Personal Engagement Quotes

I get diminishing returns when I bore myself in an interview.

It's a strange thing, to be talked about instead of talked to.

Politics for me is when I feel a personal engagement between people: I don't trust politicians.

We are always bored by the very people by whom it is vital not to be bored.

I've been an Obama supporter since he announced he was campaigning. I was aware of him as a senator, but I wasn't as engaged as I probably should've been.

It's not research if you're really interested in what you're reading.

Meeting people in a genuine way and feeling like there is a vital and meaningful connection going on makes me come alive.

The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.

Instead of just being the person that's like: 'Gosh, that's cool that people are doing stuff and good luck. Do you need me to write a check? I can do that,' I've always just been very hands-on.

Without your involvement you can't succeed. With your involvement you can't fail.

True interest appears when the self identifies itself with ideas or objects, when it finds in them a means of expression and they become a necessary form of fuel for its activity.

In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn't develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote "with his blood," and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one's lifeblood. It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.

I, personally, am trying to get more and more involved with the gay and lesbian movement, very much so.

I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.

I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.

The true charm of pedestrians does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking.

I'll never get another first premiere again, especially at Sundance. I've just been trying to fully engage myself in everything that's going on, and I hope to see other movies here while I'm here! I really want to!

I didn't take very much part in activities on campus at that time.

The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called 'The Human Moment,' about how to make real contact with a person at work: ... The fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person.

Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can't get inside and know the subject.

I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant of all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is intelligence andgood will at the heart of all things, and even higher and yet higher leadings. These are my engagements; how can your law further or hinder me in what I shall do to men?

And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.

But it does no good--solves nothing--to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished.

If I meet someone at a bus stop, I want to really meet that person. I don't want to be 'Hugh Jackman, the famous actor.'

I'm pretty sure it was President Bill Clinton who brought me back into politics and following it.