Quotes About Community

Perfected by the offices and duties of social life, man is the best, but, rude and undisciplined, he is the very worst of animals.

He, therefore, who first collected societies, was the greatest benefactor of mankind.

Whoever, therefore, is unfit to live in a commonwealth, is above or below humanity.

Every political society forms, it is plain, a sort of community or partnership, instituted for the benefit of the partners. Utility is the end and aim of every such institution; and the greatest and most extensive utility is the aim of that great association, comprehending all the rest, and known by the name of a commonwealth.

Reason ... governs like a just and lawful prince, and the little community of man is thus held together and sustained.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

The advantageous situation of the capital and of the territory is necessarily a part of the common stock; and all men who inhabit the same city and country must breathe the same air, and enjoy the same climate.

Man delights in society far more than do bees or herds.

Communities could not subsist without foresight to discern, as well as exertion to effectuate the measures requisite for their safety. Men capable of discerning those measures, are made for authority; and men merely capable of effectuating them by bodily labor, are made for obedience.

It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.

That man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal who has the gift of speech.

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than what they possess in common with others.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

One man's imagined community is another man's political prison.

The more anxious, isolated and time-deprived we are, the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services, we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us.

As one man explains, "A lot of us have done okay, but we don't want to lose what we've got, see it given away." When I ask him what he saw as being "given away," it was not public waters given to dumpers, or clean air give to smoke stacks. It was not health or years of life. It was not lost public sector jobs. What he felt was being given away was tax money to support non-working people and non-deserving people--and not just tax money, but honor too.

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing,

Instead of the country agreeing with her community on the natural rightness of heterosexual marriage as the center of family life, she was now obliged to defend herself against the idea that these views were sexist, homophobic, old-fashioned, and backward.

Local waterways had long been contaminated from many sources. But in 1987, the state at last issued a seafood advisory for Bayou d'Inde, the Calcasieu Ship Channel, and the estuary to the Gulf of Mexico. ... From net to plate—fishermen, grocery stores, trucking companies, and restaurant workers—all were furious at the government officials who had declared the seafood advisory.

In a racially separated world, it's possible to have racial disadvantage without racial prejudice. Whites can turn for help to white neighbors with good connections in the plant. Blacks turn to black neighbors without them.