Quotes About Engagement

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.

A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull and obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing.

If you care about the points of agreement and civility, then, you had better be well-equipped with points of argument and combativity, because if you are not then the center will be occupied and defined without your having helped to decide it, or determine what and where it is.

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engage you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.

He Showed Up. Throughout his life and times, whenever and wherever something important was on the line, he presented himself.

The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself.

Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).

Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it.

The great reward, if that's the right word, lies in the people you will meet when engaged in the same work, the lessons you will learn, and the confidence you will acquire from having some experiences and convictions of your own - to set against the received thirdhand opinions of so many others.

When intellectuals and artists withdraw from the fray, politicians feel safer.

There should be no theology that does not relate to the mission of the church – either by being generated out of the church's mission or by inspiring and shaping it. And there should be no mission of the church carried on without deep theological roots in the soil of the Bible. No theology without missional impact; no mission without theological foundations.

A guy who used to come in the bar told me once that if you go in someplace and they don't pay any attention to you, then start stealing stuff. They'll either start paying attention or you'll have something for your time.

When you sit, sit. When you breathe, breathe. When you eat, eat," Gaspar would say, meaning that every bit of our being was to be in the moment, completely aware of the now, no past, no future, nothing dividing us from everything that is. It's hard for me, a Jew, to stay in the moment. Without the past, where is the guilt? And without the future, where is the dread? And without guilt and dread, who am I?

When you sit, sit. When you breathe, breathe. When you eat, eat

Talking with her is always...' Different? suggested Saphira. 'Exactly.

books should go where they will be most appreciated, not sit unread, gathering dust on a foreign shelf, don't you agree?

I like to be wherever interesting things are happening. It's a terribly bad habit of mine.

Master." For several minutes, no one spoke. Eragon tried to guess what the elf was thinking, but could glean no information from his masklike visage. Finally, Oromis stirred. "Were you, perchance, given a trinket of some kind in Tarnag, Eragon?

Then you're not... betrothed?

Teamwork is a dance—engrossing to perform and exciting to watch.