Quotes About Belonging

Once individuals are identified as belonging to an outgroup, there seems to be no limit to the human capacity for cruelty.

Being American is not a matter of birth. We must practice it every day, lest we become something else.

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.

Wealth (among the Dagara) is determined not by how many things you have, but by how many people you have around you.

We need ritual because it is an expression of the fact that we recognize the difficulty of creating a different and special kind of community. A community that doesn't have a ritual cannot exist. A corporate community is not a community. It's a conglomeration of individuals in the service of an insatiable soulless entity.

A true community begins in the hearts of the people involved. It is not a place of distraction but a place of being.

So one of the ways to maintain a certain sense of self is to remain somewhat linked to essential traditionalism.

One of us... One of them... One of us... One of them... A rhythm playing like train wheels on a circular track -- never ending but going nowhere.

You have to live in a world divided into Noughts and Crosses. A world where you will be biologically both and socially neither. Mixed race. Dual heritage. Labels to be attached.

Being in and being accepted are two different things.

That's just the point,' Callum said with sudden bitterness. 'This place is like the whole world and the whole world is like this place. So where could I go?

Funny how my status seemed to change depending on the eyes of the beholder. To Drew I was a Nought and would never be anything else. Lucas called me a Cross. Where did that leave me? On one side or the other or stuck somewhere in the middle? 'Lucas,

Ladies and gentlemen, for your delectation and delight, another performance of 'You're a nought and don't you ever forget it, blanker boy.

Es kommt in einer christlichen Gemeinschaft alles darauf an, daß jeder Einzelne ein unentbehrliches Glied einer Kette wird.

You can scream you're Indian, you can disavow your religion, you can even be the next incarnation of Krishna for all your Hindu countrymen will care. Their HRM will pull down your pants and check your foreskin and slaughter you just the same.

Perhaps that was the ultimate immigrant experience. Not that any one thing was steady enough to attach yourself to for the rest of your life, but that you found different ways to belong, ways not necessarily lasting, but ones that made your journey less lonely for a while. When something failed it was a signal to move on. For an immigrant there was no going back.

Es verdad que siempre he tenido miedo de que la gente no me quisese tal y como yo soy, ese es mi temor más grande, pero a lo mejor faltaba la clave, el por qué.

Chacun a son monde, le tout est de planter ses racines dans la terre qui nous convient.

Il faut croire que nous, les Polonais, avions la maladie de vouloir changer de nationalité.

Har du aldrig varit rädd att ni var för olika? - Jag ska ge dig ett gott råd: om du är på ett ställe där alla människor är som du, stick därifrån så fort du kan!

everybody living in the empire was considered a Roman citizen,

Si elle veut venir dans notre maison, moi mon idee, c'est qu'elle n'en partira jamais plus.

Each artist seems thus to be the native of an unknown country, which he himself has forgotten, different from that from which will emerge, making for the earth, another great artist.

Reflection comes between us and every other person and object in the world. An object or a person can be reflected in so many different ways. Yet the heart of an object or the essence of the heart can never be reflected. All faith and creativity is the hunger to cross over this frontier, it is the desire for pure and total encounter and belonging. Love is an affair between a reflection and its object.