Quotes about engagement
page 8

“What the Universities have mainly done—what I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me. Whatever you may think of all that, the clearest and most imperative duty lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading; and learn to be good readers, which is, perhaps, a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading—to read all kinds of things that you have an interest in, and that you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Books, Imagination, Thinking, Learning

“I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Life, Secret, Question, Effort

“As for the matter of my judicial philosophy, I didn't have one- and didn't want one. A philosophy that is imposed from without instead of arising organically from day-to-day engagement with the law isn't worth having. Such a philosophy runs the risk of becoming an ideology, and I'd spent much of my adult life shying away from abstract ideological theories that served only to obscure the reality of life as it's lived.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 238
2000s, (2008)

Life, Law, Reality

“Deny it as may the cunning capitalists who are clear-sighted enough to perceive it, or ignore it as may the torpid workers who are too blind and unthinking to see it, the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and as the toiling millions come to see and understand it and rally to the political standard of their class, they will drive all capitalist parties of whatever name into the same party, and the class struggle will then be so clearly revealed that the hosts of labor will find their true place in the conflict and strike the united and decisive blow that will destroy slavery and achieve their full and final emancipation.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Understanding, Decision

“Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 16, 1895)
Letters

Beauty, Game, Sense, Sport

“While people are engaged in creating a totally different world, they always form vivid images of the preceding world.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 21

People, World

“Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington
Don’t put your daughter on the stage
The profession is overcrowded
And the struggle’s pretty tough
And admitting the fact she’s burning to act
That isn’t quite enough
She’s a big girl and though her teeth are fairly good
She’s not the type I ever would be eager to engage
I repeat, Mrs. Worthington, sweet Mrs. Worthington
Don’t put your daughter on the stage.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mrs Worthington (1933).

Girl, Daughters

“He [Julius Caesar] stayed in Egypt from early October until late in June settling affairs of state. It was a boy and they called him Caesarion, or Little Caesar, so Cleopatra now regarded herself as practically engaged. Caesar might have married her, but he had a wife at home. There's always something.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Cleopatra

Home, Boy

“The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), IV. Normal Science as Puzzle-solving, p. 38.

Motivation, Problem, Time

“A true philosopher does not engage in vain disputes about the nature of motion; rather, he wishes to know the laws by which it is distributed, conserved or destroyed, knowing that such laws is the basis for all natural philosophy.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Law, Nature

““If charity and philanthropy is not connected with any ulterior motive, they are beneficial. But charity and conversions cannot go together. Religion prospers only when charity and philanthropy are undertaken without any motive. … The poor and illiterate may enjoy religious freedom without any fear. We have to be particularly vigilant about the Scheduled Tribes whose protection is not only guaranteed by the laws of the land but is also enshrined in the Constitution. It is our duty to preserve every aspect of their way of life along with their religion and ways of worship. No group belonging to any creed should interfere with their religion and rituals. Other organizations are also engaged in the philanthropic work… But that work can be helpful only when it is done without any ulterior motive.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

Morarji Desai, Letter to Mother Teresa, 21 April 1979. quoted from Madhya Pradesh (India), Goel, S. R., Niyogi, M. B. (1998). Vindicated by time: The Niyogi Committee report on Christian missionary activities. ISBN 9789385485121

Life, Fear, Religion, Law

“A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1

People

“I'm not the youngest person at the table anymore. I'm not the young precocious one. I feel like I'm engaging with people in a different way now. I am a woman. I'm treated with respect, as an equal.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977) American actress

On being 30 years old, Marie Clare (2008)

People, Way, Feeling, Personality

“I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Preface, p. viii.
The World We Want (2000)

Idea

“Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 2 : Religion
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Faith, Religion, Effort

“I have always found it a little strange that the majority of schools are utilizing filters. It seems to me that this is the environment where filters would not be used because the students are so carefully monitored, the activities in which they engage all go toward the same goals of education, and this is the very place where young people should be learning about information and its uses, in other words, where they should be learning information literacy.A recent National Research Center report, commissioned by Congress, clearly stated that information and media literacy are the most important things we can teach our children in order to truly protect them. Instead of placing barriers around the swimming pool, we must teach children to swim. We must teach children to find and use accurate information.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"Children's Internet Protection Act" http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/02/washtech_policy060302.htm by Brian Krebs, The Washington Post (June 3, 2002 )

Children, People, Education, School

“There were long stretches where each of us was engaged in a private world of rapidly shifting vignettes. Always I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

Of a trip to India, in With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (1979), p. 135 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Aos1iJ9YfRwC&pg=PA135&dq=%22howard+thurman%22+india&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bmNeT47pDIqZ8QPJt9XvDg&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22howard%20thurman%22%20india&f=false

World, Sea

“In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somalia intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U. S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on Earth. Why are we apologizing?”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, January 30, 2009, "Outreach, Yes. Apology, No: We’ve Never Been Islam’s Enemy" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer013009.php3 at jewishworldreview.com. 2000s, 2009

People, World, Exercises, Suffering

“The European Union as a whole, but also Germany, needs to recognize that this is our alliance, our common alliance, our transatlantic alliance, that we have to step up our engagement. Because, in the long run, we will not be allowed to accept this imbalance as regards the contributions we give to this alliance. And we have understood this message, and we have started to react.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

2016, Joint press conference of 17 November 2016

“Every person who seeks to practise agriculture with the full success which it admits—and that is the natural aim of every one who engages in it—must possess energy, activity, reflection, perseverance, and a knowledge of all the kindred and accessory sciences.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 8.

Nature, Knowledge, Science, Success

“I had measured the difference that separated art prior to 1900 from the art which I felt was being born. I knew that all instruction was at an end. The age of personal expression had finally begun. The value of an artist was no longer to be judged by the finish of his execution, or by the analogies his work suggested with such-and-such an archetype. It would be judged – exclusively – by what distinguished this artist from all the others. The age of the master and pupil was finally over; I could see about me only a handful of creators and whole colonies of monkeys. But I could not ask Gleizes to see it that way. Happily, nothing of his social or mystical opinions remained when he was engaged in the work of painting. The work of reconciling an oval and a lozenge, a yellow and a blue, prevailed and saved him.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Age, Art, Way, Painting

“Humankind is conceived as primarily motivated by neurochemically mediated emotions resulting from genetic make-up and environmental influences, employing reason and engaging in conscious reflection only occasionally.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.65

Motivation

“Of all countries passing through these difficult times the one that has stood the test with the greatest measure of success is the United Kingdom. Without underrating the hardships of our situation—the long tragedy of the unemployed, the grievous burden of taxation, the arduous and painful struggle of those engaged in trade and industry—at any rate we are free from that fear, which besets so many less fortunately placed, the fear that things are going to get worse. We owe our freedom from that fear largely to the fact that we have balanced our Budget.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1933/apr/25/direct-taxation in the House of Commons as Chancellor of the Exchequer (25 April 1933) Chancellor of the Exchequer

Pain, Fear, Freedom, Time

“He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Campaign rally at UCLA, quoted in "It’s All About Him" by William Kristol in The New York Times (25 February 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/opinion/25kristol.html?ref=opinion 2000s

“More importantly however, is that a new generation of leaders is emerging in Africa who does not want to approach the world with a begging bowl. Leaders who want to engage the world as partners; leaders who are prepared to take responsibilities for the problems of their countries and continent; leaders who recognize the enormous opportunities that abound in the world and are eager to connect Africa to the centres of those opportunities; leaders who want to harness the huge resources of Africa to play on the global stage; leaders who are not content to ask, ‘what can the rest of the world do for us', but rather ‘what can we do with the rest of the world.”

Bukola Saraki (1962) Nigerian politician

Beyond Natural Resources (2005)

World, Problem, Country

“I do a lot of speaking engagements and sometimes I feel like I’m being paid to curse in front of people who haven’t heard it in a while.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

from a 2008 interview http://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/dining/anthony-bourdain-restaurants.html

People, Feeling

“Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium. So this might be a teachable moment. As we are mortified by the slaughter of those writers and editors in Paris, it’s a good time to come up with a less hypocritical approach to our own controversial figures, provocateurs and satirists. The first thing to say, I suppose, is that whatever you might have put on your Facebook page yesterday, it is inaccurate for most of us to claim, Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, or I Am Charlie Hebdo. Most of us don’t actually engage in the sort of deliberately offensive humor that that newspaper specializes in.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks. "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" http://archive.li/nlsvG The New York Times (January 2015) 2010s

Time

“I learned from Nol that nowadays you [ Willem Witsen ] are especially engaged upon enlargements [of photos]. I would like to ask you if you perhaps have a piece of moorland (foreground) for me, I would be very grateful to you. Because I am working on a painting with a large foreground. You may have seen it, with that artillery in it. It must be a simple sloping ground. Without much frills of sand - etc. nothing but heather..”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik vernam van Nol dat ge u tegenwoordig speciaal bezig houdt met vergrootingen [van foto's]. Ik zou je wel willen vragen als je soms een stuk heidegrond (voorgrond). voor me had, zou ik je zeer dankbaar zijn. Ik ben naml. aan een schilderij bezig met groote voorgrond. je hebt het misschien wel gezien, met die artillerie er op. Het moet een eenvoudig opglooiende grond [zijn]. Zonder veel tierelantijntjes van zand – etc niets anders dan heide..
In a letter of Breitner to Willem Witsen, undated, c. 1893-99; in the collection Royal Dutch Library, the Hague; as cited in master-thesis Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 48
The two artists exchanged sometimes photos, using them as elements for their paintings
1890 - 1900

Photo, Learning, Painting

“Do you know how many times, when I was a kid, going to Europe, having a Frenchman try to get on my case about Vietnam. And that wasn't the problem, do you know what it was like to have other kids, other American students go, "yeah, it's pretty bad, in Vietnam, we should, yeah". And I'd be like, 'but, mhmm, French Indochina.', and they'd be like, "Oh is that near Vietnam" (groans). We don't educate our young people, and then we send them out into the world, as ambassadors as lameness. So no, no world empire, I don't want to be responsible for the plumbing in Rwanda, but we do need to become as much of a student of them as they are of us. Because, here's the thing. Well, the problem with the global village, remember in the early 90's, with the term now, global village, well the problem with the global village is that a lot of people are waking up realizing that they are in the global villages ghetto. And now with media, we are broadcasting these images of our wealth, and our power, our society, and the people in the global village are looking up on the hill seeing that mansion, but we're not looking down into the slum, and we need to do that. There's just so many times you can drive slowly through the ghetto in a rich convertible before you get carjacked. So this is what I mean, we need to engage…”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

People, World, Education, Problem

“Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth””

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

1 Cor 13:6
2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Love, Life, God, People

“To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002
Context: Here's a simple copyright lesson: Law regulates copies. What's that mean? Well, before the Internet, think of this as a world of all possible uses of a copyrighted work. Most of them are unregulated. Talking about fair use, this is not fair use; this is unregulated use. To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else. For example, quoting a text in another text — that's a copy, but it's a still fair use. That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.
Enter the Internet. Every act is a copy, which means all of these unregulated uses disappear. Presumptively, everything you do on your machine on the network is a regulated use. And now it forces us into this tiny little category of arguing about, "What about the fair uses? What about the fair uses?" I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?

Books, Law, Sleep, Reading

“The producer. This is a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.”

James Agate (1877–1947) British diarist and critic

Ego 6, p. 199, June 26, 1943.

Personality

“The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.”

John Perry Barlow (1947–2018) American poet and essayist

Twitter comments, in regard to WikiLeaks controversies, as quoted in "Analysis: WikiLeaks battle: a new amateur face of cyber war?" at Reuters (9 December 2010) http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/09/us-wikileaks-cyberwarfare-amateur-idUSTRE6B81K520101209

“It's basically [about] having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

On celebrities supporting efforts to curtail climate change. source http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1795948,00.html

Way, Decision, Personality

“It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’" Holder wrote. "The answer to that question is no.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

Five questions: Targeting Americans on U.S. soil http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/us/drones-five-things/index.html, CNN, March 8, 2013. 2010s

Question

“So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I have rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be great for the interests of the south. So fully am I satisfied with this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Statement to John Leyburn (1 May 1870), as quoted in R. E. Lee: A Biography (1934) by Douglas Southall Freeman.
1870s

War, Suffering

“This struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

What is to be Done? (1902)

People, Art

“In the entire range of Sikh history, the account of Banda Singh Bahadur has remained almost an enigmatic phenomenon for the historians. Most scholars have not been able to perceive how an ascetic of some credibility, engaged in exercise of occult powers made an instant decision of joining the Khalsa-fold after a short but fateful meeting with Guru Gobind Singh in his own hermitage.”

Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716) Sikh military commander

Life & exploits of Banda Singh Bahadur by Sohan Singh

Fate, Exercises, History, Decision

“Democracy cannot wield authority, because it cannot enforce its decisions. A party cannot move against itself, against its members who engage in scandalous malfeasance, who rob and steal, because it is afraid of losing its members. Nor can it move against its adversaries, because in so doing it would risk exposure of its own wrongdoings and shady business.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Democracy, Business, Decision

“I enjoy gambling, I find ample opportunity in gambling to engage my mind and study.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

जूवा (Gambling)

Study

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books, Color, Communication, Idea

“Changing the world is like trying to straighten a dog's tail. However much you may try, you won't succeed. But although the tail won't straighten, if you keep trying every day, at least you will put on some muscle. Similarly, even though it is difficult to make a change, our effort to do so in itself brings positive results. It will help us change. Without waiting for others to change, if we change ourselves first, that will make a difference. Instead of worrying about results, focus on doing our best in what we are engaged in.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Conversation in Helsinki (2000)

World, Dogs, Effort, Change

“The advent of colonialism and western capital to the Arab world has transformed most aspects of daily living; however, it has failed to impose a European heterosexual regime on all Arab men, although its efforts were successful in the upper classes and among the increasingly westernised middle classes. It is among members of these richer segments of society that the Gay International has found native informants. Although members of these classes who engage in same-sex relations have more recently adopted a western identity (as part of the package of the adoption of everything western by the classes to which they belong), they remain a minuscule minority among those men who engage in same-sex relations and who do not identify as “gay” nor express a need for gay politics.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 172-3
Desiring Arabs

Men, World, Sex, Effort

“The person engaged in action is always unconscionable; no one except the contemplative has a conscience.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Der Handelnde ist immer gewissenlos; es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende.
Maxim 241, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The man of action is always unprincipled; none but the contemplative has a conscience
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Personality

“When Nicholas II was crowned tsar of Russia in 1894, the country was seething with unrest. Brought up by private tutors, he had little training in the affairs of state. He was dull, reactionary, and an ineffective ruler who was easily influenced.
Although revolution was slowly brewing, Russia on the surface remained a prisoner of its feudal past. In order to maintain the appearance of stability, Nicholas II engaged ina policy of suppreission and later on supported pogroms against Jews.
Such anti-Semitic views were not new. Even before the assassination in 1881 of Alexander II (Nicholas II’s grandfather) the Romanov family had been convinced of p-lots against the tsar.
During his own reign, Nicholas II was easily swayed by strong opinions. He veered from one plan to another depending on the advice of the most articulate in his council. His most trusted adviser was Sergei Yulievich Witte, a clever but sometimes unpopular councilor who was known to have liberal modernistic views regarded as controversial by conservatives, who dominated the court.
Witte had two very resentful enemies…Gorymikine and Rachkobsky, who were associated with the secret police.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 21-23

Secret, Family, Support, Strong

“Innovative roles represent patterned organizational deviance… The intra-role conflicts of the innovator stem from his engagement and commitment to the creative, non-routine aspects of his job and his corresponding disinterest and disdain for the routine or uncreative demands placed upon him.”

Robert L. Kahn (1918–2019) American psychologist

Source: Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity, 1964, p. 388, as cited in: Eugene E. Szymaszek (1996). Changing Role of Leadership for Vocational Education in... p. 41

“Hindu records of what the “law” of Islam meant to the Hindus are few and far between. But whenever they are available, they confirm the medieval Muslim historians. Gangadevi the wife of Kumar Kampana (died 1374 AD) of Vijayanagara writes as follows in her Madhurãvijayam regarding the state of things in the Madurai region when it was under Muslim rule:
“The wicked mlechchas pollute the religion of the Hindus every day. They break the images of gods into pieces and throw away the articles of worship. They throw into fire Srimad Bhagwat and other holy scriptures, forcibly take away the conchshell and bell of the Brahmanas, and lick the sandal paints on their bodies. They urinate like dogs on the tulsi plant and deliberately pass faeces in the Hindu temples. They throw water from their mouths on the Hindus engaged in worship, and harass the Hindu saints as if they were so many lunatics let large.””

Gangadevi Indian princess and Sanskrit poetess

Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.

God, Religion, Law, Dogs

“Navy Department, Washington, Sept. 16, 1879.
General Order: The Acting Secretary of the Navy announces, with regret, to the Navy and Marine Corps, the death of Rear-Admiral Charles Boarman, on the 13th instant, at his home in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and after an honorable service of over sixty-eight years. Rear-Admiral Boarman entered the Navy, June 9, 1811, and at the time of his death had been longer in the service than any other Officer borne on the Navy Register. He was a participant in the War of 1812, and during his long career in the Navy had many important commands. On March 4, 1879, he was promoted from a Commodore to a Rear-Admiral on the retired list, from August 15, 1876, under the law authorizing such promotion, where an officer, being at the outbreak of the Rebellion, a citizen of a State engaged in such rebellion, exhibited marked fidelity to the Union in adhering to the flag of the United States. In respect to his memory it is hereby ordered, that, on the day after the receipt hereof, the flags of the Navy Yards and Stations, and vessels in commission, be displayed at half mast, from sunrise to sunset, and thirteen minute guns be fired at noon from the Navy Yards and Stations, flagships, and vessels acting singly.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

William N. Jeffers, Acting Secretary of the Navy 1879
Historical Records and Studies, Vol. VI (1911)

Death, War, Age, Law

“We can take a just pride in the great contribution to the common cause by all those who owe allegiance to the British Crown. … In this great contest we are all engaged in a single enterprise. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the United Kingdom, from the British Commonwealth and the Empire, from the United States, and from many nations are found fighting side by side in many ocean and theatres of war. They know that they are engaged in a common service and are inspired by a common faith. In the Atlantic Charter the United Nations have declared the faith that is in them. Against the false gods of cruelty, hatred, and domination they have proclaimed their gospel of freedom, justice, and social security.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Message (2 September 1942), quoted in The Times (3 September 1942), p. 2.
War Cabinet

God, War, Faith, Justice

“In spite of Darwin's hopes, the acceptance of his views has led to no real improvement — scarcely indeed to any change at all in either the practice or aims of systematists. In a famous passage in the Origin he confidently declares that when his interpretation is generally adopted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be a true species. This, I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be no slight relief. The endless disputes whether or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species will cease." Those disputes nevertheless proceed almost exactly as before. It is true that biologists in general do not, as formerly, participate in these discussions because they have abandoned systematics altogether; but those who are engaged in the actual work of naming and cataloguing animals and plants usually debate the old questions in the old way. There is still the same divergence of opinion and of practice, some inclining to make much of small differences, others to neglect them. Not only does the work of the sytematists as a whole proceed as if Darwin had never written but their attitude towards these problems is but little changed.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Problems In Genetics (1913), p. 10

Hope, Way, Feeling, Confidence

“As a philosophical problem, it comes down to a better way to engage with the passage of time; and I think we're getting close to one, because the imaginative loss of the future is becoming acute.
The most effective political actors on the planet now are people who want to blow themselves up.
These are people who really don't want to get out of the bed in the morning and face another unpredictable day.”

Bruce Sterling (1954) American writer, speaker, futurist, and design instructor

in the Long Now talk "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" (2004).

People, Way, Imagination, Problem

“I believe, and always have, that America must engage — not retreat — in the world.”

Chuck Hagel (1946) United States Secretary of Defense

Transcript: Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/1368, submitted by Robert Naiman on February 1, 2013 at Justforeignpolicy.org, accessed February 10, 2013. 2013

World

“The right hon. Gentleman's statement was that Germany has already at this moment a military air force which is approaching equality with our own, and that by this time next year, if Germany continues to execute her programme without acceleration and if we continue to carry out the increase announced to Parliament in July last, the German military air force will be at least as strong as, and may be stronger than, our own…It is not the case that Germany is rapidly approaching equality with us…Even if we confine the comparison to the German air strength and the strength of the Royal Air Force immediately available in Europe, Germany is actively engaged in the production of service aircraft, but her real strength is not 50 per cent. of our strength in Europe to-day. As for the position this time next year, if she continues to execute her air programme without acceleration and if we continue to carry out at the present approved rate the expansion announced to Parliament in July…so far from the German military air force being at least as strong as and probably stronger than our own, we estimate that we shall still have in Europe a margin—in Europe alone—of nearly 50 per cent.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/nov/28/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (28 November 1934). 1934

Strong, Time

“In televisionland we are all sophisticated enough now to realize that every statistic has an equal and opposite statistic somewhere in the universe. It is not a candidate's favorite statistic per se that engages us, but the assurance with which he can use it.
We are testing the candidates for self-confidence, for "Presidentiality" in statistical bombardment. It doesn't really matter if their statistics be homemade. What settles the business is the cool with which they are dropped.
And so, as the second half hour treads the decimaled path toward the third hour, we become aware of being locked in a tacit conspiracy with the candidates. We know their statistics go to nothing of importance, and they know we know, and we know they know we know.
There is total but unspoken agreement that the "debate," the arguments which are being mustered here, are of only the slightest importance.
As in some primitive ritual, we all agree — candidates and onlookers — to pretend we are involved in a debate, although the real exercise is a test of style and manners. Which of the competitors can better execute the intricate maneuvers prescribed by a largely irrelevant ritual?
This accounts for the curious lack of passion in both performers. Even when Ford accuses Carter of inconsistency, it is done in a flat, emotionless, game-playing style. The delivery has the tuneless ring of an old press release from the Republican National Committee. Just so, when Carter has an opportunity to set pulses pounding by denouncing the Nixon pardon, he dances delicately around the invitation like a maiden skirting a bog.
We judge that both men judge us to be drained of desire for passion in public life, to be looking for Presidents who are cool and noninflammable. They present themselves as passionless technocrats using an English singularly devoid of poetry, metaphor and even coherent forthright declaration.
Caught up in the conspiracy, we watch their coolness with fine technical understanding and, in the final half hour, begin asking each other for technical judgments. How well is Carter exploiting the event to improve our image of him? Is Ford's television manner sufficiently self-confident to make us sense him as "Presidential"?
It is quite extraordinary. Here we are, fully aware that we are being manipulated by image projectionists, yet happily asking ourselves how obligingly we are submitting to the manipulation. It is as though a rat running a maze were more interested in the psychologist's charts on his behavior than in getting the cheese at the goal line.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"And All of Us So Cool" (p.340)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Life, Men, Behavior, Exercises

“My engagements will not permit me to be present, and I believe if there I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter regarding war monuments https://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+commit+to+oblivion+the+feelings+it+engendere%22&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1#tbm=bks&q=%22to+commit+to+oblivion+the+feelings+it+engendered%22 (1869), as quoted in Personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and letters of gen. Robert E. Lee https://books.google.com/books?id=VikOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA234 (1874), by John William Jones, p. 234. Also quoted in "Renounce the battle flag: Don't whitewash history" http://www.newsleader.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/07/01/renounce-battle-flag-whitewash-history/29574721/ (26 June 2015), by Petula Dvorak, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C. This quote is also given as: "I think it wisest not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered." https://books.google.com/books?id=x7OOraQWi5wC&pg=PA299&dq=%22i+think+it+wiser+moreover%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMIxZSVnqTyxgIVw9SACh39bQbx#v=onepage&q=%22i%20think%20it%20wiser%20moreover%22&f=false 1860s

War, Feeling, Thinking

“The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy, and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal, and have done so for a very long time…. Respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do.”

Byron White (1917–2002) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, American football player

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

Law, Time

“We ought to regard the interests of the state as of far greater moment than all else, in order that they may be administered well; and we ought not to engage in eager rivalry in despite of equity, nor arrogate to ourselves any power contrary to the common welfare. For a state well administered is our greatest safeguard. In this all is summed up: When the state is in a healthy condition all things prosper; when it is corrupt, all things go to ruin.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

“The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

Education, Country

“Very few people, including authors willing to commit to paper, ever really read primary sources—certainly not in necessary depth and comtemplation, and often not at all. […] When writers close themselves off to the documents of scholarship, and then rely only on seeing or asking, they become conduits and sieves rather than thinkers. When, on the other hand, you study the great works of predecessors engaged in the same struggle, you enter a dialogue with human history and the rich variety of our own intellectual traditions. You insert yourself, and your own organizing powers, into this history—and you become an acive agent, not merely a “reporter.””

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Introduction, p. 6
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

People, History, Study, Reading

“The more complex the faculty of awareness or consciousness is in an organism, the more discriminations are possible to it, i. e., the more differentiating and integration between and of aspects of reality it is capable of engaging in.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

Roy A. Childs, Jr., The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism: An Open Letter to Objectivists and Libertarians,” Part I, (1969); : Republished in: Roy A. Childs, Jr. Anarchism & Justice, Libertarianism.org Press, 2012.

Reality

“I think it right to warn my reader, that there are more passages than one in the book, which are of that nature, which will be perfectly understood by my Masonic friends, but which my engagements prevent me explaining to the world at large. My Masonic friends will find their craft very often referred to. I believe, however that they will not find any of their secrets betrayed; but I trust they will find it proved, that their art is the remains of a very fine ancient system, or, perhaps, more properly, a branch of the fine and beautiful system of WISDOM which, in this work, I have developed.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Preface to Vol. I.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Wisdom, Secret, Books, World

“Disobedience, when it is not criminally but morally, religiously, or politically motivated, is almost always a collective act, and it is justified by the values of the collectivity and the mutual engagements of its members.”

Michael Walzer (1935) American philosopher

"The Obligation to Disobey," Ethics, Vol. 77, No. 3 (April 1967), p. 163

Motivation

“The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges? … we as a nation have no interest in the existence or non-existence of Kuwait or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia as an independent state… I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The Sunday Correspondent (21 October 1990), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 933
1990s

Men, World, Evil

“But some years after, a letter, which he received from Dr. Hooke, put him on inquiring what was the real figure, in which a body let fall from any high place descends, taking the motion of the earth round its axis into consideration. Such a body, having the same motion, which by the revolution of the earth the place has whence it falls, is to be considered as projected forward and at the same time drawn down to the centre of the earth. This gave occasion to his resuming his former thoughts concerning the moon, and Picard in France having lately measured the earth, by using his measures the moon appeared to be kept in her orbit purely by the power of gravity; and consequently, that this power decreases, as you recede from the centre of the earth, in the manner our author had formerly conjectured. Upon this principle he found the line described by a falling body to be an ellipsis, the centie of the earth being one focus. And the primary planets moving in such orbits round the sun, he had the satisfaction to see, that this inquiry, which he had undertaken merely out of curiosity, could be applied to the greatest purposes. Hereupon he composed near a dozen propositions, relating to the motion of the primary planets about the sun. Several years after this, some discourse he had with Dr. Halley, who at Cambridge made him a visit, engaged Sir Isaac Newton to resume again the consideration of this subject; and gave occasion to his writing the treatise, which he published under the title of Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. This treatise, full of such a variety of profound inventions, was composed by him, from scarce any other materials than the few propositions before mentioned, in the space of a year and a half.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 519 Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Appearance, Time, Sun

“[I]n all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate in any American city.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

citing the research of George Williams from "Huxley's Evolution and Ethics in Sociobiological Perspective" in Zygon (v.23/88)
Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Study, Time

“The essential difference with Builders is that they've found something to do that matters to them and are therefore so passionately engaged, they rise above the personality baggage that would otherwise hold them down. Whatever they are doing has so much meaning to them that the cause itself provides charisma and they plug into it as if it was electrical current.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson. Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That Matters, Wharton School Publishing, 2006. p. 110

Passion, Personality

“By now I assume you know my attitude to this type of conduct. I have stated categorically, many times, that the Army has to be a inclusive organisation, in which every soldier, man and woman, is able to reach their full potential and is encouraged to do so. Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues, have no place in this army. Our service has been engaged in continuous operations since 1999, and in it’s longest war ever in Afghanistan.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Message regarding unacceptable behaviour (2013)

War, Way, Thinking, Time

“Like any internationalist, I embrace Scotland's interdependence and the advantages that such interdependence confers. But in international relations - perhaps even more than the economic sphere - there are major advantages to pursuing an independent policy that promotes Scotland's global interests. Indeed it precisely because we live in an interdependent world - one where markets are integrating and information flow is unstoppable - a world where the reality of climate change acts as a daily reminder of our reliance on each other - that independence matters. Interdependence is a welcome fact of modern global politics. What matters in the Scottish national interest - above all else - are the terms on which Scotland engages. The equality of esteem, of authority between nations matters more now than it has ever done.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008)

World, Reality, Change

“In previous ages, a person could reach perfection through meditation, temple worship or yajnas but in Kali-yuga, we cannot even perform one of the nine-fold activities nicely. Although just one of these nine activities can result in full love of Godhead, we engage in all nine and still have problems. Fortunately Srila Haridasa reveals the holy name as a source of hope in spite of the constant challenges in this Kali-yuga.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, Reflections on Sacred Teachings, Volume III: Harinama Cintamani (Hari-Nama Press, 2005)

Love, Age, Hope, Problem

“But not in my family. My mother and father (with immigrant pragmatism) assumed the American tongue would reinvent their children. Just so did several immigrant Hispanic mothers in Southern California recently remark their children’s reluctance to join America. These mothers feared their children were not swimming in the American current—not in the swifts and not in the depths; not even in the pop. They blamed “bilingual education,” a leaky boat theorem ostensibly designed to sink into the American current. (In fact, the theorem became a bureacracy preoccupied with prolonging itself.) These few mothers organized an opposition to bilingual education and eventually they sank the Armada in California. Theirs was an American impulse: to engage the American flow directly and to let their children be taken by it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Children, Education, Fear, Family

“I discovered that I had, in the past two decades, written a far greater amount in the essay form than I remembered. Certainly I have written enough of it to demonstrate that I harbor no disdain for literary journalism or just plain journalism, under whose sponsorship I have been able to express much that has fascinated me, or alarmed me, or amused me, or otherwise engaged my attention when I was not writing a book.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

"A note to the reader" - This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)

Books, Past

“Once we become conscious of a feeling and attempt to make a corresponding form, we are engaged in an activity which, far from being sincere, is prepared (as any artist if he is sincere will tell you) to moderate feelings to fit the form. The artist’s feeling for form is stronger than a formless feeling.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: Collected Poems (1966), p. 18

Feeling, Sincerity

“Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Exercises, Question, Business, Personality

“Quite frankly, several of the people who contributed to the article should be banned from coming near a keyboard until they have learned to engage in proper encyclopedia writing.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Source: In a discussion about Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:BonziBUDDY&diff=74314772&oldid=74246581 (07 September 2006)

People, Learning

“I, Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr, Governor of the state of Maryland, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of Maryland, including but not limited to Title 14 and Section 13-702 of the Public Safety Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, declare that a state of emergency exists in Baltimore City, I call the Maryland National Guard into action and state service and hereby authorize the Maryland Emergency Management Agency or other appropriate state authority, during this emergency period, to engage, deploy, and coordinate available resources.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Declaration of Emergency https://governor.maryland.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EO01.01.2015.16.pdf" (27 April 2015).

Law

“The United States is engaged today in a great mission to spread democracy to the Middle East, beginning with Afghanistan, and continuing with Iraq. The inhabitants of Iraq are divided into many groups and factions that hate and distrust each other. The attitude of Sunni and Shia Muslims toward each other resembles that of Catholic and Protestant Christians in the sixteenth century, which persist today in northern Ireland, each regarding the other as heretics. Under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the minority of Sunnis persecuted the majority Shias. It is understandable that the minority Sunnis are today resisting majority rule, while the majority Shia favor it. The Sunnis clearly believe that majority rule by Shia will be used as a means of retribution and revenge. The Sunnis look upon majority rule by the Shia the way the South looked upon the election of Lincoln in 1860. It is inconceivable to the Sunnis that the rule of the Shia majority will be anything other than tyranny. Indeed, it is inconceivable to them that any political power, whether of a minority or a majority, would be non-tyrannical. The idea of non-tyrannical government is alien to their history and their experience. They regard our assertions of Jeffersonian or Lincolnian principles as mere hypocrisy, as they see no other form of rule other than that of force. Our government assumes that the people of the Middle East, like people elsewhere, seek freedom for others no less than for themselves. But that is an assumption that has not yet been confirmed by experience.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

Hate, People, Way, Democracy

“Acting in collaboration with the National Research Council, the Western Electric Company had for three years been engaged upon an attempt to assess the effect of illumination upon the worker and his work.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation, (1933), p. 55, chapter 3: The Hawthorne experiment Western Electric Company

“The first notion of constructing a free goal-seeking mechanism goes back a wartime talk with the psychologist, Kenneth Craik, whose untimely death was one of the greatest losses Cambridge has suffered in years. When he was engaged on a warjob for the Government, he came to get the help of an automatic analyzer with some very complicated curves he had obtained, curves relating to the aiming errors of air gunners. Goal-seeking missiles were literally much in the air in those days; so, in our minds, were scanning mechanisms. Long before the home study was turned into a workshop, the two ideas, goal-seeking and scanning, had combined as the essential mechanical conception of a working model that would behave like a very simple animal.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: The Living Brain (1953), p. 82.

Death, Error, Home, Idea

“Dershowitz does not engage the debate in this country about Israel on the factual, legal, moral, and humanitarian merits because he knows that his client is "guilty" of violating international law in its occupation of the Palestinian territories”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Howard Friel http://www.zcommunications.org/on-dershowitz-and-hampshire-college-by-howard-friel

Law, Country

“Ideology critique, having become respectable, imitates surgical procedure: … The opponent is cut open in front of everyone, until the mechanism of his error is laid bare. … Ideology critique is now interested not in winning over the vivisected opponent but in focusing on the “corpse,” the critical extract of its ideas. … Those who previously did not want to engage in enlightenment will want to do so even less now that they have been dissected and exposed by the opponent.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), pp. 16-17

Error, Idea

“In its quest to control an unruly world, the Pentagon — acting in the name of the American people — slices and dices that world into smaller and smaller segments, while neglecting to assess the actual costs and benefits of the persistent meddling that it terms engagement.”

Andrew Bacevich (1947) United States Army officer

Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (2013).

People, World

“As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages — undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment — find it necessary to seek enlightenment and engage in spiritual practice?”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

As quoted in Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist (2004) by Hee-jin Kim

Age, School, Birth, Nature

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.

The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace'. The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.

Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), pp. 487-488.
1970s

War, World, Peace, Law

“Now that you have seen how I help people transition from homosexual to straight, you can buy my new book or you can purchase my therapeutic tapes, and don’ t forget my hope and healing videos. I’ m also available for speaking engagements. And, of course, I take credit cards. God bless. Amen. Be straight.”

Richard Cohen (author)

As quoted in Wayne Besen, Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies behind the Ex-Gay Myth, Harrington Park Press. ISBN 1560234458

God, People, Books, Hope

“The BJP is not a communal party; it cannot be, for the simple reason that Hindus have never been, and are not, a community in the accepted sense of the term. They represent an ancient civilization not known either to draw a boundary between the faithful and the faithless, the blessed and the damned, or to engage in heresy hunting and its counterpart, persecution of other faiths. Hindus are, in western terms, pagans.”

Girilal Jain (1924–1993) Indian journalist

Page 149, The Hindu Phenomenon, ISBN 81-86112-32-4.
On Hindutva

Faith, Communication, Sense, Drawing

“This is really an opportunity to mobilize a new generation of scholars and pastors not just to equip the saints but also to engage the culture and reclaim it for Christ. That's really what is driving me.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

Dembski to head seminary's new science & theology center
2004-09-16
Baptist Press
Jeff
Robinson
http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=19115
2011-10-23
2000s

Christ

“I had been warned about Mr. Truman's quick and violent temper and prejudices, but he radiated nothing but courtesy and good humor during our meeting. He has an engaging personality, a quick and witty tongue, and I liked him from the start. At the conference itself, he seemed to take great pride in his historical knowledge, but, it seemed to me that in spite of his having read much, it was of a superficial character, encompassing facts without the logic and reasoning dictating those facts. Of the Far East he knew little, presenting a strange combination of distorted history and vague hopes that somehow, some way, we could do something to help those struggling against Communism.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 361

Hope, Way, History, Communication

“Having engaged in vigorous and passionate debate while on their honeymoon trip from New York, they had arrived at the startling—and rather liberating—conclusion that the marriage itself was not at all necessary. Stanton no longer had a name to give, and taking Emily’s would have involved all the tedium of authority and nonsense they’d hoped to avoid. So, in the end, he had returned to her the simple gold band she had worn for so long, sliding it onto the ring finger of her new right hand. And she had given him a soft slow kiss. They were the only vows required.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

Epilogue (p. 373)
The Hidden Goddess (2011)

Marriage, Hope, Kiss, Passion

“America had declared war with Spain…. It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim. I could not join them. I was sure that no one, be it individual or government, engaged in enslaving and exploiting at home, could have the integrity or the desire to free people in other lands.”

Emma Goldman book Living My Life

Source: Living My Life (1931), p. 226

Wisdom, War, People, Feeling

“Cute,” she said, smiling. “If the liberal arts do nothing else they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Home is the Hangman (1975)

Smile, Art, Thinking

“It would grant me much relief to learn your sons were engaged matrimonially to other white men if I was previously faced with the spectre of those same sons wedding negro women, slave or free, and siring negro sons that could presume to claim inheritance of your namesakes and property, or worse, equality with your purer grandchildren.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

1860, Senate debate on legal status of interracial relationships.
1860s

Women, Men, Wedding, Learning

“The Internet has been accused of making us shallow. We’re skimming, not reading. We lack the ability to engage deeply with a subject anymore. That’s both true and not true: we skim and browse certain types of content, and read others carefully. Oftentimes, we’ll save a long form journalism article and read it later offline, perhaps on the train home from work.”

Kenneth Goldsmith (1961) American writer

Wasting Time on the Internet, 2016

Home, Reading, Training

“Above all, Chopin was the greatest master of counterpoint since Mozart. This will appear paradoxical only if we equate counterpoint with strict fugue, and Chopin wrote no formal fugues except as an academic exercise. His chief training, in both composition and keyboard playing, however, came from a study of Bach, and it was a study that engaged him all his life and which he always recommended to his pupils.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 5 : Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms

Life, Exercises, Study, Appearance

“I have from the beginning been adverse to distant expeditions for the purpose of expanding our colonial possessions. They are necessarily attended with a further division of our force, and with a diminution of our means of acting in Europe. Whilst we are acquiring colonies, the enemy is subjugating the Continent; and though I am by no means disposed to raise doubts of our ability to maintain the contest in this manner, I cannot help fearing the effect of any system which might enable the French, either completely to subdue the remaining Powers of the Continent, or to engage them in opinion against this country…In Europe the most formidable danger exists. It is there that every effort should be made to stop the career of the enemy. Our interest and our reputation are equally at stake. Our allies have a right to look to us for support, and our honour requires that we should not appear to be wanting to the common cause. With a view, therefore, to a continuance of the war on the Continent, I am strongly of opinion that we should immediately collect and prepare for embarkation the largest possible British force that can be made applicable to such a service.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Minute written whilst Foreign Secretary (autumn 1806) and docketed as 'objections intended to have been submitted to the King, if the plan for more extended operations in South America had been persevered in', quoted in Lieutenant-General Hon. C. Grey, Some Account of the Life and Opinions of Charles, Second Earl Grey (London: Richard Bentley, 1861), pp. 135-136.
1800s

War, Fear, Support, Effort

“What right had I to value her less than the bodies in the square? Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist, in terms of quantity, and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. IV, ch. 2, pg 242
The Quiet American (1955)

World, Feeling, Decision, Suffering

“Thank you. Thank you very much. President Turner, thanks. Members of the Board of Trustees, Provost Ludden, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, and — most importantly — the Class of 2015. Thank you for your warm welcome, and I appreciate the invitation to be with you. You know, when I mentioned this speech to some pals, they were surprised I was going to give it. I haven't given a commencement address since leaving office. You know, my decision is quite practical. So I got a call from my landlord, Gerald Turner. Rather than raising the rent or threatening to withhold our security deposit. I was relieved to hear President Turner ask if I believed in free speech. I said yeah. He said, 'Perfect. Here’s your chance to give one'. As a proud member of the SMU community, I am honored to be here – truly honored – to deliver the 100th Spring Commencement address. I admire President Turner’s persuasiveness and leadership. He runs a fantastic university. It is dynamic, diverse, and destined for continued excellence. He has assembled a strong administrative team. He is supported by engaged alumni, and he has an outstanding Board of Trustees.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Spring, Communication, Support, Parent

“Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they don’t know it.”

Daniel Levitin book The Organized Mind

The Organized Mind (2014)

Happiness, People, Time

“The North Korean state is essentially two things: 1) a large money-laundering concern; 2) the world’s largest prison and slave labor camp. Now, however, it is a large money-laundering concern and prison camp that has additionally extorted its way to nuclear weapons. Any U. S. policy should begin and end with the knowledge of what North Korea really is. It is not a state engaged in the normal give-and-take of diplomacy, seeking "security assurances" in return for "denuclearization" or some other such deal conjured up by diplomats whose experience is in dealing with real countries who negotiate in good faith. Rather, North Korea has had a pretty good run with its current approach of extortion, criminality and the deprivation of its own people.”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/11/all_you_need_to_know_about_north_korea
North Korea is a nuclear criminal enterprise
Daniel Blumenthal
February 12, 2013
Foreign Policy
USA
February 13, 2013
http://web.archive.org/web/20130708033612/http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/11/all_you_need_to_know_about_north_korea
July 8, 2013
no

Money, People, World, Faith

“Such men and women are not confined to any one country or to any one period. They are in the great tradition of humanism. Their work is as typical of the social heritage of the twentieth century as the work of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci was typical of the Renaissance. That heritage can neither be understood nor preserved, unless it is seen as the unified gift of many minds bearing on every aspect of life which has engaged man's long search for goodness, beauty and truth.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Vol II. p. 18as cited in: Hopf (1947).
1940s, The Making Of Scientific Management, 1945

Life, Women, Men, Truth

“The challenge for Labour is that there’s huge support for working class, from mining communities, from northern working class communities for UKIP, which wouldn’t be the case if they were a straightforward Thatcherite party. So an ability to engage with the rage and dispossession people feel is absolutely necessary for constructive politics. And how do you build a common good between locals and immigrants? How do you build a common good between north and south, between the small towns and cities? We’re not thinking of the levels of abandonment that people feel, and UKIP express that.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Maurice Glasman on Democracy, creative destruction and Wolf Hall https://soundcloud.com/university-of-cambridge/1-maurice-glasman-on-democracy

People, Feeling, Communication, Support

Quotes about engagement page 8

Quotes about engagement
page 8