Quotes About Community

he never spoke save in the debased patois of his environment;

Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each other's houses, and the burying ground, and the sea?

Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of the native American people.

relapsing into a bovine, half-amiable normality like that of the other hill-dwellers.

He was a product of a culture where it was generally counterproductive to hold grudges.

It's philanthropy, but it's good politics, too. Mighty good politics. The poor are some of the most grateful people in the world. George Washington Plunkett.

At home you could depend on your parents, but in America you are on your own and should make as many friends as you can . . . You don't know who may hold out a helpful hand in your hour of need.

Steve Langley, a forecast manager from Beloit, Wisconsin, recalls running 15 miles with friends on a January morning when the temperature was 5°F. Running through a park with a small lake, they passed several people sitting on buckets, ice fishing. "Look at those idiots," said one of the fishermen. "They're going to freeze to death!" Langley admits thinking the same about them.

Running with a partner or a group can make running more enjoyable. You can gain additional knowledge about the sport, but you also can occupy your mind and make the miles pass faster.

In the extreme, fads can arise, spread through, and then disappear from a community in a fraction of a human generation.

Cultures evolve. The culture associated with a community changes over time, moving this way and that, pushed by several forces.

We can get caught in what have been called "information cascades," where incorrect information propagates through a community because individuals, for whatever reason, prefer to copy others rather that trust their own judgment.

Ef maður vill stela í þjófafélagi, þá verður að stela samkvæmt lögum; og helst að hafa tekið þátt í því að setja lögin sjálfur.

I know perfectly well that it is impossible, according to arithmetic and scholarly books, to live in a far valley off a handful of ewes and two low yield cows. But we live, I say. You children all lived; your sisters now have sturdy children in far-off districts. And what you are now carrying under your heart will also live and be welcome, little one, despite arithmetic and scholarly books.

But whoever thinks that beauty is something he can enjoy exclusively for himself just by abandoning other people and closing his eyes to the human life of which he is part—he is not the friend of beauty. He who doesn't fight every day of his life to the last breath against the representatives of evil, against the living images of evil who rule Sviðinsvík—he blasphemes by taking the word beauty into his mouth.

I also note pro tem that the church seems only moderately suited to attracting a congregation.

The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness, deep listening and loving speech, and a strong community to support you.

Not everything can be achieved alone.

the world is simple: it's just a matter of cafés where they like you, and cafés where they don't.

Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.

As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.

Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena—homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.

No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature's wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.