Theme

Philosophy quotes about attention

Attention appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat attention as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.

Why this theme matters

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch), attention is framed through Religious Existentialism and Platonic Moral Philosophy. Some passages define attention; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language.

In the history of philosophy

Discussions of attention travel through Greek and European modern traditions. Compare the quotations below with their school labels rather than forcing a single definition.

Thinkers in this collection

Seneca , William James , Simone Weil , Iris Murdoch , Ludwig Wittgenstein

Frequently asked questions

What did philosophers say about attention?

They disagreed in productive ways. In this archive, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and related voices treat attention as something to clarify, cultivate, or critique—not merely to celebrate.

Where can I find philosophy quotes about attention?

This theme page gathers 13 verified English quotations tagged Attention, with links to thinkers and sources.

How should I read quotes about attention?

Read the sentence, then check school and source. A compact line is an entry point into an argument about attention, not a substitute for the surrounding text.

  1. All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
  2. The essential achievement of the will is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.
  3. Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
  4. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
  5. Absolute attention is prayer.
  6. Prayer consists of attention.
  7. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love… can once again be made central.
  8. The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because they are ordinary.
  9. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.
  10. The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: "What are you going through?"
  11. I can only choose within the world I can see, in the moral sense of "see" which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort.
  12. The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself.
  13. Moral change and moral achievement are slow; we are not loosely and lightly attached to the world.