Quotes on Priorities

When I went through my confirmation hearing to serve as surgeon general they asked me what my priorities would be and I didn't list loneliness in that priority list because it was not one at the time.

The idea that there is one kind of African is of course ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue for example that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.

Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego - its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.

Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

I learned in my Ph.D. the discipline I needed to be successful. Most boxers are not that disciplined. They have talent, but the self-organization - the ability to schedule yourself and your priorities - is lacking. My studies were about the control of training on both the psychological and the physical side.

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

Some parents place undue priority on temporal and material possessions. Some are far less diligent in their efforts to immerse their children in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember that having religious observance in the home is as important as providing food, clothing and shelter.

If you have children, you know you're responsible for somebody. You realize you are being imitated; your belief systems and priorities have a direct influence on these children, who are like flowers in a garden.

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

Being a husband is for me as big a priority as being a father.

There is no doubt that many expensive national projects may add to our prestige or serve science. But none of them must take precedence over human needs. As long as Congress does not revise its priorities, our crisis is not just material, it is a crisis of the spirit.

It's not a nice-to-have - it's a must-have. It's time we stop treating child care as a side issue, or a women's issue, and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us.

Don't prioritize your schedule, schedule those priorities.

American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows.

It's not only a matter of when to do things, but whether or not to do them at all.

I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

If you don't have time, you don't have priorities.

You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.