A Quote by Sendhil Mullainathan

If you have urgent current expenses to cover, then future priorities like college and retirement fall off your radar because they are simply less pressing. Scarcity of attention prevents us from seeing what's really important. The psychology of scarcity engrosses us in only our present needs.

Sendhil Mullainathan

Quote Topics

Attention Because College Cover Current Expenses Fall Future Important Less Like Needs Off Only Our Present Pressing Prevents Priorities Psychology Radar Really Retirement Scarcity Seeing Simply Then Urgent Us Your

Quote Author

Sendhil Mullainathan
American - Economist
Born: 1972

Capitalism has created a situation called scarcity. And that scarcity is not natural, it's socially induced. Along with that sense of scarcity, or feeling of scarcity, is a feeling of economic insecurity. Along with that is a feeling of deprivation... And unless we can demonstrate that that feeling is not justified technologically, we will not be able to speak intelligently to the great majority of people and reorganize our economy so that we really know what needs are rational and human and what have been created, almost fetishisticaly, by the capitalist economy.

Murray Bookchin

Discrimination is simply the act of choice. Scarcity requires us to choose; scarcity is the cause of discrimination!

Walter E. Williams

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

Eric Hoffer

The biggest mistake we make is asking the source to understand scarcity - something that is not! People pray: "Please give me more..." Or, "Please heal me." If you do this, you'll only attract more scarcity into your life. You can't think about what's missing in your life, what you don't like, or what "they" want for you.

Wayne Dyer

The current institutionally provided retirement plans will not cover people's needs upon retirement.

Scott Cook

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there's only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

Wayne Dyer

We may tell ourselves that love is not really available. but the deeper truth is that we don't entirely trust it, and therefore have a hard time fully opening to it or letting it all the way into us. This disconnects us from our own heart, exacerbating our sense of love's scarcity.

John Welwood

I don't think poetry needs to be "easily understandable." First of all, there are often complexities of syntax, form, unfamiliar absences, etc., that require a deeper concentration than is usually demanded of us. So that, right off the bat, is a little difficult. Then there is the deeper issue of what poetry is really asking of us. I feel it is asking us to read with great, even sacred, care and attention. That, too, is difficult. It requires discipline and the creation of a temporary zone of privacy, which is inimical to our current conditions of life.

Matthew Zapruder

. . . Action always happens in the present, because it is an expression of the body, which can only exist in the here and now. But the mind is like a phantom that lives only in the past or future. It's only power over you is to draw your attention our of the present.

Dan Millman

There's a popular image of people who don't save for the future as lacking in self-control. But the reason saving is so hard has less to do with self-control and more to do with a scarcity of attention.

Sendhil Mullainathan

Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.

Frances Moore Lappé

Since scarcity is the basic economic problem, if it does not exist then there is no reason for my economics course. Devoting time to the study of how people use limited resources to fulfill unlimited wants and needs should help us to discover how to best utilize the resources we have at our disposal.

Kurt Bills

We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us. Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.

David Eagleman

We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.

Winona LaDuke

Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?