People often ask, “What is the single most important environmental / population problem facing the world today?” A flip answer would be, “The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!”
Jared Diamond (b. 1937) American geographer, historian, ornithologist, author
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)
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Quotations about:
myopia
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Every man knows there are evils in this world which need setting right. Every man has pretty definite ideas as what these evils are. But to most men one in particular stands out vividly. To some, in fact, this stands out with such startling vividness that they lose sight of other evils, or look upon them as the natural consequence of their own particular evil-in-chief.
Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) American business and economics journalist
Thinking As A Science, ch. 1, opening words (1916)
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Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
[Jeder hält das Ende seines Gesichtskreises für das der Welt.]
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, ch. 26 “Psychological Observations [Psychologische Bemerkungen],” § 338 (1851) [tr. Saunders (1890)]
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(Source (German)). Alternate translation:
Everyone regards the limits of his field of vision as those of the world.
[tr. Payne (1974)]
