Quotes About Belonging

Why bother with other people?

Yet something keeps dragging us back to other people. We know we are less than human when we are all alone.

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them.

Make new friends and march with them. For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends.

What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion.

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them. Even

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them. Even the history of lapel pins is far from innocent.

As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism "has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.

people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends. Protest

Every man has a name given by the stars given by his neighbors. —ZELDA MISHKOVSKY, 1974

Don't you believe that," she said very slowly. "Don't you believe that, Lena. Black folk belong here. You belong here. Don't believe black folks don't belong on the beach. Don't never believe black folks don't belong nowhere. Don't be afraid, Lena. Claim what is yours. I died to be here on this beach, Lena. Don't never forget that. You belong anywhere on this earth you want to.

Why did I practically flee from home when I was fifteen, to go and wash dishes all over Europe? Why, when I arrived in Asia, did I feel so much at home that I stayed there. The wish to get as far away as possible from the poverty-stricken world of my childhood? Perhaps.

He remembered that these imaginary conversations always began the same way, with the same phrase, the words he believed lay at the core of what any human being ever wants to hear from another, what affection is in its primary essence, what the bonds of friendship and family mean above all else. So he placed his hand gently on Bemm's shoulder and, softly, slowly, spoke the phrase, over and over again, as if it were a prayer, "I am so glad you are here.

your character was the only thing you ever wholly and truly possessed.

Some versions of patriotism come close to the tribal, which we all want to surpass, and some don't.

The universal is what particulars share not having.

No society can include us without simultaneously alienating us from it. My belonging in a society always breaks down, which enables me to turn against this society when it takes a direction that I cannot accept. This is why I am free. Freedom is not a value of belonging, of being a member of a free society. Freedom becomes apparent as a value when we experience our nonbelonging, a nonbelonging that is universal because it applies to everyone, even those who most feel like they fit in.

All social hierarchies depend on our collective belief in them. Simply by collectively disbelieving in someone's importance, we can cause this importance to vanish, which reveals the universal equality that becomes evident through the lack of belonging.

Light skin gives me such privileges that my complaints are not worthy. I'm not "positive" enough. Not "black" enough. I'm not a "real" black person. Worst of all are the terrible choices - the possibility of losing connections to those I love, betraying them, those who have done terrible things but at the same time have had to survive within the context of racism. Whose side am I on?

reason for giving up an itinerant life

Music is one of those things that make us feel a little less alone in the world.

It never occurred to me that I could live in California. Now I can't imagine living anywhere else.

I look really odd in jeans and a hoodie - it doesn't feel or seem right.

We are a very close family, and I love them very much, but I'm definitely the odd one out. I live a completely different kind of life style. I always was different. I felt like a fish out of water; I really never knew who I was.