Importance

The essence of a general's job is to assist in developing a clear sense of purpose... to keep the junk from getting in the way of important things. ~~ Lieutenant General Walter F. Ulmer

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. ~~ Carl Jung

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that, apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy. Second is not all that bad. ~~ George Carlin

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies. ~~ Rudyard Kipling

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest. ~~ Georgia O'Keefe

The life of the creative man is led, directed, and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes. ~~ Saul Steinberg

Promote then as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. ~~ George Washington

No human thing is of serious importance. ~~ Plato

Commit yourself to a dream... Nobody who tries to do something great but fails is a total failure. Why? Because he can always rest assured that he succeeded in life's most important battle -- he defeated the fear of trying. ~~ Robert H. Schuller

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. ~~ John Lubbock

It is very important to make sure the person you're marrying is like minded. It's crucial for a couple to have shared goals and values. The more you have in common the less you have to argue about. ~~ Barbara Friedman

If your project doesn't work, look for the part you didn't think was important. ~~ Arthur Bloch

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage. ~~ Benjamin Disraeli

The truth is more important than the facts. ~~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality. ~~ Erich Fromm

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. ~~ R. Buckminster Fuller ["Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"] (See "Said Who?")

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. ~~ Aldous Huxley

The most important thing in acting is honesty. Once you've learned to fake that, you're in. ~~ Samuel Goldwyn

I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment? ~~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers. ~~ Martina Horner

The automobile has become such an important member of the American family that many of us house, clean our cars, and worry about their health almost as if they were alive. ~~ The American Museum of Natural History

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict on each other through stupidity or malevolence or both. ~~ Bertrand Russell

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. ~~ Sydney Smith

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where the graver issues are at stake. ~~ Norman Douglas

Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves; to like themselves. ~~ Bonaro Overstreet

After forty, men have married their habits, and wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important. ~~ H. L. Mencken

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectually and happily than seriousness. ~~ Horace

Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. ~~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

There is very little difference between one man and another, but what difference there is is very important. ~~ Joe Moore

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. ~~ T. S. Eliot

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be. ~~ Hubert H. Humphrey

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. ~~John McEnroe

The longer the title, the less important the job. ~~ George McGovern

Where there are no tigers, a wildcat is very self-important. ~~ Korean proverb

We live in a stage of politics where legislators seem to regard passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement. ~~ William Howard Taft

With a concession of responsibility... we have entrusted our lives and futures to professionals and experts who convince us that we have too little knowledge or wit to make any decisions of importance about the management of society. ~~ Dean Koontz ["Fear Nothing"]

It isn't important who is ahead at one time or another in either an election or a horse race. It's the horse that comes in first at the finish that counts. ~~ Harry S Truman

There are times when forgetting can be just as important as remembering -- and even more difficult. ~~ Harry and Joan Mier

In marriage, being the right person is as important as finding the right person. ~~ Wilbert Donald Gough

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself. ~~ Gerald Brenan

Don't believe that winning is really everything. It's more important to stand for something. If you don't stand for something, what do you win? ~~ Lane Kirkland

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. ~~ Peter F. Drucker

Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. ~~ Chester Bowles

Things are only for us what we hold them to be. Which is to say that our attitude toward things is more likely in the long run to be more important than the things themselves. ~~ A. W. Tozer

If you have anything to tell me of importance, for God's sake begin at the end. ~~ Sara Jeanette Duncan

More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind. ~~ Eric Butterworth

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. ~~ Samuel Johnson

Most important ideas aren't exciting, and most exciting ideas aren't important. ~~ Unattributed

How important is it? ~~ 12-Step Program Slogan

Wasting time is an important part of living. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

[In answer to the question, what are the three most important words in the English language:] Wait a minute. ~~ Sam Rayburn

Life is an unanswered questions, but let's believe in the dignity and importance of the question. ~~ Tennessee Williams

Is the human race a joke? Was it devised and patched together in a dull time when there was nothing important to do? ~~ Mark Twain

It is unimportant that people know what you stand for. It's equally important that they know what you won't stand for. ~~ Mary Waldrop

Don't overlook the importance of worldwide thinking. A company that keeps its eye on Tom, Dick, and Harry is going to miss Pierre, Hans, and Yoshio. ~~ Al Ries

It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches. ~~ Robert Maynard Hutchins

Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have. ~~ Arthur E. Morgan

Whenever you're sitting across from some important person, always picture him sitting there in a suit of long red underwear. That's the way I always operated in business. ~~ Joseph P. Kennedy

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy. ~~ Michio Watanabe

I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally. ~~ John Foster Dulles

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of the educated man. ~~ Norman Cousins

The media overestimates its own importance. I was on the cover of everything for three years but I still only had half a bottle of milk in the fridge. ~~ Mark E. Smith

The man who is denied the opportunity to taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take. ~~ C. Northcote Parkinson

The university is a Mecca to which students come with something less than perfect faith. It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is now, but to question it. ~~ Jacob Bronowski

The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself. ~~ Allan Bloom

Perhaps sex and sentiment should be separated. Isn't sex, shadowed as it always is by jealousy and ruled by caprice, a rather risky basis for a sustained, important relationship? ~~ Edmund White

Oh, the self-importance of fading stars. Never mind, they will be black holes one day. ~~ Jeffrey Bernard

Food is an important part of a balanced diet. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation and take it seriously. ~~ Stephen Fry

Rock is very, very important and very, very ridiculous. ~~ Pete Townshend

For an intimate relationship with one's mate, the only really important thing is feelings... You can be seething about something that's so petty you hardly dare bring it up, but the fact is that you must say, "I am furious." ~~ James Taylor

Both dreams and myths are important communications... If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world. ~~ Erich Fromm

The chimerical pursuit of perfection is always linked to some important deficiency, frequently the inability to love. ~~ Bernard Grasset

Don't take yourself too seriously, that's incredibly important. Don't start believing what everyone else is saying about you -- good or bad. Keep a grip on reality. ~~ Brett Anderson

On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it. ~~ E. B. White

Nature could not care less about wine. From her point of view, the most important part of the grape is in the seeds, which ensure the survival of the species. ~~ Edward Steinberg

The most important thing is to be whatever you are, without shame. ~~ Rod Steiger

The things that are urgent are rarely important, and the things that are important are rarely urgent. ~~ Unattributed

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is. ~~ John Kenneth Galbraith

The important thing is not what the author, or any artist, had in mind to begin with but at what point he decided to stop. ~~ D. W. Harding

Laughter is much more important than applause. Applause is almost a duty. Laughter is a reward. ~~ Carol Channing

Being in politics is like being a football coach... smart enough to know the game and stupid enough to think it is important. ~~ Eugene McCarthy

Even in the deepest sinking there is hidden purpose of an ultimate rising. Thus it is for all men, from none is the source of light withheld unless he himself withdraws from it. Therefore the most important thing is not to despair. ~~ Hasidic saying

Observe due measure, for right timing in all things is the most important factor. ~~ Hediod [Works and Days]

"Important if true." Inscription which Kinglake wanted on all churches. ~~ Geoffrey Madan

It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not. ~~ Mignon McLaughlin

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing, "There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is very important." ~~ William James

There was never an age in which useless knowledge was more important than our own. ~~ Cyril Joad

Night, when words fade and things come alive, when the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~~ Antoine de Saint Exupery

[On the independence of cats:] Is it yet another survival of jungle instinct, this hiding away from prying eyes at important times? Or merely gesture of independence, a challenge to man and his stupid ways? ~~ Michael Joseph

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her as a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as man, some think even better. ~~ Virginia Woolf

It's as interesting and difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colors, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important. ~~ Vincent van Gogh

Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance. ~~ Oscar Wilde

It is only with the heart that one can see clearly. The important things are invisible to the naked eye. ~~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One doesn't recognize in one's life the really important moments -- not until it's too late. ~~ Dame Agatha Christie

"Henry Rackmeyer, you tell us what is important."

"A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note in music, and the way the back of a baby's neck smells if its mother keeps it tidy," answered Henry.

"Correct," said Stuart. "Those are the important things." ~~ E. B. White [Stuart Little]

But not only medicine, engineering, and painting are arts; living itself is an an art -- in fact, the most important and at the same time the most difficult and complex art to be practiced by man. ~~ Erich Fromm ["Man for Himself"]

The important thing is life is not the victory but the contest; the essential thing is not to have won but to be well beaten. ~~ Baron Pierre de Coubertin

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. ~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ["Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"]

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money. ~~ Gerald Brenan ["Thoughts in a Dry Season"]

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held. ~~ Aldous Huxley ["Beyond the Mexique Bay"]

The truth in these matters may be stated as a scientific law: The persistence of public officials varies inversely with the importance of the matter on which they are persisting. ~~ Bernard Levin ["In These Times"]

A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence. ~~ W. Somerset Maugham ["A Writer's Notebook"]

Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage. Like two out of every ten couples. ~~ Neil Simon ["Barefoot in the Park"]

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. ~~ Henry James [Letter to H. G. Wells]

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. ~~ Sinclair Lewis ["Babbitt"]

The beginning is the most important part of the work. ~ Plato

Don't sell the steak; sell the sizzle. It is the sizzle that sells the steak and not the cow, although the cow is, of course, mighty important. ~~ Elmer Wheeler ["Principle Number 1 of Salesmanship"]

The scientist takes off from the manifold observations of predecessors, and shows his intelligence, if any, by his ability to discriminate between the important and the negligible, by selecting here and there the significant steppingstones that will lead across the difficulties to new understanding. The one who places the last stone and steps across to the terra firma of accomplished discovery gets all the credit. ~~ Hans Zinsser ["As I Remember Him"]

Important principles may and must be inflexible. ~~ Abraham Lincoln [Last public address, Washington DC, April 11, 1865]

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think. ~~ Matthew Arnold

Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor. ~~ Hesiod

It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. ~~ Sir Arthur Conon Doyle ["The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual"]

If it is important, it can wait. ~~ Unattributed

My lifetime is just a moment in eternity, but for me it's quite an important moment. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

What we believe about God is the most important thing about us. ~~ A. W. Tozer

How we perished by our own hand may be more important than how we came into existence in the first place -- which is a mystery that we will now never solve. ~~ Dean Koontz ["Fear Nothing"]

People to whom nothing has ever happened
Cannot understand the unimportance of events. ~~ T. S. Eliot