100 Quotes About Community

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden. Unknown

The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers..of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good.. They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found.. This is the meaning of the riddle of the improbable philosopher-kings. They have a true community that is exemplary for all other communities. . Allan Bloom

Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is.. One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation.. Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love, by man's basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a "stranger" in a random universe.. The human being develops when. . his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator.. It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God. Pope Benedict XVI

Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering. Rachel Naomi Remen

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. Michael Pollan

People need each other. Our well-being is tightly tethered to the well-being of people we do not know, most of whom look nothing like ourselves. Happiness, I realized right there in breathing class, requires engagement. Paula Poundstone

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne

We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don't understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn't. The five of us, huddled together shoulder to shoulder over the bima, read the words aloud slowly, and the congregation, these old friends and acquaintances and strangers, all respond, and for reasons I can't begin to articulate, it feels like something is actually happening. It's got nothing to do with God or souls, just the palpable sense of goodwill and support emanating in waves from the pews around us, and I can't help but be moved by it. When we reach the end of the page, and the last "amen" has been said, I'm sorry that' it's over. I could stay up here a while longer. And as we step down to make our way back to the pews, a quick survey of the sadness in my family's wet eyes tells me that I'm not the only one who feels that way. I don't feel any closer to my father than I did before, but for a moment there I was comforted, and that's more than I expected. Jonathan Tropper

Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity... life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn't? She realized now wrong she'd been; the pali wasn't a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn't a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them. Alan Brennert

Lovelessness is a huge sin in the church. The four primary personalities in the New Testament- Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John- all four of them say that love is the most important thing. But the only time love really counts is when something unlovely happens. Jeff Chu

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more. Unknown

Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. D.h. Lawrence

..aconsejaría yo a los que tienen oración, en especial al principio, procuren amistad y trato con otras personas que traten de lo mismo. Es cosa importantísima, aunque no sea sino ayudarse unos a otros con sus oraciones, ¡cuánto más que hay muchas más ganancias! Y no sé yo por qué no se ha de permitir que quien comenzare de veras a amar a Dios y a servirle, deje de tratar con algunas personas sus placeres y trabajos, que de todo tienen los que tienen oración. Unknown

When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified. Pearl Abraham

In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect, I think, always implies imagination - the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls. (pg. 181, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community) Wendell Berry

If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.(pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy") . Wendell Berry

Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls. Greg Mortenson

I grew up in libraries, and I hope I've learned never to take them for granted. A thriving library is the heart of its community, providing access to information and educational opportunities, bringing people together, leveling the playing field, and archiving our history. Josie Brown

We need to bridge our sense of loneliness and disconnection with a sense of community and continuity even if we must manufacture it from our time on the Web and our use of calling cards to connect long distance. We must “log on” somewhere, and if it is only in cyberspace, that is still far better than nowhere at all. (264) Julia Cameron

(In reference to swingers) In the meantime, if you wish to declare yourself polyamorous, get used to the fact that the confusion is gong to remain as a pejorative. Sure, clear up the misunderstanding as much as you can, but don't put too much effort into setting yourself up as a "good", responsible, community-oriented polyamorist by contrasting yourself to the "bad" swingers - they may not be your siblings, but they're definitely your cousins. Anthony D. Ravenscroft

In the mainstream, with its illusion of unlimited relational possibilities, we can counter dissatisfaction in relationships by simply moving on in search of the "right people." But community..demands we cultivate friendships with people we might not choose ordinarily. Founding friendship on commitment rather than "chemistry" often requires adjustment.. At the end of the day, however, we have found that any loss of chemistry in relationships is more than made up for with gains in meaning. Unknown

We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. (..) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success. . Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Polyamorous people are wary of having others' values inflicted upon themselves, and so tend to stay very far away from making such pronouncements, to the point that they will actively ignore predatory behavior that is affecting their own "community. Anthony D. Ravenscroft

Walking through suffering is a work that is bound by limitation. Often it isn't that the afflicted are unwilling to let others in. It is just that there comes a certain point in a person's suffering where there is no apparent port of entry. Russ Ramsey

The strength of our digital ‪community‬ is derived by the ‪relationships‬ we build over time by connecting, sharing and engaging our successes as well as our failures. This creates extraordinary opportunities because we are‪ ‎human‬ and carry a unique trait called ‪empathy‬ that naturally wants to add value and help others Paul Bradley Smith

History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings. Wendell Berry

It is one thing to speak kindly to an irritating stranger on Monday. It is quite another thing to go on speaking kindly to the same irritating relative, or irritating employee, or irritating child day after day, week after week, year after year and come to see in that what God is asking of me, what God is teaching me about myself in this weary, weary moment. Joan D. Chittister

Rough as life can be, I know in my bones we are supposed to stick around and play our part. Even if that part is coughing to death from cigarettes, or being blown up young in a house with your mother watching. And even if it's to be that mother. Someone down the line might need to know you got through it. Or maybe someone you won't see coming will need you. Like a kid who asks you to help him clean motel rooms. Or some ghost who drifts your way, hungry. And good people might even ask you to marry them. And it might be you never know the part you played, what it meant to someone to watch you make your way each day. Maybe someone or something is watching us all make our way. I don't think we get to know why. It is, as Ben would say about most of what I used to worry about, none of my business. Bill Clegg

But for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, ' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.' The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. it is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside. Let us not reckon without our Host. . C.s. Lewis

Don't let your fear of criticism suffocate your leadership potential. Once you begin to speak your truth, you will discover the people who have been waiting for someone exactly like you. Until you speak up, all you need is the faith that they exist. And I promise you: they do. Vironika Tugaleva

I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I’ve done it so many times. First, there’s a kind of shock at the comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about, depending on their views: the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign born, the President, or the entire US government. It is a level of contempt that is usually reserved for enemies in wartime except that now it is applied to our fellow citizens. Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. Sebastian Junger

This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other's needs-- no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for empire. Shane Claiborne

When RBG fretted over the first dry opinion the chief justice assigned her, O'Connor gave her a pep talk. As RBG read that opinion on the bench, O'Connor, who had dissented in the case, passed her a note. "This is your first opinion for the Court, " she had written. "It is a fine one, I look forward to many more." Remembering the comfort that note gave her on such a nerve wracking day, RBG did the same for the next two women to join the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. . Irin Carmon

The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place. Dee Hock

The sense of community is that feeling of togetherness that brings us comfort. We are all alone in the world, so we strive to form bonds with others to eliminate that sense of feeling alone. Del Suggs

In my opinion, the state of mind of a community is always directly due to the influence of the man at the top. Agatha Christie

A sacred space is not a place to hide out. It is a place where we recognize ourselves and our commitments. Sherry Turkle

To understand desire, one needs language and flesh. Sherry Turkle

You learn to write by reading and writing, writing and reading. As a craft it's acquired through the apprentice system, but you choose your own teachers. Sometimes they're alive, sometimes dead. As a vocation, it involves the laying on of hands. You receive your vocation and in your turn you must pass it on. Perhaps you will do this only through your work, perhaps in other ways. Either way, you're part of a community, the community of writers, the community of storytellers that stretches back through time to the beginning of human society. As for the particular society to which you yourself belong -- sometimes you'll feel you're speaking for it, sometimes -- when it's taken an unjust form -- against it, or for that other community, the community of the oppressed, the exploited, the voiceless. Either way, the pressures on you will be intense; in other countries, perhaps fatal. But even here, speak 'for women, ' or for any other group that is feeling the boot, and there will be many at hand, both for and against, to tell you to shut up, or to say what they want you to say, or to say it a different way. Or to save them. The billboard awaits you, but if you succumb to its temptations you'll end up two-dimensional." Tell what is yours to tell. Let others tell what is theirs. . Margaret Atwood

Every nation has hidden history, countless stories preserved only by those who experienced them. Stories of war are often read and discussed worldwide by readers whose nations stood on opposite sides during battle. History divided us, but through reading we can be united in story, study, and remembrance. Books join us together as a global reading community, but more important, a global human community striving to learn from the past. . Ruta Sepetys

Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being in which the multiplicity of individuals are dissolved and into which these individuals are destined to be reabsorbed. As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognizes to be true internally and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful (which is not in dispute here) but also when it comes to happiness. . Maurice MerleauPonty

Hm-m, " he said. "Lookie, Ma. I been all day an' all night hidin' alone. Guess who I been thinkin' about? Casy! He talked a lot. Used ta bother me. But now I been thinkin' what he said, an' I can remember-all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an' he foun' he didn' have no soul that was his'n. Says he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain't no good, 'cause his little piece of a soul wasn't no good 'less it was with the rest, an' was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn't even think I was listenin'. But I know now a fella ain't no good alone. John Steinbeck

Soon enough it will be me struggling (valiantly?) to walk - lugging my stuff around. How are we all so brave as to take step after step? Day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say O.K. Why do I feel so sorry for everyone and so proud? Maira Kalman

If we stretch ourselves to open our minds, to see our shared humanity with others, we allow ourselves to see the existence of community and generosity in unexpected places. Sharon Salzberg

I write. See you there. Barbara Johansen

We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsible within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone. (pg. 134, The Body and the Earth) . Wendell Berry

My life's work is to help people step into their God-given abilities and make a positive difference in their community. Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

You are not for everyone. But you are for someone. Julieanne OConnor

Peace in the home is the peace for the community. Lailah Gifty Akita

I suppose what I mean is, I never felt like I was part of a gang. No, that's the wrong word. Part of a MOVEMENT! That's it. It feels like there's a swirling, shining wind of change sweeping right at you, sweeping over everyone, and you're inside it. It feels like there is something that transcends you, that goes beyond whatever you are, that is great and whole and good. Great, because when it all comes together it's so much more than all its individual pieces. Whole because you're part of it and if you weren't, then both you and it would be diminished. Good because at its core is pure talent and skill, like you know you'll never have yourself. Simon Cheshire

When i look to my past i'm not believe in god but for future god is hope. Kjiva

Think of the power we could have if all the energy and effort in the world — or maybe even just your energy and effort? — that goes into drinking were put into resisting, building, creating. Try adding up all the money anarchists in your community have spent on corporate libations, and picture how much musical equipment or bail money or food it could have paid for — instead of funding their war against all of us. CrimethInc.

I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life or the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left. . Jeanette Winterson

We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and forebears were people of substantial or remarkable intellect, thought somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had our wish. Marilynne Robinson

Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try. Dee Hock

I was a tourist in a bizarre land. I was home. Rabih Alameddine

Having been fucked up by my family and community, I’ll never know where my gayness came from, and where it ends and “neurosis” begins. But as a gay person I know I’m a vital element in our civilization. Edward Field

Regardless of the difficulties we may face individually, in our families, in our communities and in our nation, the old adage is still true - you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you cannot make both! Mia Love

Technology has transformed the world into a global village. And communities, families, friends, etc., into local islands. Mokokoma Mokhonoana

... the forces of power, particularly corporate power, are impatient with what is adequate for a coherent community. Because power gains so little from community in the short run, it does not hesitate to destroy community for the long run. Wes Jackson

The act of claiming an identity can be transformational. It can provide healing and empowerment. It can weld solidarity within a community. And, perhaps most importantly, it can diminish power from an oppressor, a dominant group. Simon Tam

Actually, all the life we keep deceiving eachother. Because, life is too short to hate someone. M.H. Rakib

People are living books. The real library of life is community. Bryant McGill

..but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes. But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious. Leo Tolstoy

They didn't get the friendships that formed, the community of people who shared in your same joy. Goldy Moldavsky

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny? Audre Lorde

Through the practice of compassion and forgiveness, I was able to sustain my appreciation for her work and cope with the grief and disappointment I felt about the loss of this relationship. Practicing compassion enabled me to understand why she might have acted as she did and to forgive her. Forgiving means that I am able to see her as a member of my community still, one who has a place in my heart should she wish to claim it. Bell Hooks

We of alien looks or words must stick together. C.J. Sansom

He is among those beings of great scope who spread their leafy branches willingly over broad horizons. To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to know shame at the sight of poverty which is not of our making. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, as we place our stone, that we are contributing to the building of the world. Unknown

In less than a decade, social media is one of those things that has become part of the fabric of society. It is also something about which everyone has an opinion. At some point in a dinner party, someone tends to malign social media for being full of updates about lunch or photos of pets. Life is full of froth. It is the mundane that makes us human. The seemingly inconsequential tidbits we share help us forge social bonds and bring us closer together. Alfred Hermida

Everyone belongs to a society, whether he wishes it or not, whether he chooses it or not, whether he contributes constructively to its development or does the reverse. Community, on the contrary, implies one's relating one's self to others affirmatively and responsibly. Community in the economic sense implies an emphasis on the social values and functions of work. Community in the psychological sense involves the individual's relating himself to others in love as well as creativity. . Rollo May

Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. Sebastian Junger

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaCommunity: Irrationals unified by hope of the impossible. Idries Shah

Sharing thoughts and expressions and even actions with others, possibly many others, is becoming a normal opportunity, not just for professionals and experts but for anyone who wants it. This opportunity can work on scales and over duration that were previously unimaginable. Unlike personal or communal value, public value requires not just new opportunities for old motivations; it requires governance, which is to say ways of discouraging or preventing people from wrecking either the process or the product of the group. Clay Shirky

Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people, " Maria said finally. Lois Lowry

If you don't have a whole lot of unsatisfied people, the economy stops dead, doesn't it? Andy Couturier

Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas. Dan Harmon

A disposable society is only fit for disposable people. Bryant McGill

Being well regulated in relatedness is the deeply gratifying state that people seek ceaselessly in romance, religions, and cults; in husbands and wives, pets, softball teams, bowling leagues, and a thousand other features of human life driven by the thirst for sustaining affiliations. (157) Thomas Lewis