Disengaged Quotes & Sayings

When we constantly fill up all our "empty" time with stimulation in the form of electronic devices, games, and distractions, our brains become disengaged and the thinking process is effectively halted. We never get to hear our own inner voice-we don't develop a relationship with ourselves and our minds. We don't get to know who we are because we're not listening. — Keri Smith

An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done. — Jane Austen

I think all Internet comments should be disengaged. But I kind of live and die by it. It's completely irresistible. It's not like comedy. When I do a podcast or write an episode of TV, I have no feedback for that. That's the only way you know what you're doing is good or bad. — Harris Wittels

Under pressure, the mouth speaks when the brain is disengaged, and, sometimes unwittingly, the gearshift is in reverse when it should be in neutral. — Henry Ford

We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions. — Philip G. Zimbardo

Disengaged employees are an unfortunate reality in the workplace, and poor leadership is often to blame. — W.Chan Kim

Ambition is, of all other, the most contrary humor to solitude; and glory and repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly inhabit one and the same place; and for so much as I understand, those have only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd, their mind and intention remain engaged behind more than ever. — Michel De Montaigne

Christians are becoming disengaged in following the Scripture that tells us not to conform to the world's system. — Billy Graham

Over the page I went, shifting the bit of coal to a new position; and, as the scheme of the picture disengaged itself from out the medley of colour that met my delighted eyes, first there was a warm sense of familiarity, then a dawning recognition, and then - O then! along with blissful certainty came the imperious need to clasp my stomach with both hands, in order to repress the shout of rapture that struggled to escape - it was my own little city! — Kenneth Grahame

According to Barna surveys, 61 percent of today's youth had been churched at one point during their teen years but are now spiritually disengaged. — Philip Yancey

Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not ... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of. — Aldous Huxley

I told myself that in the country of my birth, from which I was disengaged in an increasingly irreversible way, there undoubtedly were many men and women like him, basically decent people who had dreamed all their lives of the economic, social, cultural, and political progress that would transform Peru into a modern, prosperous, democratic society with opportunities open to all, only to find themselves repeatedly frustrated, and, like Uncle Ataulfo, had reached old age - the very brink of death - bewildered, asking themselves why we were moving backward instead of advancing and were worse off now with more discrimination, inequality, violence, and insecurity than when they were starting out — Edith Grossman

Turn your face toward the sacred Mosque (Koran 2:144,149,150) Commentary: The word "sacred" means that a heart which has not disengaged itself from the sphere of the soul and the sphere of created beings is forbidden to penetrate into this place ... "Wherever you are, turn your face" [toward the sacred Mosque] means, "Wherever you are, in the accomplishment of works of worship or in the ordinary acts of life, contemplate Him - in what you eat, in what you drink, in him or her whom you marry, always knowing that He is at once the Contemplator and the Contemplated ... " — Abdelkader El Djezairi

The first half of the 1960s was the apogee of what might be termed the Age of Cool - as defined by that quality of being simultaneously with-it and disengaged, in control but nonchalant, knowing but ironically self-aware, and above all inscrutably undemonstrative. — Martin Filler

I always thought there were some people who were just destined to be disengaged in their jobs because that was their personality, and no matter how hard managers tried, there wasn't much they could do with some of those people. — Tom Rath

in a 2013 Gallup survey, 70 percent of Americans said they hated their jobs or felt disengaged. — Jon Acuff

The "Higher Self" camp is notoriously immune to social concerns. Everything that happens to one is said to be "one's own choice" - the hyper-agentic Higher Self is responsible for everything that happens - this is the monological and totally disengaged Ego gone horribly amok in omnipotent self-only fantasies. This simply represses the networks of communions that are just as important as agency in constituting the manifestation of Spirit. This is not Eros; this is Phobos - a withdrawal from social engagement and intersubjective action. All of this totally overlooks the fact that Spirit manifests not only as Self (I) but as intersubjective Community (We) and as an objective State of Affairs (It) - as Buddha, Sangha, Dharma - each inseparably interwoven with the others and interwoven in the Good and the Goodness of the All. — Ken Wilber

God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore, which correspond to the physical element in us, do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond. — James Martineau

Shame can only rise so far in any system before people disengage to protect themselves. When we're disengaged, we don't show up, we don't contribute, and we stop caring. — Brene Brown

Truth is better disengaged from error than torn from it. — George Iles

I think an erotics of place may be one of the reasons why environmentalists are seen as subversive. There is a backlash now: ... [ellipsis in source] take all the regulations away; weaken existing legislation; the endangered species act is too severe, too restrictive; let there be carte blanche for real-estate developers. Because if we really have to confront wildness, solitude, and serenity, both the fierceness and compassionate nature of the land, then we ultimately have to confront it in ourselves, and it's easier to be numb, to be distracted, to be disengaged. — Terry Tempest Williams

I think American culture had just become so disengaged from the process of government, and we'd been so fuzzed out by our pop culture around us, that I don't think people really saw this guy for what he was. — Adam McKay

A minute or two more and Orlant disengaged, and swore. 'Are you going to fight me or not?'
You said we were sparring,' said Damen, neutrally.
Orlant flung down his sword, took two steps off to one of the watching men, and pulled from its sheath thirty inches of polished steel straightsword, which without preamble he returned to swing with killing speed at Damen's neck. — C.S. Pacat

The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it. — Ken Robinson

The Middle East is a very difficult stage to play upon. Without doubt, it is a good drama. And on occasion, there are situations so unimaginable, if not ludicrous, as to make them almost comic. But the cast is constantly changing, the audience is often disengaged, and it seems at times that no one is actually running the show. — Jason Alexander

Even the earliest silent readers recognized the striking change in their consciousness that took place as they immersed themselves in the pages of a book. The medieval bishop Isaac of Syria described how, whenever he read to himself, "as in a dream, I enter a state when my sense and thoughts are concentrated. Then, when with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of my memories is stilled in my heart, ceaseless waves of joy are sent me by inner thoughts, beyond expectation suddenly arising to delight my heart." Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn't involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing, or the mind. Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was - and is - the essence of the unique mental process of deep reading. — Nicholas Carr

Children have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty. — Judi Dench

The delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Frank Churchill, of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth to the hope, that, in time, he might gain her affection himself; - but it had been no present hope - he had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to attach her. - The superior hopes which gradually opened were so much the more enchanting. - The affection, which he had been asking to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his! - Within half an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name. — Jane Austen

I was feeling like a rock in a stream with the water passing by me, not fully engaging in life with this heavy burden hanging over me. — Lisa Bonavita

A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. — Robert Smithson

I no longer care about the financial system. I gave them my roadmap. OK? Thanks, bye. I've no idea what's going on. I'm disconnected. I'm totally disengaged. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nothing moved him. No sense of remorse could knock him back into reaction; no tears of regret flowed from those weary eyes.This seemingly innocuous episode, transpired into greater tragedy and it left him vaguely disengaged. — Mehreen Ahmed

How did you get in here?"
He opened up his arms. "Easy. I jumped from a plane onto your roof, disengaged the security grid in your basement, crawled into your house through an air vent, cut the security wires on your wall screens, crawled back outside, unlocked a sky window, slid through, and here I am."
I raised a single eyebrow.
"I knocked on the door and your mum let me in. Crazy, right? — Katie Kacvinsky

Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

The reason most of your staff are asleep and disengaged, is because you have boring, and bully managers, and no REAL Leaders to inspire and unleash potential. — Tony Dovale

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday? — Oscar Wilde

Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing politicians trade in forms of idiocy and superstition that mesmerize the illiterate and render the thoughtful cynical and disengaged. — Henry Giroux

Climbing along the blade of the summit ridge, sucking gas into my ragged lungs, I enjoyed a strange, unwarranted sense of calm. The world beyond the rubber mask was stupendously vivid but seemed not quite real, as if a movie were being projected in slow motion across the front of my goggles. I felt drugged, disengaged, thoroughly insulated from external stimuli. I had to remind myself over and over that there was 7,000 feet of sky on either side, that everything was at stake here, that I would pay for a single bungled step with my life. Half — Jon Krakauer

I already felt disengaged with my contemporaries. — Kyle MacLachlan

Women have to do all of the catching up. So we are disengaged and overburdened. Sounds like it is time we ditch the complacent fluoride-in-the-tap-water feminism and get reenergized and reinspired. — Amy Richards

Too often in our culture of BlackBerrys and cell phones, people are disengaged and disconnected and distracted from their immediate surroundings. — Emily Giffin

Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it. — Timothy R. Clark

Already very near to him, she moved a bit closer. He disengaged his hand and touched her face. Her skin was like silk, and he let his fingers glide along her jawline. Her lips parted, and he noticed the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed more rapidly. His own breath felt shallow and raspy. He leaned down. Before he could let his reason take over, he pressed his lips against hers. A tiny sound escaped her throat, and his mind seemed to leave him entirely. He cupped her cheek in his hand and pulled her mouth full against his. Even — Melanie Dickerson

Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. — Noam Chomsky

The task of the modern individual is to move appropriately and effectively from disengaged spectator to attentive perceiver in order to slide easily into the social order. The starer, in contrast, is an undisciplined spectator arrested in an earlier developmental stage or one resistant to the attentiveness of the modern networker. The starer is a properly attentive spectator befuddled, halted in mid-glance, mobility throttled, processing checked, network run amuck ... So the challenge of proper looking is converting the impulse to stare into attention, which is socially acceptable. (21-22) — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Most sexism is down to men being accustomed to us being the losers. That's what the problem is. We just have bad status. Man are accustomed to us being runners-up or being disqualified entirely. For men born pre-feminism, this is what they were raised on: second-class citizen mothers; sisters who need to be married off; female schoolmates going to secretarial school, then becoming housewives. Women who disengaged. Disappeared. — Caitlin Moran

As the shift in valuable skills continues, organizations are finding not only that they have no jobs for the disengaged and socially inept, but that such people are toxic to the enterprise and must be removed. — Geoff Colvin

If you use language that divides people and makes people who agree with you really stoked and people who disagree with you disengaged then you're preaching to a choir, and you've lost any kind of relativity across the spectrum. So it's important to be subtle and understand that there's a lot more you can learn. — Dan Mangan

Imagine a husband who really loves his wife. He is attentive to her needs. He listens to her heart. He is her best earthly gift. How would she react if he said to her, "Don't ask me for anything. I'm your best gift." When I've said this at our prayer seminars, everyone bursts into laughter. The husband's love for his wife is not disengaged from responding thoughtfully and generously to her requests. If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God's best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer. — Paul E. Miller

Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised his head. "Scout," he said, "Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?"
Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. "Yes sir, I understand," I reassured him. "Mr. Tate was right."
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. "Thank you for my children, Arthur." he said. — Harper Lee

A lot of us simply disengaged from politics altogether, but then we woke up and went wow, wait a minute. Why does that insane conversation get to dominate? Who made those people the creators of the conversation? And how can we start a new one? — Marianne Williamson

I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist. — Jim Crace

A soul disengaged from the world is a heavenly one; and then are we ready for heaven when our heart is there before us. — John Newton

I don't think that people are disinterested or uninterested in politics. I think very often they are disengaged from the formal political process. To some extent they are suspicious or even despairing of formal politics as a means to give expression and effect to what they want. — John Bercow

There are animals that borrow their colour from the neighbouring body, and consequently vary their hue as they happen to change their place. In like manner it ought to be the endeavour of every man to derive his reflections from the objects about him; for it is to no purpose that he alters his position, if his attention continues fixed to the same point. The mind should be kept open to the access of every new idea, and so far disengaged from the predominance of particular thoughts, as easily to accommodate itself to occasional entertainment. — Samuel Johnson

Writing when perched along a ledge of conscious awareness while simultaneously giving voice to the unconscious voice tumbling within allows a writer to tap into the external world of the known while also exploring the unconscious world of the unknown and the unknowable. For as long as I can stand the mounting pressure, I dance along this tremulous thin line separating sanity and insanity, mediating the conflicts between a lucid intellect and an impulsive, instinctual nature. Captivated in this submerged psyche space, disengaged from conscious tether of personal identity, and free from the jaundiced constraints and dictatorial commands of rational logic, I operate unencumbered by preconceived limitations. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady. — Michelle Obama

Children who don't feel safe in infancy have trouble regulating their moods and emotional responses as they grow older. By kindergarten, many disorganized infants are either aggressive or spaced out and disengaged, and they go on to develop a range of psychiatric problems.23 They also show more physiological stress, as expressed in heart rate, heart rate variability,24 stress hormone responses, and lowered immune factors.25 Does this kind of biological dysregulation automatically reset to normal as a child matures or is moved to a safe environment? So far as we know, it does not. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons. — Jo Brand

People need to be given enough so that they feel like they're not missing something. There's a thing that you have when you watch a movie where, if you feel like you're not following and you're going to get tested on it later, you're going to get disengaged. So, you have to give people just enough information, so that they're able to keep up with the story. — Mark Waters

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. — Noam Chomsky

Deliver me, O God, from too intense an application to even necessary business. I know how this dissipates my thoughts from the one end of all my business, and impairs that lively perception I would ever retain of thee standing at my right hand. I know the narrowness of my heart, and that an eager attention to earthly things leaves it no room for the things of heaven. O teach me to go through all my employments with so truly disengaged a heart, that I may still see thee in all things, and see thee therein as continually looking upon me, and searching my reins; and that I may never impair that liberty of spirit which is necessary for the love of thee. — Steven W. Manskar

As much as younger women are infused with a greater sense of possibility than most women of preceding generations, as a generation we are generally politically disengaged. — Amy Richards

There's a tired notion that the photojournalist has to be disengaged to be able to shoot what he shoots, and that's such a cliched idea of what the experience is. Of course they're engaged, and they're not distanced. — Michael Mann