Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.

People should have freedom in their pilgrimages and tours. They should come and visit historical monuments and sites - let's say the sites around Iran - where they can easily engage in wide- scale contacts with others.

For in the end freedom is a personal and lonely battle and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying as politely as possible that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.

Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning.

People feel uncomfortable talking about racial issues out of fear that if they express things they will be characterized in a way that's not fair. I think that there is still a need for a dialogue about things racial that we've not engaged in.

We must have our say not through violence aggression or fear. We must speak out calmly and forcefully. We shall only be able to enter the new world era if we agree to engage in dialogue with the other side.

On the one hand Twitter gives you the opportunity to engage with people which is great but on the other there are people who feel they can say whatever they want put poison out there really without fear of any repercussions.

If you can once engage people's pride love pity ambition on your side you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

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 active disengagement.

Women are in my view natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities.

My parents were both very intellectually honest straightforward and for them faith meant that you were fully engaged.

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.

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.

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'

Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.