Quotes & Sayings About Taking For Granted

Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted. — Max Lerner

This is life. It is everywhere, and it is here for the taking. I am alive and I know this, now, in a more profound way than when I am doing anything else. These sights are ephemeral, fleeting treasures that have been offered to me and to me alone. No other person in the history of the world, anywhere in all of time and space, has been granted this gift to be here in my place. And I am privileged, through the camera, to take this moment away with me. That is why I photograph. — Bill Jay

I get to the bottom of why I'm so upset. When I do, it's almost too Mortifying to admit. All this months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly. — Suzanne Collins

You need to understand that some comedy can have consequences. — Auliq Ice

Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio. — Melinda Gates

We tend to take things for granted that we've had for long periods of time. Take a moment to appreciate the person in your life. Realize why you are with them. Take a moment with them and really be in that moment completely. — Pandora Boxx

It's very easy for a church just to slide along from week to week, taking it for granted that we do our services like this and that, and we celebrate the sacraments like this and that. — N. T. Wright

Men are like children, in that, if you spoil them, they become naughty. Therefore it is well not to be too indulgent or charitable with anyone. You may take it as a general rule that you will not lose a friend by refusing him a loan, but that you are very likely to do so by granting it; and, for similar reasons, you will not readily alienate people by being somewhat proud and careless in your behavior; but if you are very kind and complaisant towards them, you will often make them arrogant and intolerable, and so a breach will ensue. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Feminism" means taking for granted that woman and man are meant to complement each other while sharing equal dignity, equal rights, and equal humanity - nothing more and nothing less. — Mitch Finley

I feel like sometimes people on television shows can start taking things for granted, or they don't want to be here or something like that. — Jason Ritter

God would have us cherish even the smallest of blessings, for in taking a blessing for granted we are well on our way to taking it to its grave. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I fear that many of us rush about from day to day taking for granted the Holy Scriptures. We scramble to honor appointments with physicians, lawyers, and businessmen. Yet we think nothing of postponing interviews with Deity postponing scripture study. Little wonder we develop anemic souls and lose our direction in living. How much better it would be if we planned and held sacred fifteen or twenty minutes a day for reading the scriptures. Such interviews with Deity would help us recognize his voice and enable us to receive guidance in all of our affairs. — Carlos E. Asay

There's so much to appreciate about my life every single day, and I make a big point of taking time to smell the roses and noticing how lucky I am. I never want to take that for granted. — Josie Maran

I truly realized that health is a precious, fragile gift. We are all guilty of taking it for granted. I felt so guilty that it took something like this to make me realize what was important. — Lisa Wainland

Rose and Dimitri moved almost as one entity, like a matched pair of wolfes or lions, both wary and deadly as they studied their surroundings, taking no detail or person for granted. — Richelle Mead

I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be. — Huston Smith

He was like a kid who'd grown up beside an ocean, taking it as much for granted as he took the sky, but knowing nothing of currents, shipping routes, or the ins and outs of weather. He'd used decks in school, toys that shuttled you through the infinite reaches of that space that wasn't space, mankind's unthinkably complex consensual hallucination, the matrix, cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas, data so dense you suffered sensory overload if you tried to apprehend more than the merest outline. — William Gibson

In this delicate and unpredictable life, the future is unwritten. Do not take someone for granted today, for once tomorrow dawns upon the indigo night the only remaining trace will be tracks in the sand... — Virginia Alison

Lila had discovered that the hardest part of her charade was pretending that everything was old hat when it was all so new, being forced to feign the kind of nonchalance that only comes from a lifetime of knowing and taking for granted. Lila was a quick study, and she knew how to keep up a front; but behind the mask of disinterest, she took in everything. She was a sponge, soaking up the words and customs, training herself to see something once and be able to pretend she'd seen it a dozen - a hundred - times before. — V.E Schwab

[With R-rated movie] you're not dealing with the restrictions imposed by the FCC. They're self-imposed. In a way, that does make it harder. You actually have to think about it, as opposed to just taking for granted that you're not going to be able to do this. — Seth MacFarlane

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. — Aldous Huxley

People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency. — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Say a child raises this beautiful beet. It's going to give her a sense of ownership, and that changes everything. You stop taking things for granted; you become less wasteful. — David Chang

One way to demonstrate courtship as a matter of course in an established relationship is to remember that courtship is the act of trying to persuade someone to choose you - by demonstrating that you've chosen them. If you look at each day of your relationship as another opportunity to choose to be with the person you're with, you'll display those feelings of affection in your actions and your words - and you'll refrain from taking that person's presence for granted. — Sarah Wendell

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. — Thomas Fuller

It's a real misconception that water is a problem in Africa only. It's also an issue in Nepal, in Honduras, and in the United States of America. If we don't start paying attention now and curb our use and stop taking it for granted, we're going to be in a bad place, like everyone else. — Kenna

Are you repeating someone else's narrative, taking it for granted? Talk therapy sessions and 12-step recovery shares help develop the ability to present a coherent life narrative through the safe structure of clear rules of communication that support healthy self-expression and self-awareness. — Alexandra Katehakis

In the United States in 1907, a book entitled Three Acres and Liberty seized the imagination of the reading public. The author, Bolton Hall, began by taking for granted the awkwardness of having to work for someone else, and so advised his readers that they could win their freedom by leaving their offices and factories and buying three acres apiece of inexpensive farmland in middle America. This acreage would soon enable them to grow enough food for a family of four and to build a simple but comfortable home, and best of all, relieve them of any need ever again to flatter or negotiate with colleagues and superiors. — Alain De Botton

I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking books up trees and reading there. — Tana French

They that live at the source of a great river shall always take the great river for granted but they that live at the estuary of the great river shall always watch the great river in awe and admiration! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There are so many minutes and hours and days we spend taking life for granted, not feeling it so much as going along with it. But then there are moments like this, when the aliveness of life is crystalline, palpable, undeniable. It is the ultimate buoy against drowning. It is the ever-saving grace. — David Levithan

Our entire society's based on discontent: people wanting more and more and more, being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their decor, their clothes, everything. Taking it for granted that that's the whole point of life, never to be satisfied. If you're perfectly happy with what you've got - specially if what you've got isn't even all that spectacular - then you're dangerous. You're breaking all the rules, you're undermining the sacred economy, you're challenging every assumption that society's built on. That's why Rafe's dad throws a mickey fit whenever Rafe says he's happy where he is. The way he sees it, we're all subversives. We're traitors. — Tana French

We were smack bang in the middle, years from the finish, taking nothing for granted. I — Max Porter

The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible. — Neal Shusterman

For in the latter days of that passionate life that lay now so far behind him, the conception of a free and equal manhood had become a very real thing to him. He had hoped, as indeed his age had hoped, rashly taking it for granted, that the sacrifice of the many to the few would some day cease, that a day was near when every child born of woman should have a fair and assured chance of happiness. And here, after two hundred years, the same hope, still unfulfilled, cried passionately through the city. After two hundred years, he knew, greater than ever, grown with the city to gigantic proportions, were poverty and helpless labour and all the sorrows of his time. — H.G.Wells

Taking friendships for granted is one of the surest ways of ending them. Unless nourished, they tend to wither and die. Unless we earnestly desire its continuance we should never start a friendship any more than we would a love affair. — Alice Hegan Rice

I am still not taking my "career" in music for granted. It is constantly surprising that it works. Generally my thinking about the future has this assumption of an impending apocalypse. — Phil Elvrum

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like. — Coco Chanel

Um, this is kind of a whole lot more than you kneeling on the floor while I wank. Are you absolutely sure we don't need a safeword?" It was getting increasingly difficult for me to think at all, let alone keep up with him as he jumped from topic to topic, from instinctive control to confessed uncertainty. "Yes, I'm sure." "But aren't we supposed to?" He let me go, and while my body regretted him, my mind cleared a little. "They don't come round and check, Toby. Confiscate our sex licences." His silence suggested he wasn't amused, and I realised I was being too glib. Taking too much for granted. "If it would make you feel safe, then of course, we can have a safeword. — Alexis Hall

To be moral involves taking a position towards that matrix, thinking critically about what is taken for granted. — Maxine Greene

I guess the main thing is, you unconsciously take things for granted, and you think the audience is with you, because you're with yourself. — Robert Downey Jr.

People are fed up with Labour for taking them for granted for far too long, they are fed up of too much spin, and the people of Dunfermline and West Fife have spoken for the rest of the country with their views on the Labour government. — Willie Rennie

Taking things for granted is a terrible disease. We should all be checking ourselves regularly for signs of it. — Kate Tempest

There is no fool like a careless gambler who starts taking victory for granted. — Hunter S. Thompson

If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singulary generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most importent challenge of our times. — Wade Davis

We will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things. — John Desmond Bernal

I didn't have the luxury of taking reality for granted. And I wouldn't say I hated people who did, because that's just about everyone. I didn't hate them. They didn't live in my world.

But that never stopped me from wishing I lived in theirs. — Francesca Zappia

I've been given a gift [musical talent] - don't misuse it. I spent a lot of time just wasting that talent, not treasuring it, not valuing it, not respecting it, just taking it for granted. That was a hard lesson to learn. It doesn't come for free. Don't do that. Treasure it, respect it, treat it as a responsibility that you've been given, and enjoy the hell out of it. — David Crosby

Don't take things for granted. — Allen Evangelista

I appreciate everything that I have, versus taking it for granted. — Avril Lavigne

Q. What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life - the need for taking time to be alone with God?
Lewis: We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by Our Lord; and since they are his commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door. — C.S. Lewis

Taking someone for granted is same as checking the strength of a boat by making holes in it. — Himanshu Chhabra

The quiet gravity really wasn't his style at all, which had always been both needy and dour; anxious to be liked, but incapable of taking friendliness for granted. A burden of the hugely rich. — Ian McEwan

I guess we're all guilty at some point of failing to appreciate the small things, because when we use a broad brush to paint our exemplary lives, we splatter ourselves with ignorance. — Danielle Esplin

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions ... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. — Noam Chomsky

It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I like poems that immediately claim my attention, instead of taking my attention for granted. At first read, I want to feel compelled to pick up the poem again; I want to be curious about its byways and secret corners. — James Arthur

Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three. — Swami Vivekananda

My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control. — Mahatma Gandhi

I find myself constantly taking apart be taken-for-granted. — Rebekah Nathan

In taking the everyday details of life for granted, we fail to appreciate the extraordinary fact that we are conscious at all. — Stephen Batchelor

Legal documents have mistrust written all over them. It's unfortunate, but the human DNA is so tuned to kind of taking you for granted that we tend to protect ourselves legally. That's why I don't read them as, if I read them, I will go soft. To me, the human relationship is far more important than the professional bond I share with anyone. — Karan Johar

And after the briefest flowering of understanding, my own generation had grown complacent. At some level, we must have started taking it for granted that the way the universe worked was now obvious to any child ... even though it went against everything innate to the species: the wild, undisciplined love of patterns, the craving to extract meaning and comfort from everything in sight.
We thought we were passing on everything that mattered to our children: science, history, literature,
art. Vast libraries of information lay at their fingertips. But we hadn't fought hard enough to pass on
the hardest-won truth of all: Morality comes only from within. Meaning comes only from within. Outside our own skulls, the universe is indifferent. — Greg Egan

Trying to figure out how something works on that deep level, the first ninety-nine explanations you come up with are wrong. The hundredth is right. So you have to learn how to admit you're wrong, over and over and over again. It doesn't sound like much, but it's so hard that most people can't do science. Always questioning yourself, always taking another look at things you've always taken for granted," like having a Snitch in Quidditch, "and every time you change your mind, you change yourself. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

In fact, we will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things. We have to learn to understand nature and not merely to observe it and endure what it imposes on us. Stupidity, from being an amiable individual defect, has become a social crime. — John Desmond Bernal

One key to happiness, then, is to forestall the adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get. — William B. Irvine

Every rep that you take off, somebody else gets another look. That's just how I am. It's not a matter of being paranoid, it's a matter of being confident and not taking anything for granted. — Derrick Brooks

Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost-infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. 'Ohe, Salad baba, it's you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch.' At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater's face. 'Hey, Spoono,' Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, 'Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won't know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. — Salman Rushdie

Both Mum and Dad were converts to Catholicism, and normally if you convert to Catholicism you have thought about it more than someone who just grew up with it, taking it for granted. — Tony Abbott

Love's Kiss of Death [10w]
Love's kiss of death is taking each another for granted. — Beryl Dov

If you are a kid in Beverly Hills, (I am not putting down people who live in Beverly Hills) if that kid knows private school and a credit card ... you can't say the kid is taking life for granted. He is taking the life that was given to him. — Henry Rollins

He would have to ask questions constantly, take nothing for granted. There would be so many opportunities to miss the obvious, so many chances to misunderstand, so many ways of taking the wrong path. 11 — Isaac Asimov

I've come to learn that leadership is not automatically granted to you because of your position or your salary or the size of your office. Leadership is influence based on trust that you have earned. A leader is not someone who declares what he wants and then gets angry when he doesn't get it. A true leader is someone who is going someplace and taking people with him, a catalyst for elite performance who enables people to achieve things they wouldn't achieve on their own. A leader is someone who earns trust, sets a clear standard, and then equips and inspires people to meet that standard. — Urban Meyer

When we are fully mindful of the transience of things - an impending return home from an overseas adventure, a graduation, our child boarding the school bus for the first day of kindergarten, a close colleague changing jobs, a move to a new city - we are more likely to appreciate [be grateful for] and savor the remaining time that we do have. Although bittersweet experiences also make us sad, it is this sadness that prompts us, instead of taking it for granted, to come to appreciate the positive aspects of our vacation, colleague, or hometown; it's 'now or never.' — Sonja Lyubomirsky

In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it. — Stephen Batchelor

Ironically, we may discover that death meditation is not a morbid exercise at all. Only when we lose the use of something taken for granted (whether the telephone or an eye) are we jolted into a recognition of its value. When the phone is fixed, the bandage removed from the eye, we briefly rejoice in their restoration but swiftly forget them again. In taking them for granted, we cease to be conscious of them. In taking life for granted, we likewise fail to notice it. (To the extent that we get bored and long for something exciting to happen.) By meditat- ing on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life. — Stephen Batchelor

Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented. — Sonja Lyubomirsky

[Monty] talks about Fritz Perls and the Gestalt theory. The here and now is the only time that exists. And being yourself. Not accepting yourself, not taking yourself for granted. Being yourself. Your self. Monty defines 'normality' as a contententment with who you are. — Antony Sher

Sometimes I worry, for myself, that I've stopped being amazed at certain things, or I've taken for granted a set of ideas about how the world works, what people are doing with each other or alone, all the fundamental relationships in the world. I worry that I start taking it for granted and stop feeling the intensity of it because of language. Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world. — Ben Marcus

There was always so much going on. Never any time to stop and smell the roses. Never any roses to stop and smell anyway. — Ellie Lieberman

It's natural for children to drift through their early childhood taking their parents for granted, then adolescence rears its ugly head and insouciance morphs into rebellion as they strive to define themselves by being as different from those who gave them life as possible. But for me, now on the eve of my sixteenth year, familial insurrection had yet to seize me - and in reality, it never would. I was my father's son. His moral compass was inexorably mine. I knew that day I would forever define myself not by contrasts to my father, but by emulation, striving to be a "good man" like him. But the term "good man" was not adequate to describe him. Daddy was a great man who charted his own course in life, guided by his own light, irrespective of the opinions of others, be they my grandmother's or those of his Brothers in the Lodge. He was the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind of man I was already becoming without fully realizing it. — G.M. Frazier

Most people say if you tell a wish it won't come true. But I don't think wishes work like that. I don't believe there's some bad-tempered wish-fairy with a clipboard, checking off whether or not you've told ... But it's a long shot I'll get my wish, so even if there is a fairy in charge of telling, it won't matter.
'I wish everyone had the same chances,' I say. 'Because it stinks a big one that they don't. What about you? What did you wish for?'
'Grape soda.'
I can't help smiling. 'You wished for grape soda?' He doesn't answer, and I pull my hand from my pocket. Taking one of his fluttering hands, I wrap his fingers tightly around a dollar. 'Wish granted, toad.'
He takes off running and Dad runs after him.
I close my eyes and make a new wish.
I wish the refreshment stand has grape soda. — Cynthia Lord

Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted. — Anna Quindlen

'Sweet Dreams' is such a dark-sounding song, but it's about not taking anything for granted; share yourself with others after you have first spent some time with yourself. — Angel Olsen

She said things and I nodded. I didn't pay attention. She didn't pay attention to me. We floated through our days in that way. — Frederick Barthelme

It certainly seems too simple to say what I am going to say, yet it is almost as if you would be better off turning the entire rational approach upside down, taking it for granted that all of its assumptions were false, for they are indeed more false than true. — Seth

The irony that always amazes me when I see people up in arms about our war against Islamo-fascism is how they don't understand that the social freedoms they take for granted will be the first casualties of Islamic influence and control. The only social liberal thinkers in the Muslim Arab Islamo-fascist world are dead ones. Women's freedoms and their protection under the law, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and other human rights will be the first to suffer. Oh yes, sorry, I forgot. . . there will always be the ACLU to depend on to keep the radical Muslims from taking these rights away. How foolish of me. Almost lost my head there. — Brigitte Gabriel

I could worry about his health but somehow not about my own. We throw ourselves away a little each day. — Padma Lakshmi

Coaching staff: I know there's days you look at that film and you want to kill me. I'm not playing defense, taking bad shots, getting too many techs. But you always believe that I can be the guy. Through the tough times, you guys never left my side ... That's something that I really appreciate and I never want to take you guys for granted. I thank you so much for being part of my life. And not just on the basketball court, but giving me talks about growing as a man first, and a basketball player next. — Kevin Durant

The first thing is love: love deeply. If you have been with a person for a few years, in deep love, and you have experienced all the joys and all the miseries, and still you decide to be with the person, then marriage is okay. Because marriage is only a legal arrangement, it cannot make anything more beautiful than it is. It can only make it ugly, it cannot beautify it. Once it is settled legally, once you start taking each other for granted, things will start going down rather than rising high. — Rajneesh

I do support artists standing by their beliefs and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics. — Lauryn Hill

When the eye wakes up to see again, it suddenly stops taking anything for granted. — Frederick Franck

Taking experimental results and observations for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it. — Paul Feyerabend

There were two types of mourning. There was the type when a person opened up his heart to the world, never taking anything for granted, and lived each day to the fullest. Then there was the type of mourning where a person closed off his heart to the world and lived in his own world, unable to connect to others. — Brittainy C. Cherry

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's. — John Mayer

Science is like society and trade, in resting at bottom upon a basis of faith. There are some things here, too, that we can not prove, otherwise there would be nothing we can prove. Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end. It is a mistake to contrast religion and science in this respect, and to think of religion as taking everything for granted, and science as doing only clean work, and having all the loose ends gathered up and tucked in. We never reach the roots of things in science more than in religion. — Charles Henry Parkhurst

Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted. — David Steindl-Rast

Good science is done by being curious in general, by asking questions all around, by acknowledging the likelihood of being wrong and taking this in good humor for granted, by having a deep fondness for nature, and by being made jumpy and nervous by ignorance. — Lewis Thomas

GT: You know how you think you know these things about yourself?
GT: Like all these personal attributes about you as if theyre written down somewhere like a sort of mini biography so they have to be true.
GT: So you just believe them and hope that the believing is what makes them true.
GT: But then you spend so much time believing those things and taking their truth for granted that you somehow forget to MAKE them true with your words and deeds.
GT: How can i truly love adventure when i never even knew what it was? — Andrew Hussie

The way to get killed around machinery was to take things for granted. — Richard McKenna