Quotes on Attention

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

Author: Lascelles Abercrombie

The great corrupter of public man is the ego. Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.

Author: Dean Acheson

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

Author: Abigail Adams

I honestly didn't expect this much attention, but it just keeps happening so I must be doing something right.

Author: Freddy Adu

We do all the appropriating. They do not do any of it down at the White House. They send a budget up here, and we don't have to pay any attention it to at all. We do what we want to do.

Author: Lamar Alexander

If one cannot command attention by one's admirable qualities one can at least be a nuisance.

Author: Margery Allingham

I didn't pay as much attention in school as I would have liked to.

Author: Gillian Anderson

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.

Author: Antisthenes

There were scenes that just for length purposes, and knowing that the attention span of kids is not great, don't make it much longer than about 90 minutes.

Author: John Badham

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

Author: Liberty Bailey

The interparliamentary conference should, in my opinion, direct its particular attention to the preparation of the next Hague Conference, the diplomatic conference, the conference of governments.

Author: Fredrik Bajer

If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.

Author: Bob Balaban

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

Author: James Baldwin

You have to pay a lot of attention to what's important, what's permanent, what's real.

Author: Jim Balsillie

Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock.

Author: Bernard Baruch

It was my study of the two Corinthian letters that first caused me to concentrate my attention more directly on the relation of the apostle Paul to the older apostles.

Author: Ferdinand Baur

Using rhetorical questions in speeches is a great way to keep the audience involved. Don't you think those kinds of questions would keep your attention?

Author: Bo Bennett

But the exposure we got by doing the stint with Nine Inch Nails brought us a lot of attention.

Author: Daisy Berkowitz

Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those - but it's really important who's mayor and who's on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board.

Author: Jello Biafra

In the first place, you must pay great attention to the key note.

Author: William Billings

Female television viewers paid attention to Catherine Gale.

Author: Honor Blackman

Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention. As a player, he didn't do anything amazing.

Author: Ritchie Blackmore

What is the effect of unlimited coinage of silver in this country? and I invite your attention to this particularly, because it is a question of vital importance.

Author: Richard Bland

The individual couldn't find any attention in Italy.

Author: Emma Bonino

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Author: Edward Bono

I live myself with my cat Pebbles. She isn't enjoying the attention as much as me - she ran off up the stairs as soon as the film crew for the show came into the house. She didn't come down for hours. But I have the support of all my brothers and sisters and my neighbours and friends - everyone thinks it's just great.

Author: Susan Boyle

The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course, the Headmaster.

Author: Georg Brandes

Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities.

Author: William Bridges

We have to make some radical move to get the attention of everyone. Cheaters can't win and steroids has put us in the position that it's OK to cheat.

Author: Lou Brock

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

Author: Anita Brookner

Telling the community a serial killer is out there stirs up a lot of unpleasant attention.

Author: Pat Brown

A quiet personality sure isn't what you need to attract attention.

Author: Bill Budge

If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed.

Author: Luther Burbank

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.

Author: Octavia Butler

The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

Author: Julia Cameron

I was in relationship with a guy who was much older than me - either he was past his prime and I was coming into mine. There was nothing I could do to keep his attention.

Author: Deana Carter

You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I've been trying to do that. It's really made a major difference for me. I'm a happier person.

Author: Tracy Chapman

I am calling attention just to the main points of these tremendously important matters, which can be understood better by pious meditation than explained by human language.

Author: Martin Chemnitz

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

Author: Lord Chesterfield

It's quite hard for me being an actress because I actually don't like attention.

Author: Julie Christie

Early on, I found the attention completely embarrassing. I'd cringe if I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine.

Author: Julie Christie

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

Author: Winston Churchill

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

Author: Emile Cioran

A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson.

Author: John Clarke

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Author: Paulo Coelho

I appreciated and respected kids who asked questions. They didn't do it to get attention, but because they were interested. Kids who didn't want to look dumb seemed like scared little rabbits.

Author: Henry Cole

The interval allowed was only five minutes, at the end of which I resumed the lecture; but so refreshing was the effects of the brief rest and, above all, the admission of pure air, that during the second hour the attention was as completely sustained as during the first.

Author: George Combe

Phrenology taught us that the mind thinks by means of the brain, is liable to become fatigued by too long attention, as the locomotive muscles are by too much walking; and I therefore proposed to them to take a brief rest.

Author: George Combe

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

Author: Confucius

You have to learn the crowd. I just pay attention to them so I can make sure I can make them laugh.

Author: Dane Cook

Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.

Author: James Cook

My head was always bubbling over with facts and it seems to me this had little to do with my paying close attention in school and more to do with my voracious and omnivorous reading habits.

Author: Eric Cornell

Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.

Author: Bernard Cornwell

I think the killers get far too much attention.

Author: Doug Coupland

If you've got a big mouth and you're controversial, you're going to get attention.

Author: Simon Cowell

Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.

Author: Robert Crippen

The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.

Author: Phil Crosby

I don't mind if somebody comes up to me and shakes my hand, but if I'm in the middle of a restaurant and somebody asks me for a picture, I can be a jerk and say no, or I can say yes and draw more attention to myself, which is exactly the opposite of what I want.

Author: Macaulay Culkin

The greatest gift that you can give yourself is a little bit of your own attention.

Author: Anthony D'Angelo

The state of our state needs serious attention.

Author: Mitch Daniels

The value of impermanence is to call attention to the permanent.

Author: Stuart Davis

I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.

Author: Iris DeMent

I was always the kid in school who tried to get attention, not necessarily the class clown, but I'd do little unexpected performances.

Author: Leonardo DiCaprio

At times, it was an incredible blessing to have all the attention; at times it was a logistical nightmare.

Author: Rocco DiSpirito

But since we've been fighting for first or second place, it's grabbed the media's attention. I enjoy racing them. They are a good team and when you beat them it's something to be proud of.

Author: Larry Dixon

I have no ego investment in being on the air. I don't knock others for whom that kind of attention is like oxygen, but I don't miss anything about it.

Author: Hugh Downs

In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.

Author: Jay Dratler

There's a danger of the Internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention.

Author: Matt Drudge

A lot of the stories are internal. They leak it to me wanting to get attention, wanting to get that headline. More times than not, I will not give it to them.

Author: Matt Drudge

She claimed she loved the camera, its warmth, its familiarity. She responded to its naked glare, its slavish attention to every expression of her face and body, with the kind of immediacy a trusted lover could expect.

Author: Anne Edwards

The turning point for me was when the Supreme Court installed Bush in 2000, even though he got half a million votes less nationally than Gore. It was nothing more than a bloodless coup and that's when I really started paying attention.

Author: Mark Edwards

In a world full of competing emergencies and disasters, it really helps if there is an international locomotive that can help us bring attention - help us bring resources.

Author: Jan Egeland

You know, it's been proven that 35 to 40 hours a year with one-on-one attention, a student can get one grade level higher.

Author: Dave Eggers

I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.

Author: James Ellroy

You learn a lot more from the lows because it makes you pay attention to what you're doing.

Author: John Elway

When a show has gotten as much attention as this one, everyone wants to join in with something to say.

Author: Edie Falco

I just really don't like being the center of attention that much. It's kind of ironic.

Author: Jimmy Fallon

The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.

Author: Marilyn Ferguson

I'm not bothered by the paparazzi and I don't feel hemmed in, I've never felt that. My youth, mind you, there wasn't quite the same attention to celebrities as there is now, but I've never felt that.

Author: Albert Finney

Opera is given so little attention in the national press.

Author: Carlisle Floyd

I'm used to the golf course playing soft, so tomorrow I'm going to have to pay attention a little bit more.

Author: Raymond Floyd

Telling lies and showing off to get attention are mistakes I made that I don't want my kids to make.

Author: Jane Fonda

Lennon was not very fond of me. Lennon didn't like to be around somebody else who was likely to be the center of attention and didn't like being on deck with somebody who was intellectually as hot as he was.

Author: Peter Fonda

So I played the acoustic guitar and harmonica and stomped my foot and I think I was right in assuming that Greenwich Village would be the best place to perform my own material and possibly get some attention, move on to making records and all.

Author: Steve Forbert

The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away.

Author: Harrison Ford

A terrorist network that believes a nation so tested will fold under pressure of a few horrific acts may capture its attention, but will not achieve its submission.

Author: Virginia Foxx

Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance.

Author: Janet Frame

Ian McKellen is brilliant with research. I paid really close attention to the sources he goes to. He's a very, very intelligent man.

Author: Brendan Fraser

But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.

Author: Robert Fripp

I went to the Capitol and came to court specifically to draw attention to the problems of the world that directly affect my state of mind and my physical body and to offer a way to clean up the world. This is my intent.

Author: Lynette Fromme

You have got to pay attention, you have got to study and you have to do your homework. You have to score higher than everybody else. Otherwise, there is always somebody there waiting to take your place.

Author: Daisy Fuentes

Even though it has been very painful, lots of opportunities have come forward journalistically. Once all of this blows over, I think it might actually help that I have gotten this attention.

Author: Jeff Gannon

In our show you have to pay attention and know what happened before. I think it's very intelligent entertainment. It makes demands of viewers that a lot of shows don't.

Author: Victor Garber

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Author: Jose Gasset

You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.

Author: Newt Gingrich

That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

Author: Natalie Goldberg

Don't pay any attention to the critics - don't even ignore them.

Author: Samuel Goldwyn

If you do a practice and train your attention to hover in the present, then you will build the internal capacity to do that as needed - at will and voluntarily.

Author: Daniel Goleman

Obviously the shift to gas and the need for large amounts of gas in the United States is going to be a major focus of attention on the part of producers.

Author: Andrew Gould

It shifted attention away from that and I've never been someone who liked the attention from the media anyway.

Author: Steffi Graf

I'm glad you asked that question, because of any musical situation I've been in, the communication feels great here with Russell. He really pays close attention to what I'm doing because he cares.

Author: Benny Green

Their scrambled attention spans struck me as a metaphor for the way we get our doses of reality these days.

Author: Bill Griffith

Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house!

Author: Nanci Griffith

Most TV shows don't reward you for paying attention.

Author: Matt Groening

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

Author: Marilyn Hacker

Sometimes if you get 'em too drunk they don't pay no attention to what you're doin' anyways, so you might as well just do old songs. But if you get one that's paying attention, sometimes we'll do some new material.

Author: Merle Haggard

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Author: Philip Hamerton

I like conventions. I like meeting and greeting. I'm perched on that edge where I'm getting more attention than I quite know what to do with, though.

Author: Laurell Hamilton

So much of our attention is trained on the Middle East these days, but we cannot ignore East Asia.

Author: Lee Hamilton

Anytime you get an audience that's paying attention, you enjoy it more.

Author: Natasha Hamilton

And the fact that I liked to show off and be the center of attention really lends itself to figure skating very well.

Author: Scott Hamilton

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

Author: Dag Hammarskjold

When exercising, be sure to focus your attention on what you are doing.

Author: Lee Haney

If you direct your attention to the position of a bird with regard to the wave surface, it will speedily be noticed to be nearly always on the rising side or face of the wave and moving apparently at right angles to the wave's course, but really diagonal to it.

Author: Lawrence Hargrave

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

Author: Ben Harper

I don't want to be the center of attention. My posture has changed. I walk with my head down and shoulders slumped. Suddenly I carry myself as if I'm ashamed of something.

Author: Randy Harrison

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Author: Stephen Hawking

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

Author: Patrick Henry

Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

Author: Keith Henson

Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.

Author: Keith Henson

I was always jealous of something getting more attention.

Author: Robyn Hitchcock

You have to be smart to play a dumb blonde over and over again and keep the audience's attention without extraordinary physical equipment.

Author: Judy Holliday

No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back.

Author: John Holt

Desperation is like stealing from the Mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.

Author: Douglas Horton

We're not paying attention to the fact that Hillary Clinton is running in 2006. Everyone is looking to her for the future. It's the same with anybody else who's positioning themselves.

Author: Gwen Ifill

Thank you for leaving us alone but giving us enough attention to boost our egos.

Author: Mick Jagger

I cannot stand public attention, I just can't. Of course, if I may I might write something instead.

Author: Elfriede Jelinek

I never really paid attention to sales until the second record.

Author: Daniel Johns

When things haven't gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.

Author: Lyndon Johnson

I pay a lot of attention to how things are done and the whole activity of building something is interesting.

Author: Donald Judd

I had 16 other prisons that I needed to pay attention to, and we did. And I had 3,400 soldiers who were depending on me to take care of them, and I did.

Author: Janis Karpinski

I think the aim - and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving - is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

Author: David Kay

They pay little attention to what we say and prefer to read tea leaves.

Author: Nikita Khrushchev

The studies indicate that focusing our attention on someone else, takes our mind off of our own problems. We stay healthier and thereby live longer.

Author: Allen Klein

When you think about advertisements, it makes sense that they want to hold and retain our attention.

Author: Allen Klein

Commercials capture your attention, that's all.

Author: Calvin Klein

The SSRC committee turned attention from team research for building a model of the United States to doing one for world trade in order to investigate the international transmission mechanism.

Author: Lawrence Klein

I don't pay attention to target audiences and therefore I often hear that I am a ratings killer, somebody who fundamentally doesn't care whether one person is watching or an entire soccer stadium.

Author: Alexander Kluge

I wanted to write a story that demanded the viewer's attention.

Author: Nigel Kneale

The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.

Author: Alexis Korner

You can't really tell what the audience wants but you can tell what will keep everybodies attention in the same place.

Author: Leo Kottke

I worked very hard and I earned all the attention I'm getting.

Author: Anna Kournikova

Normally, if you go through a game without attracting attention, you are doing a hell of a job.

Author: Jerry Kramer

The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span.

Author: Karl Kraus

A little bit of attention can go a long way.

Author: Nicholas Kristof

Obviously, a skirt does present certain problems that I had to be aware of. But when it came to the shoot and we were rolling, I didn't really pay it any attention. It wasn't too bad.

Author: Chiaki Kuriyama

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.

Author: Wally Lamb

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.

Author: Anne Lamott

Boy, you gotta be real sick to get this much attention.

Author: Michael Landon

I have just enough attention to feel glamorous and important.

Author: Diane Lane