Quotes About Community

People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.

Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation. (pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture.

The power of a sports team in a community it's almost indescribable.

I was starting to understand that the more you talked about something the less it hurt, each telling deflating it a little bit more. That was why we had to say it out loud at the beginning of every meeting: My name is Delia and I'm an addict. It was so we could stop flinching and just live with it. (72)

In any case, whether or not there really is a Hinduism, there certainly are Hindus.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.' Marcus Aurelius

I don't think I was funny until college. I lived with some Harvard MD/PhD students - they were so smart, and what I contributed to the house was, I was the funny one.

Who wants avocado?

Some porn users tell us they feel too ashamed to go to church or express their spirituality in the ways that were once meaningful to them.

T)he world is broken up into pieces, and...it's up to everyone to help put it all back together. It's about recognizing the spark of life in everyone and everything, and gluing those shards back together.

I've learned that almost anyone will help if you ask for it.

Recent events lead me to believe the world is like that, too--people are the individual fragments, but we are also part of the whole mirror. We are connected, not only to one another but also to the fabric of the universe.

that. Amanda and Leo tried to help me last year

When I stand back, the surface of the pieces reflect the world around me like a solid mirror. But I can also see myself in each of the tiny, broken fragments. Recent events lead me to believe that the world is like that, too — people are the individual fragments, but we are also part of the whole mirror. We are connected, not only to one another but also to the fabric of the universe.

Fiddler on the Roof, to

I remember we crossed a bridge and it trembled underneath our feet because we were so many people.

I swear, in Syria nobody used to ask whether you're Muslim or Christian. We had no idea what religion our friends were.