Quotes About Community

Kevin Stassu, the parent of an autistic son and the Director of the First Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University, said something once that has struck with me: 'I would not change my son for the world, so I will change the world for my son.

So when we do not have much money, we should give it away anyway. It can be exchanged for other currencies that we need more than mere money. When we give, we interact with others and we exchange other currencies. When we give, we form trusting networks and create community. When we give, we start things moving and flowing again, recirculating different currencies through the community.

Eyes glazed over as the great rice-wine parties in the highlands were recalled, parties that are no longer held since the arrival of the mission. Bario has become a good, clean, upstanding, sober, hard-working Christian community. What a loss for these fun-loving and generous people.

The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.

I don't even talk about whether or not racial profiling is legal. I just don't think racial profiling is a particularly good law enforcement tool.

Once you're in the circus you're all in the circus, and of course it turns out that they are real people too.

Far from being misanthropic loners with anger issues, most of these pirates had lives that were intimately intertwined with the communities from which they came, and to which they one day hoped to return to enjoy their spoils. They viewed piracy as a job, not a lifestyle.

The accessible physical space of the library is not the only factor that makes it work well as social infrastructure. The institution's extensive programming, organized by a professional staff that upholds a principled commitment to openness and inclusivity, fosters social cohesion among clients who might otherwise keep to themselves.

There's a term you don't hear these days, one you used to hear all the time when the Carnegie branches opened: Palaces for the People. The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can't otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognize it in them too.

For most of us, Facebook friends and Instagram followers are supplements to -- not surrogates for -- our social lives. As meaningful as the friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsatisfied with virtual ties that never develop into face-to-face relationships. Building real connections requires a shared physical environment -- a social infrastructure.

The Philadelphia studies suggest that place-based interventions are far more likely to succeed than people-based projects.

People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures—not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.

Robust social infrastructure doesn't just protect our democracy; it contributes to economic growth.

The elderly can also participate in some of these activities in senior centers, but there they can do them only with other old people, and often that makes them feel stigmatized, as if old is all they are. For many seniors, the library is the main place they interact with people from other generations.

Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.

Living in a place like East New York requires developing coping strategies, and for many residents, the more vulnerable older and younger ones in particular, the key is to find safe havens. As on every other Thursday morning this spring, today nine middle-aged and elderly residents who might otherwise stay home alone will gather in the basement of the neighborhood's most heavily used public amenity, the New Lots branch library.

As of 2016, more than twelve million Americans aged sixty-five and above live by themselves, and the ranks of those who are aging alone is growing steadily in much of the world.

Social media, for all their powers, cannot give us what we get from churches, unions, athletic clubs, and welfare states. They are neither a safety net nor a gathering place. In fact, insider accounts from Silicon Valley tech companies establish that keeping people on their screens, rather than in the world of face-to-face interaction, is a key priority of designers and engineers.

In New Orleans, the Lafitte Greenway is a bicycle and pedestrian trail that's designed to connect people and neighborhoods that might otherwise remain divided.

Lassie was so well known in the village. It was because, as the women said, "You can set your clock by her".

Ah, Peggy, and how should I know? All I do know is that ye'd be feeding all the stray dogs and waifs and tramps in the world if ye had your way.