Too great a preoccupation with motives (especially one's own motive) is liable to lead to too little concern for consequences.
The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.
This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.
My preoccupation has been from the very beginning that I believe that the "Brexit" referendum result is the most disastrous peacetime result that we've seen in Britain.
. . . The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.
Nature is millions of things. And there are millions of ways of understanding its preoccupations.
Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation.
I have always found that actively loving saves one from a morbid preoccupation with the shortcomings of society.
You are wrong. The state and its existence are essential before everything else. All this preoccupation with liberty is not serious.
Walk away from your own preoccupations. . . and see the perishing multitudes.
If you begin with the assumption of freedom, the preoccupation is always how to keep freedom in check, how to bind; But if you begin with the assumption of bondage, the preoccupation is always how to set out the word that frees.
I had been afraid of breast cancer, as I suspect most women are, from the time I hit adolescence. At that age, when our emerging sexuality is our central preoccupation, the idea of disfigurement of a breast is particularly horrifying.
Proving that profit is economically and morally justifiable, rather then the result of exploitation, has been a central preoccupation of neoclassical economists.
But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.
In a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimage is inevitable.
My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?'
Your love for Jesus Christ and your discipleship in His cause must be the consuming preoccupation and passion of your mortality.
Beware of Destination Addiction. . . a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job and with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.