Community quotes
3.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside community — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I have always seen life personally; my interest or sympathy or indignation is not aroused by an abstract cause but by the plight of a single person...Out of my response to an individual develops an awareness of a problem to the community, then to the country, then to the world."
"Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery."
"My parents lived in a poor rural community on the Eastern Shore, and schools were still segregated. And I remember when lawyers came into our community to open up the public schools to black kids."
"The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge."
"The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community."
"Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is - or should be - the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all - perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows."
"Peace is for the purification of one's mind. Power is for the growth of the community. Having established the community with power, one should then establish supreme peace."
"Every person who invests in well-selected real estate in a growing section of a prosperous community adopts the surest and safest method of becoming independent, for real estate is the basis of wealth."
"No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community."
"If, with the nation watching, three black women at three different levels can't get justice... for this community, you tell me where you're going to get it in our country."
"Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life"
"If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured."
"As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."
"Our differences are our strength as a species and as a world community."
"It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community -a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth."
"Always follow these two rules: first, act only on what your reasoning mind proposes for the good of humanity, and second, change your opinion if someone shows you it's wrong. This change of mind must proceed only from the conviction that it's both correct and for the common good, but not because it will give you pleasure and make you popular."
"Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity."
"One reason--perhaps the chief--of the virility of the Roosevelts is [their] very democratic spirit. They have never felt that because they were born in a good position they could put their hands in their pockets and succeed. They have felt, rather, that being born in a good position, there is no excuse for them if they did not do their duty by the community."
"To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation. One should seek out an audience that matters - and furthermore (another important qualification), it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively."
"An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed."
