Quotes About Community

I thereby learned the invaluable lesson that in the practical activities of life no man can render the highest service unless he can act in combination with his fellows, which means a certain amount of give-and-take between him and them." Restraining

Progressives (a combination of Midwestern

The majority of the great fortunes were "won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole.

flour and lumber." The entire settlement consisted of a few hundred people, fifteen log cabins, a tavern, a church, a blacksmith, a schoolmaster, a preacher, and a

If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him.

Put ambition for the collective interest above self-interest.

Please don't be alarmed, you'd be surprised how many charming people are walking our streets, the mere ghosts of themselves.

I think people need other people to be kind to them.

Such people, such individuals, will be a most productive yeast and ferment, and lucky the society who has plenty of them.

There are a few of us around in the world, we rely on each other even though we don't know each other's names. But we rely on each other all the time. We're a team, we're the ones who haven't given in, who'll go on fighting.

That's what I feel too—people aren't taking responsibility for each other. You said the socialists had ceased to be a moral force, for the time, at least, because they wouldn't take moral responsibility. Except for a few people. You said that, didn't you—well then. But you write and write in notebooks, saying what you think about life, but you lock them up, and that's not being responsible." "A very great

Why write stories? To join the conversation.

My family of friends has kept me alive through lovers who have left, enterprises that have failed, and all too many stories that never got finished. That family has been part of remaking the world for me.

The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal. It is a belief that dominates this culture. It is what makes the poor whites of the South so determinedly racist and the middle class so contemptuous of the poor.

If we are not to sacrifice some part of ourselves or our community, we will have to go through the grief, the fear of exposure, and struggle, with only a thin layer of trust that we will emerge whole and unbroken. I know of no other way to do this than to start by saying, I will give up nothing. I will give up no one.

When the men at the counter weren't slipping quarters in her pocket they were bringing her things, souvenirs or friendship cards, once or twice a ring. Mama smiled, joked, slapped ass, and firmly passed back anything that looked like a down payment on something she didn't want to sell.

Entitlement, I have told them, is a matter of feeling like we rather than they.

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

My stories are not against anyone; they are for the life we need.

I can live alone, but it is better to have someone else to concern oneself with; to help and be helped by. There is nothing so strong as a family.

Lymond's life was lived on this level: the level on which the future of whole communities could be steered or reshaped, improved or jeopardized by a handful of people.

It is not enough,' Robert Reid said, 'to offer justice. The laws of men, the laws of God himself are not enough unless you know the heart, the tongue, the brain, the gut of your people.

There was no place for him there or in Scotland, compared to the one he held in Russia. And although Diccon Chancellor once had thought, wistfully, of a land where likeminded friends might meet and might talk and might make new and astounding discoveries, free of fear, he knew that it was not to be found yet in England.

Sybilla said, 'If there are swords, then I suppose you must wear yours. But it is you we need.' 'We?' he said. 'Five hundred thousand people,' said Sybilla. 'You have a high opinion of my swordsmanship,' Lymond said.