387 Focus Quotes

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been only a question of improving it, and learning more and more and there is almost no end. As you go through you just keep finding more and more. It's very interesting, it's fascinating.

No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.

I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

When I'm writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.

Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.

Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

Evil is whatever distracts.

There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.

The thing that's important for me is to remember what's the most important thing.

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

There is nothing so interesting on stage than a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelaces.

It's like taking a five hour final examination.

Instead of attempting to fuse elements of different cultures like everyone else, he chose to rely on what he knows best - simple arrangements with assured piano playing.

Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question: Where was 'here'? He shut that one down sharply. Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently to the abyss. Categorize your knowledge.

Eliminate 'not clear' thinking and function from your root.

Wine may become so dilute that few will drink of it.

They're busily re-thinking a lot of their cherished doctrines. Nothing concentrates the military mind like getting shot at.

Action: 'Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments.'

Change: 'One column of truth cannot hold an institution of ideas from falling into ignorance. It is wiser that a person of prudence and purpose save his strength for battles that can be won.'

There's wacky girls all over the place that try to do weird things, but we don't pay attention to them. We just kind of do our own thing and hang out with the fans that are really important to us.

Who wants the love of all the world When here was love in the eyes of just one girl That day, that precious day When even a fool learns to love.

Delivery, delivery, delivery.

So whether it's you Chris Jericho, Chris Jericho's Daddy, Chris Jericho's MaMa, Uncle Joe Jericho with the glass eye or maybe it's Grandpa Jimmy Jack Jericho with the iron lung, or hell, it might be even Grandma Jessebelle Jericho with the XX30 panties!

I believe in every man minding his own business.

'New songs are where its at, as far as I'm concerned.'

It has been my experience that there is no substitute for time where thinking is concerned. Why is it so? The answer seems to be that in many cases to think means to be able to allow the mind to stray from the task at hand. The mind must be able to be 'elsewhere.' This needs time.

The glove has been thrown to the ground, The last choice of weapons made. A book for one thought. A poem for one line. A line for one word.

A radish will never stand in the way of victory.

The worse the conditions of life the more productive the work, always provided you remember the work.

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes!

Poverty is what I'm writing about.

I hadn't heard that.... I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices.

Being a well-dressed man is a career, and he who goes in for it has no time for anything else.

La lucidite, de meme que les rayons du soleil, n'a d'effet que par la fixite de la ligne droite, elle ne devine qu'a la condition de ne pas rompre son regard; elle se trouble dans les sautillements de la chance.

I was infected with my desire, my resolve, to make it in broadcasting. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how.

To do a job effectively, one must set priorities. Too many people let their 'in' basket set the priorities. On any given day, unimportant but interesting trivia pass through an office; one must not permit these to monopolize his time. The human tendency is to while away time with unimportant matters that do not require mental effort or energy. Since they can be easily resolved, they give a false sense of accomplishment. The manager must exert self-discipline to ensure that his energy is focused where it is truly needed.

There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had to get a ladder; and he ran up and down it, putting in a touch here, and rubbing out a patch there.

Hold on, dude. It's Britney Spears. (puts on phone headset and pretends to talk to Spears) Britney--Britney? Don't have time for you right now, I'm busy. Stop calling me. Jeez.

I don't really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me. I know a whole lot of musicians, artists out there who hears the compliments and thinks 'wow, I must have been really great' and so they get fat and satisfied and they get lost and forget about their actual talent and start living in another world.

His manner of Studie was thus:About every three houres his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of Ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and dranke, and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then, he made a good Supper: now he did well not to dine, which breakes off one's fancy, which will not presently be regained: and 'tis with Invention as a flux, when once it is flowing, it runnes amaine: if it is checked, flowes but guttim [drop by drop]: and the like for perspiration, check it, and 'tis spoyled.

He was a bad acquaintance for a placid, sedentary soul like me, for though he could work like a Trojan when the fit took him, he was never at the same job very long. In the same week he would harass an Under-Secretary about horses for the Army, write voluminously to the press about a gun he had invented for potting aeroplanes, give a fancy-dress ball which he forgot to attend, and get into the semi-final of the racquets championship. I waited daily to see him start a new religion.

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

Comparable with Chawcer, yet more occupyed in supersticious and odde matters than was requesite in so good a wytte.

If you desire to discover peace and consolation for your soul and to serve God truly, do not find your satisfaction in what you have left behind, because in that which now concerns you you may be as impeded as you were before, or even more. But leave as well all these other things and attend to one thing alone that brings all these with it (namely, holy solitude, together with prayer and spiritual and divine reading), and persevere there in forgetfulness of all things.

They look down At the ground, Missing. But I never go in now. I'm looking at the Big Sky.

We hang on to every line, And walk straight down the middle of it.

Sweet and gentle and sensitive man With an obsessive nature and deep fascination For numbers And a complete infatuation with the calculation Of ?.

Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.

Oh, get ahold of yourself. Nobody's proposing that we parse English.

I don't think it's worth washing hogs over.

With the courage which only comes of justified self-confidence, he dared to rest his case upon its strongest point, and so avoided that appearance of weakness and uncertainty which comes of a clutter of arguments. Few lawyers are willing to do this; it is the mark of the most distinguished talent.

The best strategies run on rails. Live or die, you make your goal.

Miles started to track the vote, but by the time the roll came around to him, had taken to jotting repeated iterations of Lady Ekaterin Nile Vorkosigan intertwined with Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan in his fanciest handwriting down the margins of his flimsy.

One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.

'Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth.'

The five attitudes are: Upper, Middle, Lower, Right Side, and Left Side. These are the five. Although attitude has these five dimensions, the one purpose of all of them is to cut the enemy. There are none but these five attitudes. Whatever attitude you are in, do not be conscious of making the attitude; think only of cutting.

Examine your environment.

When you have mastered the Way of strategy you can suddenly make your body like a rock, and ten thousand things cannot touch you. This is the body of a rock. You will not be moved.

The true Way of sword fencing is the craft of defeating the enemy in a fight, and nothing other than this.

Whenever you cross swords with an enemy you must not think of cutting him either strongly or weakly; just think of cutting and killing him. Be intent solely on killing the enemy. Do not try to cut strongly and, of course, do not think of cutting weakly. You should only be concerned with killing the enemy.

Where there's no stop and go a thought may wet your face, a breath arreat your stare.

Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion.

His focus, almost exclusively, has been on U.S. foreign policy, a narrowness that would exert a conservative influence even for a radical thinker. If urging increased involvement in politics goes against the potentially subversive tide toward less and less involvement, Chomsky's emphasis on statecraft itself gravitates toward acceptance of states. And completely ignoring key areas (such as nature and women, to mention only two), makes him less relevant still. --John Zerzan, 1996 [196]

There's a humbling insight into the US pretension of occupying the moral high ground in Chomsky's work. Part of what he's saying is true. Objectively viewed, the United States isn't the victim but in many contexts, including its response to terrorism, the perpetrator. [But he's] so preoccupied with the evils of US imperialism that it completely occupies all the political and moral space, and therefore it's not possible for him to acknowledge that even without intending to do so, some US military interventions may actually have a beneficial effect. --Richard Falk, September 5, 2002 [201]

His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.

You're making us very tired, with all your thinking of stupid imaginary impossible things.

Will you shut up about your envy of [them]? For one day, for one hour, for one minute will you just stop and give a thought to reality?

He has the attention span of a bolt of lightning.

Bleendreeble specialises in the universe. He doesn't branch out much beyond that. But he's quite intereted in this limited field.

[after attending a John Maynard Keynes seminar, he] suddenly realized that Keynes and all the brilliant economics students in the room were interested in the behavior of commodities while I was interested in the behavior of people.