Be Selective Quotes & Sayings

Genes which allow females to be less inhibited leave fewer copies of themselves than genes which persuade them to remain highly selective. Among males, the best strategy is exactly the opposite one. The maximum advantage goes to those males with the fewest inhibitions. "Love 'em and leave 'em" is not so much a nasty peice of male chauvinist piggery as an accurate reflection of biological reality. — Lyall Watson

I have learned that I must be selective when, where, and with whom I dream out loud. — Steve Lawson

And I knew what I wanted: I would settle in a hill station and write my novel. I had visions of myself at a table on a large veranda, my notes spread out in front of me next to a steaming cup of tea. Green hills heavy with mists would lie at my feet and the shrill cries of monkeys would fill my ears. The weather would be just tight, requiring a light sweater mornings and evenings, and something short-sleeved midday. Thus set up, pen in hand, for the sake of greater truth, I would turn Portugal into a fiction. That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming the reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal? — Yann Martel

It's funny how you can intensely investigate one very particular thing, and then it can lead you to other things through links and stuff like that. It's like you're going on this selective, very precise detour. But then it is strange because with it being so quick, there must be a difference. — Jarvis Cocker

It's a lot harder to get someone OUT of your life than it is to let them IN, so please ... be selective. — Mandy Hale

The writer should have a comprehensive outlook. He should aim at a holistic understanding of the prevailing social, political and economic conditions.

He should evaluate all factors in a balanced way. To take a selective view will be erroneous. A realistic approach becomes necessary. This requires healthy literary criticism and exchange of views.

A writer should necessarily venture into his enterprise by touching on a single issue. But then he should relate it to other socially relevant issues. This is what we call the socio-spiritual approach.

You may begin your work dwelling upon the problems of an individual, but then as a writer you should be able to view it as part of the larger social reality. — Jayakanthan

I'm certainly not a person who spends their every waking moment soaking themselves in signs and signals of the sort that cult studies people study; and it's partly, I suppose, because some of those signs and signals aren't worth bothering about. You have to be selective about these things. — Peter York

You can see that there is scarcely an observable fact unworthy of mention in your notes, and yet you could easily spend more time scribbling than watching, and that would defeat the purpose. So be selective, don't be compulsive, and enjoy your note-taking. — Robert Pyle

It's nice to be in a place where I can be a little more selective, and to be sought out for ideas that I have. — Will Ferrell

Why should each generation be brought up on the selective prejudices of the one before it? I believe that this is exactly the point of history. And not just reading or studying history but also approaching it with a sceptical bent of mind. When each generation approaches received wisdom with scepticism, perhaps it will reassess established notions of right and wrong, love and hate. Perhaps it will finally see mistaken priorities for what they really are. Perhaps it will do something that previous generations steadfastly refused to do. — Sidin Vadukut

For the past few years, I've been more selective than I have any right to be, but I think that's finally starting to work in my favor. I think I get way too much credit for making what people consider to be smart choices, but it's only because I made a decision to stop worrying about making money. — Lizzy Caplan

Sometimes I can't tell that someone is a selective asshole because they're so nice to me and the people around me that I don't realize it until someone else says, "You know, that person is an asshole." So I'll be fooled by selective assholes sometimes ... lately. — Emma Stone

If America's universities are indeed poor value for money, why might that be? The main reason is that the market for higher education, like that for health care, does not work well. The government rewards universities for research, so that is what professors concentrate on. Students are looking for a degree from an institution that will impress employers; employers are interested primarily in the selectivity of the institution a candidate has attended. Since the value of a degree from a selective institution depends on its scarcity, good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates. — Anonymous

I ruffle a lot of feathers. And I'm also selective - that makes you a troublemaker. But so be it. I laid a cornerstone for black actors, and that makes me happy. — Esther Rolle

I've got to be kind of careful because I've had good advice: "Don't sell yourself too short." I have to not be too available to everything that comes along. I've always been a people pleaser and now I'm upping the ante in terms of price so I can be more selective. I really enjoyed working on three tracks on Sara Groves' [parenthood-focused] album Station Wagon. I love playing on those songs and I love the heart in that album. — Phil Keaggy

In reality," said Democritus, "there are only atoms and the void." Perception is due to the expulsion of atoms from the object upon the sense organ. There is or have been or will be an infinite number of worlds; at every moment planets are colliding and dying, and new worlds are rising out of chaos by the selective aggregation of atoms of similar size and shape. There is no design; the universe is a machine. This, — Will Durant

There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships and missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective, that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time - we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will. — Robert A. Heinlein

Self persuasion was a concept much loved by evolutionary psychologists. I had written a piece about it for an Australian magazine. It was pure armchair science, and it went like this: if you lived in a group, like humans have always done, persuading others of your own needs and interests would be fundamental to your well-being. Sometimes you had to use cunning. Clearly you would be at your most convincing if you persuaded yourself first and did not even have to pretend to believe what you were saying. The kind of self-deluding individuals who tended to do this flourished, as did their genes. So it was we squabbled and scrapped, for our unique intelligence was always at the service of our special pleading and selective blindness to the weakness of our case. — Ian McEwan

I am, but that doesn't mean I'm going to run around screwing the first thing that winks my way. I'm trying to be more selective than a hamster in heat. — Anonymous

For such people, the ruling gods are progress, science, and development. They imagine that we know so much more about the world than those people of olden times, because "we" have science. Of course, they themselves do not have science, they have simply heard and believed that scientific knowledge is real knowledge. They know little about the goals and methods of science, and nothing about the Islamic Intellectual tradition. They are blind imitators in intellectual issues, that is, on the level where they should be striving for their own understanding. What is worse, this is a selective imitation, since they only accept the authority of the "scientists" and the "experts", not that of the great Muslim thinkers of the past. If Einstein said it, it must be true, but if Al-Ghazali or Mulla Sadra said it, then it can't be true, because it isn't scientific. — William C. Chittick

When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more. — C.S. Lewis

He and she become selective at different points; she can be selective when he wants his primary fantasy - sex; he can be selective when she wants her primary fantasy - commitment. — Warren Farrell

The sad truth is that many of us are addicted to our phones because we crave immediate approval and affirmation. The fear we feel in our hearts when we are engaged online is the impulse that drives our "highly selective self-representations." We want to be loved and accepted by others, so we wash away our scars and defects. When we put this scrubbed-down representation of ourselves online, we tabulate the human approval in a commodity index of likes and shares. We post an image, then watch the immediate response. We refresh. We watch the stats climb-or stall. We gauge the immediate responses from friends, family members, and strangers. Did what we posted gain the immediate approval of others? We know within minutes. Even the promise of religious approval and the affirmations of other Christians is a gravitational pull that draws us toward our phones. — Tony Reinke

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today's China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of 'virtue' or law. — Patrick Mendis

If you need to be selective about the work at a company, maybe you need to be more selective about the company you work for! — Bruce Outridge

I've spent years saying no to things. It's important to be selective with both projects and partners. — Lauren Conrad

Seth rolled his eyes. "Because you're such a ladies man."
"I can be. I just have standards, is all. I'm very selective about who I choose to spend time with, whereas you'll fuck anything that moves. And several things that don't. — Elle Parker

Well, in our industry it's that the movies cost so much money to make they have to appeal to a broad audience. And I think that's part of what will loosen up in the future, as technology makes it cheaper, you'll be able to make films for a more selective audience. I think people will be able to make more personal movies. — Chris Wedge

My best training came from doing illustrations because it taught me to compose my paintings more effectively, to improve my colors, and to be ruthlessly selective. — Burton Silverman

But, you see, that's the luxury of being a lout - you get to be selective about when you care and when you don't. The rest of us get stuck when your care goes shallow. — Rachel Cohn

I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we're defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback. — Brene Brown

I suppose people who graduate from very selective and expensive colleges, and receive immense reinforcement from colleagues who preceded them there, develop an inflated sense of their ability to effectively manage things, especially complex things. Many of these young, bright people cannot believe that our creaking and foundering systems won't yield to their managerial tinkering, and the net effect must be to turn them into very cynical careerists with nothing left but personal ladder-climbing and wealth accumulation ... The political left in America makes up in cynical cowardly avarice for all the mendacious stupidity on the political right, so we end up at this moment in history with a perfect blend of every bad impulse in human nature and none of the virtues. — James Howard Kunstler

Moral codes were not designed to be selective, nor indeed were they designed to be questioned. You could not say that you would observe this prohibition but not that. I shall not commit theft
certainly not
but adultery is another matter: wrong for other people, but not for me. — Alexander McCall Smith

I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil. — Erica Jong

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music. — August Weismann

"Joss"
"What?"
"What?" Dylan asked back.
"You just said my name."
"No I didn't"
"Sorry that was me."
I sat up, banging my head on the roof. "Who is that?"
"Hey, stay down here where the air is good, okay?" Dylan pulled me gently back down. "Hows your head?"
"Not good, I think."
"Um, okay, so you here me. Heather's right, you do think loud. I mean, I've never heard you before, but my Talent seems to be a lot more selective than her's. But now that she's got me turned in to you-"
"Who are you?"
"It's still me, Marshall. It's Dylan. I'm right here."
"My name's Joel."
"Joel?"
"Joss, what are you talking about?" He took my face in his hands. "Who's Joel?"
"The voice in my head, I guess."
"Jesus. — Susan Bischoff

I am selective, but at the same time, I want to be out there as an actor and show people my range. — Sasha Grey

I've been fortunate that I can be selective enough to do acting when it's really furthering what I want to do with my life. — Kirk Cameron

Crossing the Atlantic on that new day was supposed to be a sharp delineation, a from-now-on demarcation in my life story. What I took off from was not supposed to arrive with me upon landing or ever pulse in me again. From the ocean and sky and the hours in flight, I intended to extract a selective, permanent amnesia. — Laurie Perez

In the symbiotic community of the forest, not only trees but also shrubs and grasses - and possibly all plant species - exchange information this way. However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost their ability to communicate above or below ground - you could say they are deaf and dumb - and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests.12 That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future. Communication — Peter Wohlleben

People have presences, both online and in real life. You can choose to show everything, meaning all sides of you, or you can choose to be selective. — Kevin Systrom

Love your neighbor, even the ones who do not show you the same courtesy. You can't expect to receive love if you're selective and not really willing to give it. What you put into the world, you will indeed get back, even if it's not from the person you're expecting it to be. — Alexandra Elle

Couldn't you see me and you stretched out in a bikini on the beach in Tahiti?
See, me, I'm very selective even though I could be greedy;
My main objective is to write our names together in graffiti. — Pharoahe Monch

Energy is the currency of the universe. When you "pay" attention to something, you buy that experience. So when you allow your consciousness to focus on someone or something that annoys you, you feed it your energy, and it reciprocates with the experience of being annoyed. Be selective in your focus because your attention feeds the energy of it and keeps it alive, not just within you, but in the collective consciousness as well. — Emily Maroutian

Subtle cues in your behavior will set the frame that you are a selective, high-value guy. She will pick up on this and gain interest. She expects that a guy with potential will be selective. Here are some standards worth considering:
An attractive woman who takes care of herself
A woman who is sociable and has friends
A woman who has a real thirst for life
A woman who has a great energy and a positive outlook
A woman who is not a flake — Erik Von Markovik

Sex is merely a genetic joint venture. the process of choosing somebody to have sex with, which used to be known as falling in love, is mysterious, cerebral, and highly selective. — Matt Ridley

Yeah, I'm a giver. I've learned to be selective of the people in my world, because if I love someone, I will give them my blood, whatever they need. In doing so, one can end up with little left for themselves. — Brittany Murphy

When all actions are used for feedback, the consequence of making mistakes will be a corrective and appropriate response, because everything everybody does matters ... The more selective you are in the feedback you accept, the more insane your reasoning will become as you will necessarily reject corrective feedback that would have led to better reasoning. — Erik Naggum

What you call your lies are fiction and myths. The art of creating a disguise can be as beautiful as the creation of a painting ... I created a woman for my artist life, bold, gay, courageous, generous, fearless; and another to please my father, a clear-sighted woman with a love of beauty, harmony, and self-discipline, critical and selective; and still another who lives in chaos, embraces the weak and the stumbling and the confused. — Anais Nin

Second, when comparing private school and public school test scores, it's like apples and oranges. Public schools have to take everyone, but private schools can be selective. It's not accurate or fair to compare the job they do. — Dennis Moore

If as a family we must be selective listeners, then let us pay more attention to the words of the heart and less to the words of anger — Wes Fesler

You have to have good training partners and not people who crank on things. There's a difference between cranking on it and catching it, holding it and making the guy work out. You have to be selective with your training partners for sure. — Jon Fitch

Be selective about your external influences. Your multi-dimensional brain is influenced by everything you see, hear, read, smell, touch, feel or say. — Brian Tracy

I wanna be selective ... very selective. Right now, hip-hop's very boring to me. It's no excitement. — Timbaland

What reason is there for believing that a high death rate, in itself, is undesirable? To my knowledge none whatever. The plain fact is that, if it be suitably selective, it is extremely salubrious. Suppose it could be so arranged that it ran to 100% a year among politicians, executive secretaries, drive chairmen, and the homicidally insane? What rational man would object? — H.L. Mencken

We only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed. So we have to be really selective about where we dig. — Sarah Parcak

More about the selection theory: Jerne meant that the Socratic idea of learning was a fitting analogy for 'the logical basis of the selective theories of antibody formation': Can the truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) be learned? If so, it must be assumed not to pre-exist; to be learned, it must be acquired. We are thus confronted with the difficulty to which Socrates calls attention in Meno [ ... ] namely, that it makes as little sense to search for what one does not know as to search for what one knows; what one knows, one cannot search for, since one knows it already, and what one does not know, one cannot search for, since one does not even know what to search for. Socrates resolves this difficulty by postulating that learning is nothing but recollection. The truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) cannot be brought in, but was already inherent. — Niels Kaj Jerne

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of
ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs. — Eckhart Tolle

The starting point of Darwin's theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary, in order that any process of Natural Selection may begin among a race, or species, is the existence of differences among its members; and the first step in an enquiry into the possible effect of a selective process upon any character of a race must be an estimate of the frequency with which individuals, exhibiting any given degree of abnormality with respect to that, character, occur. The unit, with which such an enquiry must deal, is not an individual but a race, or a statistically representative sample of a race; and the result must take the form of a numerical statement, showing the relative frequency with which the various kinds of individuals composing the race occur. — Karl Pearson

Specificity refers to the ability of any medicine to discriminate between its intended target and its host. Killing a cancer cell in a test tube is not a particularly difficult task: the chemical world is packed with malevolent poisons that, even in infinitesimal quantities, can dispatch a cancer cell within minutes. The trouble lies in finding a selective poison - a drug that will kill cancer without annihilating the patient. Systemic therapy without specificity is an indiscriminate bomb. For an anticancer poison to become a useful drug, Meyer knew, it needed to be a fantastically nimble knife: sharp enough to kill cancer yet selective enough to spare the patient. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I've urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board. — William A. Dembski

We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think. — Rod Serling

Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more — Brennan Manning

Everything you do, every thought you have, every word you say creates a memory that you will hold in your body. It's imprinted on you and affects you in subtle ways - ways you are not always aware of. With that in mind, be very conscious and selective. — Phylicia Rashad

In your thoughts, you need to be selective. Thoughts are powerful vehicles of attention. Only think positive thoughts about yourself and your endeavors, and think well of the endeavors of others. — Frederick Lenz

You don't know what goes on in anyone's life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person's life, you're not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can't be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person's life, you're messing with their entire life. Everything ... affects everything. — Jay Asher

I believe many Christians are just like I used to be. They are convinced they are allowing the Word to do its sanctifying work simply by a steady diet of sermons and Bible studies. They even love the Word. Still they may have unknowingly practiced such selective application that some places remain inadvertently unprotected. No need to wait until something painful happens. You can change your approach today! Begin aggressively asking God to plow through your precious life with His Word. Don't be scared to do it! Be scared not to do it! You're perfectly safe with God. — Beth Moore

Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria's effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What's more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so. — Michael J. Behe

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth. — E.L. Doctorow

Some on the Left can be very selective about the kinds of violence they oppose. For some of them, gun violence is a crime to be decried - unless it is committed by an 'aggrieved' victim against what they consider a corrupt institution. — Gary Bauer

You can't be selective about freedom of speech. If you say you believe in freedom of speech you have to acknowledge the people whose views you disagree with, people whose views you may detest, nevertheless have the right to freedom of speech. — George Brandis

I do lend my books, but I have to be a bit selective because my marginalia are so incriminating.
Alison Bechdel — Leah Price

Porter is my eldest child, and I tended to be fiercely protective when he was criticized. He actually was not a big complainer about school. Simply selective in what he chose to do and say. — Susan Shreve

I can understand that memory must be selective, else it would choke on the glut of experience. What I cannot understand is why it selects what it does. — Virgilia Peterson

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God's literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. — Sam Harris

If diversity is what is a central value in every selective university in the United States, then it ought to be seen as a compelling interest by the Supreme Court. — Eleanor Holmes Norton

I would prefer to write about everything; what else is there? But one must be selective. — Edward Abbey

The good news is that we can sometimes control the "circles" around us, moving toward smaller circles that boost our relative happiness. If we are at our class reunion, and there's a "big circle" in the middle of the room with a drink in his hand, boasting of his big salary, we can consciously take several steps away and talk with someone else. If we are thinking of buying a new house, we can be selective about the open houses we go to, skipping the houses that are above our means. If we are thinking about buying a new car, we can focus on the models that we can afford, and so on. We — Dan Ariely

I'm a lot more selective with work these days. My perfect plan is to do one movie every nine months. It would have to be a project that I found inspiring. It would also have to include other actors and a director I am inspired to work with. — Gwyneth Paltrow

Thank God for tunnel vision. Thank God for selective perception. Because without it, we might as well all be in a Lovecraft story. — Stephen King

Even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth — Anwar Shaikh

It must be the duty of racial hygiene to be attentive to a more severe elimination of morally inferior human beings than is the case today ... We should literally replace all factors responsible for selection in a natural and free life ... In prehistoric times of humanity, selection for endurance, heroism, social usefulness, etc. was made solely by hostile outside factors. This role must be assumed by a human organization; otherwise, humanity will, for lack of selective factors, be annihilated by the degenerative phenomena that accompany domestication. — Konrad Lorenz

Sometimes you can't help but pay attention to what is written about you. You are trying not to because it's generally not constructive, it can be very funny, in which case it's fine to pay attention to it if you're going to laugh about it. But if it's going to get you angry then it's a pretty pointless waste of energy, so I try and be selective about what I take an interest in about myself. — Daniel Radcliffe

Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'. — Wole Soyinka

One person can make a difference. A huge difference. Consider what a solitary individual may accomplish: In 1645 one vote gave Oliver Cromwell control of England. In 1649 one vote cost Charles I of England his life, causing him to be executed. In 1776 one vote gave America the English language instead of the German language. In 1839 one vote elected Mark Morgan governor of Massachusetts. In 1845 one vote brought Texas into the Union. In 1868 one vote saved President Johnson from impeachment. In 1875 one vote changed France from a monarchy to a republic. In 1876 one vote gave Rutherford B. Hayes the United States presidency. In 1923 one vote gave Adolf Hitler control of the Nazi party. In 1941 one vote saved the Selective Service Agency just — David Jeremiah

Trout aren't naturally as selective as they've become in crowded tailwaters - they've been trained to be like that by too much fishing pressure. I've seen tailwater fish that are so hysterical they'll refuse naturals. You wonder how they get enough to eat. — John Gierach

Pearls of wisdom by Ms. Hove: When choosing the right person to date, there are many virtues to consider: honesty, respect, and compassion. Be selective! Slow down!! Get to know the person before permitting any intimacy to occur. — Leslie Portu

The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness. — Thorstein Veblen

Another activity that can detract us from the proper way is watching television excessively or viewing improper movies. While fine productions on these media are uplifting and entertaining, we need to be very selective in choosing what we see and how much of our time such an activity deserves. Our precious time must not be diverted to the sideline attractions of vulgar language, immoral conduct, pornography, and violence. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Any one of us could be made to look a monster, with selective readings of our history. — Abigail Haas

Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Because your child is your first priority, your're more selective, so in order to let someone into that world, they have to be really special. You cut out the bull - that you might fall for if you didn't have responsibilities. — Helena Christensen

I'm more selective now I've got a family. I don't want to work all the time. My daughter's 12; I don't want to miss out on her life. Soon she'll be a teenager; she won't want me around. — Julie Walters

It's a dangerous thing, to divide yourself, to break off bits of yourself until there's no solid core. We are, after all, just the sum of our total experiences, each one lying beneath us like a brick in the foundation of a house. To be selective, to block out portions, is to destabilize the very ground on which you stand. — Mia Fontaine

However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost the ability to communicate above or below ground-you could say they are deaf and dumb-and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests. That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future. — Peter Wohlleben

I've always been selective about materials I choose anyways. The incoming calls haven't been projects that I necessarily want to do. Now I can always be called "Emmy winner Regina King." — Regina King

The tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact; the selective influence of conditions, which no one could deny to be a matter of fact, when his attention was drawn to the evidence; and the occurrence of great geological changes which also was matter of fact; could be used as the only necessary postulates of a theory of the evolution of plants and animals which, even if not at once, competent to explain all the known facts of biological science, could not be shown to be inconsistent with any. — Thomas Henry Huxley

One has to be very selective about what is essential for driving the story and what isn't. You leave out some things that are lovely, but unfortunately it is necessary. — David Barron

It's all in Hogwarts, A History. Though, of course, that book's not entirely reliable. A Revised History of Hogwarts would be a more accurate title. Or A Highly Biased and Selective History of Hogwarts, Which Glosses Over the Nastier Aspects of the School." "What are you on about?" said Ron, though Harry thought he knew what was coming. "House-elves!" said Hermione, her eyes flashing. "Not once, in over a thousand pages, does Hogwarts, A History mention that we are all colluding in the oppression of a hundred slaves! — J.K. Rowling

Military force is irrelevant to many of the most urgent threats we face. If we are to solve our myriad domestic problems and revitalize our economy we need to be more selective about our involvement in foreign crises large and small. — William Hartung