Narrowly Focused Quotes & Sayings

Well-honed attention - as evidenced in trackers, mindfulness practitioners, athletes, hunters, artists, writers, ornithologists, and more - is something quite different. It can be focused narrowly or distributed across the entire visual field at will. Its focus can be internal (on the contents of mind) or external, and it can be sustained for long periods. It is penetrating, quick, and efficient, picking up signals that are altogether unseen by the untrained eye. — Thomas Lowe Fleischner

The problems with willpower are many, but they may hardly be noticed by the person focused narrowly on success. First, there is little economy of means; in systems thinking terms, we act without leverage. We attain our goals, but the effort is enormous and we may find ourselves exhausted and wondering if it was worth it when we have succeeded. Ironically, people hooked on willpower may actually look for obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, and enemies to vanquish
to remind themselves and others of their own prowess. — Peter Senge

If you look at the people who have high impact, they have pretty general knowledge. They don't have a really narrowly focused education. — Larry Page

They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences. — Michael Crichton

The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. — Andrew Solomon

This book argues that the history of federal student loan policies is best understood as a series of messes in which attention became focused on some particular aspect of a larger problem and well-intentioned policies were devised to address each narrowly defined concern. — Joel Best

A lot of my colleagues have been people with broad interests in economics, not just narrowly focused interests. — Lars Peter Hansen

Only 8 percent of peace talks have included women at any level. — Zainab Salbi

Instead of being a theater actor who sometimes does movies I became a movie actor who sometimes does theater. — John Lithgow

The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view. — Paul Farmer

And if you so happen to find this good, beautiful man inside you," she whispered, wiping her tears. "Come looking for me. But until you resurrect that man. We are done. — Lucian Bane

In the photo, he and some old girlfriend smiled - greasy faces idiotic with hope that the picture would one day remind them that for three seconds they acted happy and thought it final. — Sam Pink

Everyone always sat in the same place. It just kind of happens. We're creatures of habit. There were families who sat in the same pew, generation upon generation. If I didn't know better, I'd think the people of Levan bequeathed their pews in their wills. — Amy Harmon

Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness. — Mark Twain

Very often, the judgments by ordinary citizens may be better than those by professional economists, being more rooted in reality and less narrowly focused. — Ha-Joon Chang

Moreover, environmental health at the local level has become narrowly focused, very much defined around regulations and the attendant regulatory debates. — Samuel Wilson

Pfaff: The riposte of a civilized nation: one that believes in good, in human society and does oppose evil, has to be narrowly focused and, above all, intelligent. Missiles are blunt weapons. Those terrorists are smart enough to make others bear the price for what they have done, and to exploit the results. A maddened U.S. response that hurts still others is what they want: It will fuel the hatred that already fires the self-righteousness about their criminal acts against the innocent. What the United States needs is cold reconsideration of how it has arrived at this pass. It needs, even more, to foresee disasters that might lie in the future. — Gore Vidal

I work with the dead, but I am working for the living. — Kathy Reichs

When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge. — Taiye Selasi

Since ancient times, the left side has stood for the side of the unconscious or the unknown; the right side, by contrast, has represented the side of consciousness or wakefulness. Through the late twentieth century, the movement of the Left limited themselves to a materialist understanding of reality- exemplified by Marxism- demanding social justice and economic equality but not the restoration of intuition and the recognition of the hidden, qualitative dimensions of being suppressed by the mental-rational consciousness, narrowly focused on the quantifiable. — Jean Gebser

Too many politicians are shifting the critical themes of our national conversations from a 'big ideas' American Brand Platform to narrowly focused, polarizing sound bites that put party philosophy before what used to be heralded as the common good. These ideas, more often than not, divide us rather than serve to bind us. — Alan Siegel

Is it not arrogance or narrow-mindedness to claim that there is only one way of salvation or that the way we follow is the right way? I think not. After all, do we fault a pilot for being narrow-minded when he follows the instrument panel [while] landing in a rainstorm? No, we want him to remain narrowly focused! — Billy Graham

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all. — Ann Patchett

He's an engineer. Wu's the same. They're both technicians. They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. — Michael Crichton

Cease looking for flowers! There blooms a garden in your own home.
While you look for trinkets
The treasure house awaits you in your own being. — Rumi

The AEC scientists were so narrowly focused on arming the United States for nuclear war that they failed to perceive facts - even widely known ones - that were outside their limited field of vision. — Barry Commoner

A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love. — Mignon McLaughlin

Believing time is on our side is difficult because the lens of our lives is too narrowly focused. We see only what is in our direct view, whether trials or bliss. We hold so tightly to the positive experiences for fear we won't have another just as good and those that are negative we hope will disappear.
With our vision set to the crown of our nose, we miss being exposed to a world of possibility lying in the vastness of our periphery. — Tina Leigh

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions. — Francis Schaeffer

I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem that we should really care about: how to create opportunities and ensure a reasonable standard of living for the bottom 20 percent. — Sendhil Mullainathan

And now I know the extent of Sterling's bravery. It was narrowly focused, but it was pure and unadulterated. I twas a kind of elemental self-sacrifice, free of ideology, free of logic. He would put himself on the gallows in another boy's place for no other reason than that he thought the noose was better suited to his neck. — Kevin Powers

There are no simple answers to complex problems. — Valerio Massimo Manfredi

I want to go further, because it was investment banks, it was insurance companies, it was mortgage companies, all of which contributed.So let's not just be narrowly focused on one part of the problem. We have a lot of issues with corporate power that have to be addressed. My plan takes us further and it would do the job. — Hillary Clinton