James R. Clapper Quotes

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness.

I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention.

Focusing isn't just an optical activity, it is also a mental one.

It’s very difficult to stay alert indefinitely.

We want you to pay attention.

I just don't think people listen. I mean, they can't listen to a whole album closely without checking their iPhone or wanting to skip to their favorite song, or putting something else on, practically. That's why the zone out is a good thing.

I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.

It is a little bit difficult to talk about things that do involve classified matters in public. But I think the public needs to know that there are multiple oversight layers, including the FISA Court, congressional oversight, internal oversight within the FBI and intelligence community, that protects Americans from - under - their - their privacy rights while targeting terrorists and people who are trying to kill us.

If I think of something, half-way into it, I can throw it in there and it won't be so far down the line that it would be insignificant. However, I also like to completely focus on something for a certain period of time, and then be able to move on to something else.

Never take your eyes off your opponent. And never think you don’t have to work for a victory. Even now, you could surprise me. (Takeshi)

Everything you think of that keeps you occupied is a friend.

There is so much information that our ability to focus on any piece of it is interrupted by other information, so that we bathe in information but hardly absorb or analyse it. Data are interrupted by other data before we've thought about the first round, and contemplating three streams of data at once may be a way to think about none of them.

One of the things that I've urged the president-elect to do is to develop a strong working relationship with the intelligence community and I think it's important that Congress, on a bipartisan basis.

People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.

If there is an exoneration of Donald Trump and collusion with the Russians to affect the outcome of the election, you think that's gonna make the Democrats go away? Do you think that's gonna make the deep state shut down? Is that gonna stop people in the intelligence community trying to overthrow an elected president? Because that is what is going on here.

It does demand a certain space in order to read it and I think that space is somewhat threatened by the lack of attention that people have and the amount of time that they give to things.

Focusing on one thing can be tough, and people with fewer options are more apt to concentrate on what they're doing. There's probably something to hunger.

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

There are people who are anxious about immigration for reasons that are perfectly sensible. They think it's uncontrolled. They think it's, therefore, arbitrary in its consequences, and there are some communities affected much more deeply than others.

My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.

For a lot of people, you get cramped making decisions together and living together and every other thing that starts to happen. I just think you have to be vigilant in the relationship to carve out space for yourself. And a lot of that requires knowing what you need and communicating that to your partner, which is hard.

One doesn't read poetry while thinking of other things.

Has anyone ever told you that you lack focus?

Every second you spend thinking about what you don't want in your life is a second denying focus and energy from getting what you do want. Every minute you worry about what's not working is a minute drawn away from creating what will work. And every hour spent reflecting on the disappointments of the past is an hour stolen from seeing the possibilities that your future holds.