“Attention vermin, you are in the presence of a colossus.”
Said as a joke when asked for an idea for a new catchphrase. (no-one knows why anyone would say this)
Napoleon Dynamite, 2004
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15 September 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/114341777418354689
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Quoted in Oskar von Riesemann (trans. Dolly Rutherford) Rachmaninoff's Recollections (New York: Macmillan, 1934) p. 155.
2nd Question and Answer Session, Saanen (24 July 1980) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=1395&chid=1092&w=, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. SA80Q2
1980s
Context: And the brain has been trained to record because then in that recording there is safety, there is security, there is strength, a vitality, and therefore in that recording the mind creates the image about oneself. Right? And that image will constantly get hurt. So is it possible to live without a single image? Go into it, sir. Don't please go to sleep. Single image about yourself, about your husband, wife, children, friend and so on, about the politicians, about the priests, about the ideals, not a single shadow of an image? We are saying it is possible, must be, otherwise you will always be getting hurt, always living in a pattern. In that there is no freedom. And when you call me an idiot, to be so attentive at that moment. Right? When you give complete attention there is no recording. It is only when there is not attention, inattention, you record. I wonder if you capture this. Is it getting too difficult? Too abstract? That is, you flatter me. I like it. The liking at that moment is inattention. In that moment there is no attention. Therefore recording takes place. But when you flatter me, instead of calling me an idiot, now you have gone to the other extreme, flatter me, to listen to it so completely, without any reaction, then there is no centre which records.
Source: Ways of Seeing (1972)
Context: According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man... A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you... By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. (p. 45-46)
18 September 2009 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/4084592042
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“Things hold your attention hostage until you give them the appropriate attention.”
27 June 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/85187098725974016
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy
Variant: Your attention will continue to be grabbed by anything until you give it the appropriate attention.
“The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to you or in your presence.”
Source: Across the Nightingale Floor