Shortsighted Quotes

Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working? ~ Stewart Brand

I believe in being a poet in all moments of life. Being a poet means being human. I know some poets whose daily behavior has nothing to do with their poetry. In other words, they are only poets when they write poetry. Then it is finished and they turn into greedy, indulgent, oppressive, shortsighted, miserable, and envious people. Well, I cannot believe their poems ~ Forugh Farrokhzad

the mind itself suggests to itself many perverted, vicious forms of pleasure? - in the first place arrogance, excessive self-esteem, swaggering precedence over other men, a shortsighted, nay, a blind devotion to his own interests, dissolute luxury, excessive delight springing from the most trifling and childish causes, and also talkativeness, pride that takes a pleasure in insulting others, sloth, and the decay of a dull mind which goes to sleep over itself. ~ Seneca.

But sitting out tests that have proven essential in lifting the achievement of at-risk students is shortsighted, if not selfish. ~ Anonymous

Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They're a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting "Hey!" in time to that damned song - they're all charged with magic.

My magic comes from the same places. And maybe from darker places than that. Fear is an emotion, too. So is rage. So is lust. And madness. I'm not a particularly good person. I'm no Charles Manson or anything, but I'm not going to be up for canonization either. Though in the past, I think maybe I was a better person than I am today. In the past I hadn't seen so many people hurt and killed and terrorized by the same kind of power that damn well should have been making the world a nicer place, or at the least staying the hell away from it. I hadn't made so many mistakes back then, so many shortsighted decisions, some of which had cost people their lives. I had been sure of myself. I had been whole. ~ Jim Butcher

Often we don't see the majesty of God's design because we're caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I think there's a little more attention to human needs than to property rights. But I don't think much of political activism. It's so shortsighted. Most people are interested in their own personal comfort. I've said that about environmentalists. I think they care about bike paths and places to park their Volvos, not the planet as an abstraction. ~ George Carlin

But people misunderstand warfare and think it is an end unto itself. But on the international stage, war is nothing more than another tool of diplomacy. If your country doesn't have a credible, powerful military force capable of bringing pain, death, and destruction to an enemy, then your diplomats can't get much done, because you simply aren't powerful - there's no threat of pain they can wield. That's why the western Pacific island nation of Nauru doesn't have a seat on the UN Security Council. Not recognizing this principle is shortsighted (no disrespect intended to the fine people of Nauru). ~ Jamie Smith

Senator. If you call my friend a liar one more time, I will take it badly."
"Excuse me?" Arnos said, his eyebrows rising up.
"I suggest you find an alternate shortsighted, egomaniacally ridiculous reason to blatantly, recklessly ignore an obvious threat to the Realm simply because you don't wish it to exist. If you cannot restrain yourself from base slander, I will be pleased to meet you in juris macto and personally rip your forked tongue from your head. ~ Jim Butcher

God forgive the church of Jesus Christ for trading its birthright access to the transcendent for the pot of stew that is horizontal helpfulness. How shortsighted and human centered. The outcome of this disaster is that we have created a Creator in our own image who weeps, cares, and longs to help, but in the end we doubt He can because we have made Him so much like ourselves. In making God our buddy, we find Him nice for cuddling but not much help when the hurricane comes. ~ James MacDonald

Even small gestures of kindness have the potential to reap enormous rewards. Only the shortsighted man believes otherwise. ~ Erika Johansen

It is human nature to be shortsighted and to lose momentum to make changes once the story is out of the headlines and there aren't financial incentives or political rewards. We owe to ourselves to learn from the past so we can try to do better. ~ Sheri Fink

Right now, America looks like a fatheaded, shortsighted, gas-guzzling arrogant blowhard to the rest of the world. ~ James Patterson

They're my burka ... I'm a little shortsighted, and people, when they're shortsighted, they remove their glasses and then they look like cute little dogs who want to be adopted. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

Don't be so shortsighted that if it doesn't happen right now, you're not going to be happy. You are sowing seeds that will reap a great harvest for generations to come. ~ Joel Osteen

Whoever said ignorance was bliss was shortsighted. ~ Jeaniene Frost

It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men's theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother's influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children's needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother's influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child's basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother's loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother's influence and teaching in the home - and how apparent when neglected! ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Stupid. Shortsighted. A man born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been. Miller's ~ James S.A. Corey

My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. You know, if there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought: If I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just be on stage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them. ~ Trent Reznor

Only the most arrogant, shortsighted, and spiritually bereft of our species would say that, at any cost to other species, we need only worry about our own. ~ Timothy Walker

The great Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver put it perfectly: In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end. ~ Jeff Olson

Cats?" Baba looked up from practicing chopping tomatoes, looking as if he might explode. "Kittens? 'Persian' should remind people of the empire that stretched from one side of the East to the other. The empire that set a new global standard, contributed mountainfuls to astronomy, science, mathematics, and literature, and had a leader, Cyrus the Great, who had the gumption to free the Jewish people and declare human rights! That empire! You can't be shortsighted when you look at history. History is long!" Baba was shouting now. He continued to slice tomatoes. "Cats! What have we been reduced to? ~ Marjan Kamali

Since the gap between the rich countries and the poor can be removed, it will be. If we are shortsighted, inept, incapable either of good-will or enlightened self-interest, then it may be removed to the accompaniment of war and starvation: but removed it will be. The questions are, how, and by whom. ~ C.P. Snow

The other boys at Yale came from wealthy families, and none of them were investing outside the United States, and I thought, 'That is very egotistical. Why be so shortsighted or near-sighted as to focus only on America? Shouldn't you be more open-minded?' ~ John Templeton

All subsidy measures, all schemes to redistribute income or to force Peter to support Paul, are one-eyed as well as shortsighted. They get their immediate appeal by focusing attention on the alleged needs of some particular group of intended beneficiaries. But the inevitable victims - those who are going to be asked to pay for the new handout in increased taxes (which directly or indirectly means almost everybody else) - are left out of account. Only one-half of the problem has been seen. The cost of the proposed solution has been overlooked. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Saud bin Abd al-Aziz was the moon-faced, shortsighted, bespectacled son of the old founder of Saudi Arabia, who'd always been his father's protege but had never quite lived up to everything that his father had. ~ Robert Lacey

It was this motley band of modest peeps and plovers on the beach who reminded me of the human beings I loved best - the ones who didn't fit in. These birds may or may not have been capable of emotion, but the way they looked, beleaguered there, few in number, my outcast friends, was how I felt. I'd been told that it was bad to anthropomorphize, but I could no longer remember why. It was, in any case, anthropomorphic only to see yourself in other species, not to see them in yourself. To be hungry all the time, to be mad for sex, to not believe in global warming, to be shortsighted, to live without thought of your grandchildren, to spend half your life on personal grooming, to be perpetually on guard, to be compulsive, to be habit-bound, to be avid, to be unimpressed with humanity, to prefer your own kind: these were all ways of being like a bird. Later in the evening, in posh, necropolitan Naples, on a sidewalk outside a hotel whose elevator doors were decorated with huge blowups of cute children and the monosyllabic injunction SMILE, I spotted two disaffected teenagers, two little chicks, in full Goth plumage, and I wished that I could introduce them to the brownish-gray misfits on the beach. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Hollywood is great. I also think it's stupid and small-minded and shortsighted. ~ David Fincher

It's shortsighted not to view the education of a future generation of Americans as a priority for all Americans. ~ Mel Martinez

Before us lie two paths - honesty and dishonesty. The shortsighted embark on the dishonest path; the wise on the honest. For the wise know the truth; in helping others we help ourselves; and in hurting others we hurt ourselves. Character overshadows money, and trust rises above fame. Honesty is still the best policy. ~ Napoleon Hill

5For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9For whoever lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. ~ Anonymous

The principle of compulsory service, embodied in the system of conscription, lias been the means by which modem dictators and military gangs have shackled their people after a coup d'état, and bound them to their own aggressive purposes. In view of the great service that conscription has rendered to tyranny and war, it is fundamentally shortsighted for any liberty-loving and peace-desiring peoples to maintain it as an imagined safeguard, lest they become the victims of the monster they have helped to preserve. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

The good man believed that shortsighted people were also deaf and that their spectacles would become clearer if their ears heard more sharply. ~ Joseph Roth

Some people make friends by wining and dining people with the sole objective of doing business with them. Once the usefulness goes, the friendship also goes. It is unfortunate because it is very shortsighted and insincere. One should keep in mind that just because a person is a friend it does not mean they are under an obligation to buy from you. In my career, I have acquired clients professionally and built friendships later, versus making friends with the intention of doing business. Sooner or later, people uncover the ulterior motive. ~ Shiv Khera

The uneducated relatives of our patients - persons who are impressed only by the visible and tangible, preferably by such procedure as one sees in the moving picture theatres - never miss an opportunity of voicing their scepticism as to how one can "do anything for the malady through mere talk." Such thinking, of course, is as shortsighted as it is inconsistent. For these are the very persons who know with such certainty that the patients "merely imagine" their symptoms. Words ~ Sigmund Freud

I wish that I could say I was optimistic about the human race. I love us all, but we are so stupid and shortsighted that I wonder if we can lift our eyes to the world about us long enough not to commit suicide. ~ Isaac Asimov

...Women have preserved this `baby look' for as long as possible so as to make the world continue to believe in the darling, sweet little girl she once was, and she relies on the protective instinct in man to make him take care of her.
As with everything a woman undertakes on her own initiative, this whole maneuvre is as incredible as it is stupid. It is amazing, in fact, that it succeeds. It would appear very shortsighted to encourage such an ideal of beauty. For how can any woman hope to maintain it beyond the age of twenty-five? Despite every trick of the cosmetics industry, despite magazine advice against thinking or laughing (both tend to create wrinkles), her actual age will inevitably show'- through in the end. And what on earth is a man to do with a grown-up face when he has been manipulated into considering only helpless, appealing little girls to be creatures of beauty?

What is a men to do with a woman when the smooth curves have become flabby tires of flesh, the skin slack and pallid, when the childish tones have grown shrill and the laughter sounds like neighing? What is to become of this shrew when her face no longer atones for her ceaseless inanities and when the cries of `Ooh' and Ah' begin to drive him out of his mind? This mummified `child' will never fire a man's erotic fantasy again. One might think her power broken at last.

But no, she still manages to get her own way - and for two reasons. The first is obvious: she now has child ~ Esther Vilar

All those people who are chained here thinking that their reputations matter and this little shit matters are so freaking shortsighted. Dude, what matters is that you're happy. What matters is your future. What matters is that we get out of here in one piece. What matters is finding the truth of our own lives, not caring about what other people think is the truth of us. ~ A.S. King

What a brotherband!" he declared. "A thief, a touchy first mate, a shortsighted bear, a joker, two twins who can't tell each other apart, a bookworm and a skirl who doesn't know the right shape for a ship's sail." He beamed at all of them, then added, "I can't think of better qualities in a wolfship's crew. ~ John Flanagan

She was, as always at evening parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen this he could not help being aware of it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once seen through. ~ Leo Tolstoy

opposing party was an offshoot of the Libertarians. They were called the Eliminationist Party, and their platform was predicated on the belief that corporate society had evolved beyond the need for government at all. For decades the Eliminationists remained a fringe party because of their shortsighted insistence on scrapping all government everywhere. Because corporate society was inherently conservative, and the party's platform too radical, the Eliminationist movement never got off the ground. ~ Dani Kollin

Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children's needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord. ~ Adam Smith

We think that play and fairytales belong to childhood - how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time in our life to live without play and fairytales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the same things, for the child too regards play as his work and fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic division of life into different stages - as though each brought something new ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very special circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception. ~ John Foster Dulles

Of late, attempts have been made in the USA - at a high level and in a rather cynical form - to play the "Chinese card" against the USSR. This is a shortsighted and dangerous policy. ~ Leonid Brezhnev

In a relationship, people may be inhabited by discordant personalities. For that reason, it might be convenient for partners if one of both could sometimes be a little hard of hearing, or the other a bit shortsighted. ("Mutual understanding") ~ Erik Pevernagie

If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church's culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of your ministry. ~ James MacDonald

Public work brings a vicarious but assured sense of immortality. We may be poor, weak, timid, in debt to our landlady, bullied by our nieces, stiff in the joints, shortsighted and distressed; we shall perish, but the cause endures; the cause is great. ~ Winifred Holtby

Pricing low is shortsighted, because someone else is always willing to sacrifice more profit margin and drive you both bankrupt. ~ Timothy Ferriss

Who can be 100 percent sure of one's choices in life? How do you know that your beloved will always remain the same, or that you'll never change your mind? Growth and change are two of the great gifts we get from time. It would be shortsighted to spurn them. ~ Alma Katsu

We sometimes think that being grateful is what we do after our problems are solved, but how terribly shortsighted that is. How much of life do we miss by waiting to see the rainbow before thanking God that there is rain? Being grateful in times of distress does not mean that we are pleased with our circumstances. It does mean that through the eyes of faith we look beyond our present-day challenges. This is not a gratitude of the lips but of the soul. It is a gratitude that heals the heart and expands the mind. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

We need new rituals to awaken us to the fact that we are not separate from the land, water, and sky. We need ceremonies putting us back in touch, and urging us to conserve the resources that give life to everything in existence. We need to once again think as part of something greater, to view reality from a place higher than the narrow confines of a shortsighted ego. Empathy toward other living things should be one of the very first lessons instilled by all religions. ~ Daniele Bolelli

So we are now still dependent on foreign oil, have a problem with global warming, and are losing jobs rapidly to the Japanese in fuel-efficient vehicles as a result of that very shortsighted progress. ~ Jay Inslee

The villagers were speeding up the circling of events because she was too shortsighted to see that her infidelity had already harmed the village, the waves of consequences would return unpredictably, sometimes in disguise, as now, to hurt her. This roundness had to be made coin-sized so that she would see is circumference: punish her at the birth of her baby. Awaken her to the inexorable. People who refused fatalism because they could invent small resources insisted on culpability. Deny accidents and wrest fault from the stars. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

[Some men are shortsighted, so] going to prison or going to hell just doesn't matter to these men. ~ Rodney Stark

It is a shortsighted priesthood leader who doesn't see the value in calling upon the sisters to share the understanding and inspiration they possess. ~ M. Russell Ballard

We need to allow children to try and fail. And when they do make the stupid, shortsighted decisions that come from inexperience, we need to let them suffer the results. At the same time we also need to provide balance by not setting policies that will magnify one mistake, like drug use or fighting, into a life-derailing catastrophe. Unfortunately, this is exactly what our current "zero tolerance" policies-
- that expel children from school for just one rule violation - do. ~ Bruce D. Perry

Suspicion prickled at Ravenna. "Who is to say you are not the murderer, and now that you know I have useful information you won't dispatch me too?"
"None but me."
She glanced into the darkness where the butler had disappeared, then back at the tall, dark man who had subdued her quite effectively in a stable the previous night. "This is the part where you pull out the bloodstained dagger, isn't it?"
"Why wouldn't I have done it earlier, before Monsieur Brazil knew of your involvement?"
"No doubt you only thought of it at this moment."
"It seems I am carelessly shortsighted."
"It does."
"Miss Caulfield?"
"You are not the murderer?"
"Go to bed."

-Ravenna & Vitor ~ Katharine Ashe

Only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside. ~ Russell Kirk

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full. ~ Elif Shafak

You must remember that our God has all knowledge and all wisdom, and that therefore it is very possible He may guide you into paths wherein He knows great blessings are awaiting you, but which, to the shortsighted human eyes around you, seem sure to result in confusion and loss. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

How shortsighted and how uncultured, then, are the efforts of believers in Christ when they seek for snatches of worldly culture for themselves by placing themselves, as they think, on common ground with those who are not believers in Christ. How dishonoring to their Christ if they allow that any culture endures unless it be because of the power of his resurrection in the world. If you have been taken out of the miry clay, do you jump back into it because of some glistening objects that you see in it? Do you run back into the house now almost burned to the ground in order to save your silverware? It is only those who are believers in Christ that will inherit the earth and all the fulness thereof. ~ Cornelius Van Til

A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have penetrated very far - and our blindness is extremely dangerous. ~ C. G. Jung