Disengagement Quotes

• Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame's is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement.

  Brené Brown

  Powerful, Guilt, Fuel

  "Brené Brown: 'People are sick of being afraid all the time'" by John-Paul Flintoff, www.theguardian.com. July 27, 2013.

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• I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's an active disengagement.

  Ken Burns

  Fear, Thinking, Safety

  "Ken Burns — Searching for the Soul of America". Interview with Mark Gerzon, www.lionsroar.com. June 13, 2016.

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• The talk of winning our share is not the easy one of disengagement and flight, but the hard one of work, of short as well as long jumps, of disappointments, and of sweet success.

  Roy Wilkins

  Success, Sweet, Disappointment

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• Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends. This is why most appeals against violent means usually fall on deaf ears.

  Albert Bandura

  Powerful, Fall, Mean

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• Not all Modern Orthodox Jews, at the present juncture, identify with what the Israeli government does. In Israel many religious Zionists strongly oppose the government because of the disengagement.

  Norman Lamm

  Religious, Government, Israel

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• To say that the cosmos was expanding is equally to say that its members were contracting. The ultimate centers of power, each at first coincident... themselves generated the cosmical space by their disengagement from each other.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Space, Cosmos, Firsts

  Olaf Stapledon (2017). “Star Maker”, p.177, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Unless you learn to play a duet in the same key, to the same rhythm, a slow process of disengagement will wedge you apart, first secretly, psychologically, and then openly and miserably.

  Walter Wangerin

  Marriage, Play, Keys

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• Disengagement is a response to certain demographic realities, .. Within a few years, due to the higher Arab birth rate, Jews will become a minority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. I don't want [Israel] to be South Africa because we don't believe in apartheid. We simply have to separate from the Palestinians so that we can control our own destinies.

  Ehud Olmert

  Believe, Reality, Destiny

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• I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.

  John Connolly

  Reading, Thinking, Views

  John Connolly (2006). “The Book of Lost Things: A Novel”, p.345, Simon and Schuster

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• It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Men, Design

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.25

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• Prayer may seem at first like disengagement, a reflective time to consider God's point of view. But that vantage presses us back to accomplish God's will, the work of the kingdom. We are God's fellow workers, and as such we turn to prayer to equip us for the partnership.

  Philip Yancey

  Prayer, Views, May

  Philip Yancey (2007). “Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? Six Sessions on Our Relationship With God”, p.96, Zondervan

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• Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal ... The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life ... You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing 'no thing,' and simply notice what you are experiencing.

  Tara Brach

  Moving, Reading, Acceptance

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• I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.

  John Green

  Heaven, Dumb, Intellectual

  John Green (2013). “The John Green Collection”, p.752, Penguin

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• Years of research show us that the less control a person feels over an aversive stimuli coming at them, the more likely they are to disengage. Complete loss of control over a sustained period of time can actually lead to depression. It then follows that giving the person a level of control over the situation reduce the stress - and perhaps restore the disengagement.

  John Medina

  Stress, Loss, Years

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Many young Muslims see no opportunities for themselves and do not feel they have control over their lives or a stake in their nation's future. Such pessimism leads to disengagement. We risk losing a generation of young Muslims to apathy and extremism.

  Najib Razak

  Opportunity, Risk, Apathy

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• After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.

  Wole Soyinka

  Military, Years, Administration

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• In every combustion there is disengagement of the matter of fire or of light. A body can burn only in pure air [oxygen]. There is no destruction or decomposition of pure air and the increase in weight of the body burnt is exactly equal to the weight of air destroyed or decomposed. The body burnt changes into an acid by addition of the substance that increases its weight. Pure air is a compound of the matter of fire or of light with a base. In combustion the burning body removes the base, which it attracts more strongly than does the matter of heat, which appears as flame, heat and light.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Fire, Light

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• Vice-President Ford, possibly preparing for higher duties, assessed Kissinger's part in the Syrian-Israeli troop disengagement as "the great diplomatic triumph of this century or perhaps any other.

  Edwin Newman

  President, Vices, Triumph

  Edwin Newman (1974). “Strictly Speaking: Will america be the Death of English?”

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