Quotes & Sayings About Tunnel Vision

Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision. — Stephen Jay Gould

It was hard to imagine the icy water thawed and re-sealing, or the sky returning to a lively blue. She had a sense of contraction, of huddling against the weather. Later, it figured in her mind as Stalinist classicism, the wind tunnel of the vast and inhuman Karl-Marx-Allee, and the shapes of people in padded jackets bending against the cruel air. A scene from Eisenstein, perhaps, with a gelid lens and the special effects of monumental vision, swollen by an aerial view and historical misery. Black outlines on white snow, impersonality, extinguishment. Exaggeration of this kind was irresistible. In that early, fierce cold, Berliners coped better. — Gail Jones

When your child is sick, you have tunnel vision. — Nick Cassavetes

Tunnel vision can kill creativity. — Ami Vitale

Love isn't blind. If it has any senses love, like it's second cousin lust, has not only perfect vision but in fact has tunnel vision. Some people are never able to see past what they see. — John Goode

To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost. — Chris Evert

A lot of times when I ran, to be honest, I didn't know where I was in the race. So I always was looking up at the scoreboard to say, 'Just call my name to see where I am,' because I tried to have such tunnel vision not to distract myself. — Gail Devers

I was single-minded and I had tunnel vision. Now it's time for a change. — Evelyn Ashford

Let's face it: Most companies in most industries have a kind of tunnel vision. They chase the same opportunities that everyone else is chasing, they miss the same opportunities that everyone else is missing. It's the companies that see a different game that win big. The most important question for innovators today is: What do you see that the competition doesn't see? — Bill Taylor

Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision. — Adrienne Rich

the word "silo" does not just refer to a physical structure or organization (such as a department). It can also be a state of mind. Silos exist in structures. But they exist in our minds and social groups too. Silos breed tribalism. But they can also go hand in hand with tunnel vision. — Gillian Tett

Dickhead. He makes a beeline for Kate, not even seeing the other women who are right in front of him. Tunnel vision. He wants her bad.
Where have I seen the look on his face before? Oh, yeah. In the mirror. — Vi Keeland

Learn to see the big picture. Often times we get tunnel vision and lose sight of the big picture and what we're really trying to accomplish. — Robert Cheeke

Michael Roberts is a great rider and a great tactician; he was always using his brain in a race. His determination to become champion jockey was unswerving. He worked night and day, day and night to do it. You must have tunnel vision to become champion jockey: you must almost block everything else out, and he did that perfectly. — Steve Cauthen

The problem with romance is the occlusion. The tunnel vision, drawing your every gaze downstream, into those other eyes, the flotsam of your better self, your clearer self, along for the ride. It doesn't matter what secrets swirl and bob in the waters beneath you, as you float toward that lady at Delphi, who, you imagined, reading Mythology, must have been beautiful. It doesn't matter that Charybdis, with no body, with no form, with only a mouth-as-being, couldn't have been evil, because she lacked the brain for it. It doesn't matter that following the logical course of events, the natural course, always disadvantages someone else, because love, after all, is simply a competition for resources, made infinitely complex and unknowable when squared and cubed and raised to every other emotional exponent - and then layered with sex and society and a bad memory for what those resources were in the first place. — Darin Bradley

Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. — Tom Robbins

I read every book about Buster Keaton and Chaplin to see how they worked - it's all about dedication, tunnel vision, pursuit of perfection, getting the gag right. — Paul Merton

It's like he has these moments where he just captures me in his snare and I can't see around me. Tunnel vision. I'll call it the Ian tunnel effect since it hinders me at the greatest of moments when I should be focused elsewhere. — Cyndi Goodgame

It's that one thing that you're passionate about, that you end up developing tunnel vision for and everything else tends to fall by the wayside. Passion is appealing and universal. — Johnny Galecki

In the environment in which we evolved, the careful choice of a mate was critical to a female's success in passing on her genes. If her man was not strong enough to be a successful hunter, or not of sufficiently high rank within the tribe to commandeer food from others, her children might be in trouble. The women who were reproductively successful were those with a sexual preference for effective providers. A kind of erotic "tunnel vision" was selected for, which causes women to focus their mating effort on the men at the top of the pack - the "alpha males" with good physical endowments, social rank, and economic resources (or an ability to acquire them). — F. Roger Devlin

Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options. — Simon Sinek

There always a light at the end of the tunnel but it's not about what you find at the end it's what you find on the path there — Anastasia Wild

Rhythm becoming thought, thought becoming memory; memory, which tends to shuck itself, to peel away. You get older, look back through a child's tunnel vision, and realize you never knew the whole that tied the details together. You were just along for the ride, moving from experience to experience, a flat spectacle, some kind of guideless tour. You remember--or think you remember--what happened, but not where, or why. What you did, but not with who. Details fade. People's names get lost in the white noise. — Gemma Files

For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People's ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing. — John Zorn

Sure. Focused. Let's totally ignore any possible other avenues and just tunnel-vision our way along. Maybe we'll get lucky and blunder into a Lamaru hangout, right? — Stacia Kane

My hands curled into fists just as I felt my essence tighten, muscle mass increasing and claws extending. There was a slight tremor in my entire body that should have given him significant warning. Sometimes, a little switch in me went off, I went blank and berserk, waking up often in a pool of blood none the wiser. The human world tempered that a bit. That damn smile didn't even waver even as I got tunnel vision. My last moment of consciousness was my lunging at him. — Lil Hamilton

If we are taken over by craving, no matter who or what is before us, all we can see is how it might satisfy our needs. This kind of thirst contracts our body and mind into a profound trance. We move through the world with a kind of tunnel vision that prevents us from enjoying what is in front of us. The color of an autumn leaves or a passage of poetry merely amplifies the feeling that there is a gaping hole in our life. The smile of a child only reminds us that we are painfully childless. We turn away from simple pleasures because our craving compels us to seek more intense stimulation or numbing relief. — Tara Brach

I tend to have a kind of tunnel vision when I'm looking at an individual piece. — Edward Norton

I dream in tunnel vision, I think. I remember in tunnel vision, I think. The question remains, when my tunnel vision goes, as it will very soon, what will I remember seeing? How will I remember?
All I can do is write it down and keep writing. How else can I hold this picture, this life, or this face together? The view from here is of a boy with a softball, ready to let it go. His is an ironic gift from the past, as if the young me is aiming at the old, saying, "Here, buddy, let me help you with that." I wanted to let the ball fly at my lens, whatever was left of it. — Ryan Knighton

Sometimes the tide is just out. But it always comes back in again. In times of severe distress, we tend to get tunnel vision and think this feeling will last forever. It will not. — Jewel

It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good dea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comps out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended." 86 — Tom Robbins

The impulse to be looking constantly with central vision is part of a psychophysical syndrome which includes spinal fixation as another characteristic. Tunnel vision -- the use of the macula, or central portion of the retina, to the relative exclusion of the surrounding area -- is hard on/eyes and diminishes their visual potential; it accentuates selective fixation upon objects one after another, missing the whole view and seeing objects as separate from their larger context. It accompanies and fortifies a tunneling habit of mind, a tendency to, fasten onto particular issues or circumstances, to hold doggedly and sometimes with exaggerated emotionality to a point of view, and to be unable to contextualize or to find fresh responses. — Alexandra Pierce

I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever. — David Sanborn

I've learned that if I only put my mind to one thing that I can get tunnel vision. Then I may not be as open to other opportunities because I'm so focused on one thing. I think what's worked better for me personally is I have three goals every day: be nice, work hard, and make friends. — Gigi Hadid

You cloud my vision and haunt my memories. I'm the light at the end of your tunnel. Let it be me. — L.J. Scar

Scientists are dedicated to asking questions in the search for truth. But they too are human, and like all humans, they would like their answers to be clean and clear and easy. In their desire for simple solutions, scientists are prone to fall into two traps as they question the reality of God. The first is to throw the baby out with the bath water. And the second is tunnel vision. There is clearly a lot of dirty bath water surrounding the reality of God. Holy wars. Inquisitions. Animal sacrifice. Human sacrifice. Superstition. Stultification. Dogmatism. Ignorance. Hypocrisy. Self-righteousness. Rigidity. Cruelty. Book-burning. Witch-burning. Inhibition. Fear. Conformity. Morbid guilt. Insanity. The list is almost endless. But is all this what God has done to humans or what humans have done to God? It is abundantly evident that belief in God is often destructively dogmatic. Is the problem, then, that humans tend to believe in God, or is the problem that humans tend to be dogmatic? — M. Scott Peck

Extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress. — Malcolm Gladwell

I kept my eyes on the road, and felt tunnel vision setting in. I wanted to talk - I wanted Weaver to explain why he fucking ignored me this past year! And I wanted him to shut up and never say another word to me. — Atom Yang

Desire- grasping, clinging, greed, attachment - is a state of mind that defines what we think we need in order to be happy. We project all of our hopes and dreams of fulfillment onto some object of our attention. This may be a certain activity or outcome, a particular thing or person. Deluded by our temporary enchantment, we view the world with tunnel vision. That object, and that alone, will make us happy. — Sharon Salzberg

She often had to remind herself that she couldn't do everything alone. She wasn't always the best person for the job. Sometimes she got tunnel vision and forgot about what other people needed. — Rick Riordan

People who get trapped in the tunnel vision of making money think that is all there is to life. — Felix Dennis

I just kind of do my thing with sort of tunnel vision for the story and my role and how it fits together. — Lin Shaye

However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her Panic Bird- her total lack of nostalgia. She had no armor. This left her especially vulnerable in New York, where she was removed from the context of her life, severed from that reassuring arc. — Elizabeth Winder

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. — Herbie Hancock

There is a particularly unattractive and discouragingly common affliction called tunnel vision, which for all the misery it causes, ought to top the job list at the World Health Organization. Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest. Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good dea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comps out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended. — Tom Robbins

Drivers don't always see the (flashing) lights. You can't get tunnel vision. You've got to look everywhere, even when your adrenaline is going. — Sixto Rodriguez

Sometimes when we get so caught up in our dreams we get tunnel vision. It becomes about "me, me, me," and we fail to see those around us who need our help. When this happens we can expect to experience obstacles or as I like to call them, "gentle reminders" that we are not the center of the universe. When we are not using our talents and strengths to bless others, how can we expect the Lord to bless us? — Lindsey Rietzsch

Reading can break us out of the tunnel vision of the narrow specialty and lead us into many intriguing and important avenues of thought. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

The main thing is to win. You just try to keep your tunnel vision on to get the team the win. — Jennie Finch

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

Since, on a socio-economic level, there are myriad wrongs that need to
be righted, a major problem for the species seems to be how to assist
the unfortunate, throttle the corrupt, preserve the biosphere, and
effectively organize for socio-economic alteration wihtout the
organization being taken over by dullards, the people who, ironically,
are best suited to serving organized causes since they seldom have
anything more imaginative to do and, restricted by tunnel vision,
probably wouldn't do it if they had. 151 — Tom Robbins

The greatest gift of having done this work (the research and the personal work) is that I can recognize shame when it's happening. First, I know my physical symptoms of shame - the dry mouth, time slowing down, tunnel vision, hot face, racing heart. I know that playing the painful slow-motion reel over and over in my head is a warning sign. — Brene Brown

Young hearts too often have tunnel vision. — K.J. Farnham

Stress makes us prone to tunnel vision, less likely to take in the information we need. Anxiety makes us more risk-averse than we would be regularly and more deferential. — Noreena Hertz

If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere. — Werner Herzog

Anxiety leads to a narrowing of the field of attention, the so-called tunnel vision, and when people are anxious, they are unable to attend to the total situation as is necessary to enable them to act rationally, but impulsively do the first thing that comes into their heads which is usually determined by what others are doing at the same time. — James A.C. Brown

The desire to procreate, in some, is so strong that it creates a sort of tunnel vision in the afflicted. One can't see beyond trying to make a baby, and they never stop to think about what it will really be like once said baby has in fact, arrived. — Karen Fowler

It's tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we're the least qualified to make sense of what we've done, unfortunately, because of the tunnel vision required to create anything over four years. — Stephen Gaghan

The speed limited my vision to the tunnel of the Toyota's headlights. The body could drive, I told myself, while the mind maintained. Maintained and stayed away from the weird peripheral window dressing of amphetamine and exhaustion, the spectral, luminous vegetation that grows out of the corners of the mind's eye along late-night highways. But the mind had its own ideas, and Kihn's opinion of what I was already thinking of as my "sighting" rattled endlessly through my head in a tight, lopsided orbit. Semiotic ghosts. Fragments of the Mass Dream, whirling past in the wind of my passage. Somehow this feedback-loop aggravated the diet pill, and the speed-vegetation along the road began to assume the colors of infrared satellite images, glowing shreds blown apart in the Toyota's slipstream. — William Gibson

Demanding historical (or scientific) veracity as a prerequisite for truth is another kind of tunnel vision. To do so is to mistake poetry for prose. — Charles Kimball

It gives me a sense of tunnel vision. — Tom Glavine

The problem with unfilled dreams is that they give us tunnel vision. We focus on ourselves, and that can be depressing and discouraging place to look. — Donna VanLiere

Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time you have to give up other lives you could be living. You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished. Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person. — Steve Jobs

Maintaining concentration depends on what I call tunnel vision; nothing else in the world exists but the catcher's target, the hitter and my perfect delivery. — Nolan Ryan

When I put my nose in a glass, it's like tunnel vision. I move into another world, where everything around me is just gone, and every bit of mental energy is focused on that wine. — Robert M. Parker Jr.

Research has shown that time pressure leads to tunnel vision and that people think more creatively when they are calm, unhurried and free from stress and distractions. We all know this from experience. — Carl Honore

When you have your passion, you never even think about other things. It's tunnel vision. You go until you get it. — Nicola Peltz

My tunnel vision work ethic is very hard to come by, I believe. I have had an unwavering faith in myself and my career for as long as I can remember. — Tinashe