Quotes About Engagement

No more than 25 percent of the guests at a university dinner party can come from the economics department without spoiling the conversation.

A large segment of the public willingly resigns itself to political passivity in a world in which it cannot expect to make well-founded judgments.

They thought man was a creature of rapacious self-interest, and yet they wanted him to be free- free, in essence, to contend, to engage in an umpired strife, to use property to get property.

There are really no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching?

This is what people do- solve their own problems in others' lives.

You have a right to be present. A right to attend. A right to be astonished.

She goes on staring at the city, waiting for the city to stare back.

was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active.

Bohr had learned to be alert for bright students who were not afraid to argue.

Kapitza frequently opened discussions with deliberate howlers so that even the youngest would speak up to correct him, loosening the grip of tradition on their necks.

The conversation advanced with remarkable ease. Talk is cheerful, the way talk is among people who rarely see one another and are surprised they have much to say.

In fact, the best of modern theology is revealing a strong "turn toward participation," as opposed to religion as mere observation, affirmation, moralism, or group belonging. There is nothing to join, only something to recognize, suffer, and enjoy as a participant.

The opposite of contemplation is not action, it is reaction.

We actually respond to one another's energy more than to people's exact words or actions. In any situation, your taking or giving of energy is what you are actually doing. Everybody can feel, suffer, or enjoy the difference, but few can exactly say what it is that is happening. Why do I feel drawn or repelled? What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things.

Practice is standing in the flow, whereas theory and analysis observe the flow from a position of separation.

Presence is experienced in a participative way, outside the mind.

Christianity is much more about living and doing than thinking.

spirituality" which means that things are only found to be true in the doing of them.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Christianity. To refuse to critique the system or the status quo is to fully support it—which is a political act well disguised.

It has been said that 90 percent of people seem to live 90 percent of their lives on cruise control, which is to be unconscious.

The human art form is in uniting fruitful activity with a contemplative stance—not one or the other, but always both at the same time.

In any situation, your taking or giving of energy is what you are actually doing.

Who are you talking to?" "This goose," I assure him. And in fact he looks relieved. "I was afraid you were talking to yourself.