not just stupid. — Susan Hampshire

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. — John Forbes Nash, Jr.

Lack Of Attention Quotes

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece. — Nadia Boulanger

I mean, I haven't been completely lacking in some enjoyment of Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly. But I just didn't pay attention to that period of music, obviously. — Warren Zevon

The premium so often put in schools upon external "discipline," and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home. — John Dewey

How often we all have heard speakers begin by calling the attention of the audience to their lack of preparation or lack of ability. If you are not prepared, the audience will probably discover it without your assistance. — Dale Carnegie

Hackers are arrogant geek romantics. They lack the attentive spirit of inquiry. — Bruce Sterling

I think that when Riccardo Tisci wanted to bring more attention to the lack of African American presence on the runway, he also wanted to bring attention to the lack of a sensibility of African and Asian art. — Erykah Badu

I'm not reading any novels right now, though not for lack of trying. Unless they're really good, my attention in most novels tends to sputter out after a hundred pages or so - an awful admission for someone who is trying to write one, but it's true. — Matthew Healy

This is a great nation at terrible risk in a dangerous world, and she has fully exposed this nation and will continue to do so because of her utter incompetence and Hillary Clinton lack of care, lack of attention, lack of concern. — Rush Limbaugh

It does demand a certain space in order to read it and I think that space is somewhat threatened by the lack of attention that people have and the amount of time that they give to things. — Edward Hirsch

The key is to remember a sex scene is a scene of dramatic action and psychological development. You need to pay attention to emotion and to a character's self-awareness or lack of self-awareness. — K. M. Soehnlein

Inattentive Quotes

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian. — George Washington

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

Simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other's need. It all begins with the simple act of attention. — Daniel Goleman

Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education. — Robert Andrews Millikan

And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose — Amy Tan

A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation. — Norbert Wiener

I would much rather sit, dimmed by inattention, and study the atmosphere and the silence and dance between people, but often times I’m not offered this privilege. The necessity for isolation, and the striving for popularity is the only contradiction I find in being a writer and an actress. — Masiela Lusha

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions. — Thomas Jefferson

I value mothers and motherhood enormously. For every inattentive or abusive mother in my fiction I think you'll find a dozen or so who are neither. — William Trevor

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

People Writing About Inattention

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Read quotes by William James

William James
quotes on life, education and attention

732 6320
Read quotes by Evelyn Underhill

Evelyn Underhill
quotes on education, love and life

90 717
Read quotes by Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe
quotes on colonialism, education and kinsmen

252 3394
Read quotes by Buddha

Buddha
quotes on peace, peace of mind and death

1250 5513
Read quotes by Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson
quotes on life

44 570
Read quotes by Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman
quotes on life, leadership and happiness

103 67

More Inattention Quotes

The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye. — Elizabeth Bowen

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise. — Florence King

Adolescents sometimes say..."My friends listen to me, but my parents only hear me talk." Often they are right. Familiarity breeds inattention. — Laurence Steinberg

Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp. — George Santayana

my Mamá Grande, a tiny Mayan woman, took me aside when I was an adolescent and told me several things that didn't make a bit of sense to my young and inattentive ears, and as young people tend to waste all attempts of our elders to relay to us wisdom accumulated over the decades, I thought my Mamá Grande had a few mice in the attic. — Ana Castillo

Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from...the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. — Daniel Webster

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

Training a child is exactly like training a puppy; a little heedless inattention and it is out of hand immediately; the great thing is not to let it acquire bad habits that must afterward be broken. — Emily Post

I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room. — Michel de Montaigne

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

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

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts in the hour of danger. — Andrew Jackson

In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor. — Quentin Crisp

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

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

Although our inattention can contribute to our lack of total well-being, we also have the power to choose positive behaviors and responses. In that choice we change our every experience of life! — Greg Anderson

When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one. — Helen Rowland

Advertisements ordinarily work their wonders, to the extent that they work at all, on an inattentive public. — Michael Schudson

I feel most myself when I'm reading, but by that I don't mean that I'm most comfortable when I'm reading. I feel most fully a person who's torn between attention and inattention, between loving and hating, between hyper-responsiveness and total dullness. Reading is not a comfortable experience for me. — Dan Chiasson

A 70-year-old who takes good care of herself can have the biology of a 40-year-old. Conversely, a hard-living 30-year-old who has been inattentive to his health and well-being may have the biology of a man many years older. — Deepak Chopra

My mom is a master gardener and I grew up on a farm. I came back to it really late in life and discovered that despite how lazy and inattentive I was as a child, I had managed to accidentally learn quite a bit about gardening. — Elizabeth Gilbert

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

That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists. — Ralph Ellison

It is a great advantage for any man to be able to talk or hear, neither ignorantly nor absurdly, upon any subject; for I have known people, who have not said one word, hear ignorantly and absurdly; it has appeared by their inattentive and unmeaning faces. — Doug Stanhope

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

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