Social Distraction Quotes & Sayings

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore 'great truths' about the human condition. — Michael Richardson

It is right in principle that those should be the best loved who have contributed most to the elevation of the human race and human life. — Albert Einstein

An individual does not need to be a believer in a religion to embrace the idea that there is an animating principle in the self
a life force (some of us call it soul) that when nurtured enhances our capacity to be more fully self-actualized and able to engage in communion with the world around us. — Bell Hooks

My enemy is my greatest teacher. — Dalai Lama

Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction based as much as on narcissism as on sexual pleasure. Later, they would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria as well as shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this, they cut themselves from any possibility of happiness - a condition indissociable from traditional and transient emotions which are incompatible with the practice of reason - but in doing so they hoped to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. — Michel Houellebecq

The promise of a social gospel was for Luther an irrelevant and ultimately irrelevant and ultimately cruel delusion. — Andrew Pettegree

Be content to be what you are; shiny stones and silver bangles only make you look what you really are. — Tiny Tim

Eighteen pockets in one suit? I haven't the time. — A.A. Milne

...first, in order to remember, something must be forgotten; second, the place where memories are stored has no boundaries. In other words, forgetting is a twin; its tandem effect is best called "simultancous" distraction, the instant when one memory defoliates another. This fuzzy double - one devouring the other - presumably inhibits learning — Norman Klein

She was afraid of these things that made her suddenly wonder who she was, and what she was going to be in the world, and why she was standing at that minute, seeing a light, or listening, or staring up into the sky: alone. — Carson McCullers

I grew up across the street from, you know, the Villarias, which was a great Mexican family there. In fact, there was three houses right across the street from me. So, day and night, I listened to Mexican music, and I'm sure, you know, my guitar playing, singing, writing, whatever, has a lot of Mexican flavor there, but it comes natural. — Willie Nelson

A survey of Canadian media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span had fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000. — Timothy Egan

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. — Noam Chomsky

Distracted from distraction by distraction — T. S. Eliot

Who needs a bullet piercing, armor piercing bullet to go hunting? Who needs an assault rifle to go hunting? You can't even use the prey that you kill with an assault rifle if you indeed do it. — Don Lemon

Botkin cannot build house from such little twigs!" he shouted at me, giving my upper arm a squeeze. "Eat something! — Leigh Bardugo

More voices means less trust in any given voice. — Eli Pariser

Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing, and why you are doing it. Don't value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less. Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction. — Matt Haig

We consume so we never have to answer the hard questions. When we are bored we eat. When we are lonely we watch a movie, read the newspaper, jump on social media. Each time we do we cover up our real emotions and keep throwing another layer of confusion and anxiety on top, making it almost impossible to dig ourselves out of the hole, or at least see which way is up. — Evan Sutter

Music can be a distraction and an escape. Sometimes a welcome escape. You need it. But music can also serve a very important social function because music can do things that mere prose, mere ordinary political agitation can't do. — Howard Zinn

Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet. — Bryan Adams

WHEN THE BALL IS COMING AT 100 MPH FROM PITCHER THERES NOTHING SOFT ABOUT THAT — James Madison

Entire books are being written about the distractions of social media. I don't believe media compel distraction, but I think it's clear that they afford it. — Howard Rheingold

As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life. — C. Wright Mills

We realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way when we were in Swat, we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns. — Malala Yousafzai

True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar's body begin to spread out and its light, beautiful wings begin to form. — Julia Hill

It is an easy mistake to think that non-talkers are non-feelers. — Wallace Stegner