Quotes About Community

Tea: was there ever a more universal and life-sustaining beverage.

To my mind, if you don't know anything about the lives of the people you meet then they will be inclined to treat you like a child, but if you can hunt, if you can make fire, if you can make shelter and you know how to take care of yourself, they see this; they know the time it takes to acquire those skills and they will treat you as an adult. From that, they might involve you in conversations that you would not otherwise have. That is what I wanted to try to tap into. I

The course of urban development in America is pushing the individual toward that line seperating proud independence from pitiable isolation.

The development of an informal public life depends people finding and enjoying one another outside the cash nexus.

So I took to the road with an accomplice and set off to the golden South, the new land of opportunity, North Carolina. Here, with the help of a partner I had only just met (and on the back porch of a rural farmhouse, to boot!), I was going to simultaneously live my version of the great American dream and enrich the lives of the residents of Raleigh, North Carolina.

1) Remain silent you share of the time (more rather than less). 2) Be attentive while others are talking. 3) Say what you think but be careful not to hurt others' feelings. 4) Avoid topics not of general interest. 5) Say little or nothing about yourself personally, but talk about others there assembled. 6) Avoid trying to instruct. 7) Speak in as low a voice as will allow others to hear.

our postwar residential areas are extremely hostile to strangers, outsiders, and new residents of the area.

Currently and for some time now, the course of urban growth and development in the United States has been hostile to an informal public life;

Suburban zoning has replaced "public characters" with the retailers and their employees in the malls and out on the strips.

calling a subdivision a "community," for that is precisely what it is not.

We have become a suburban nation—the only one in the world.

zoning ordinances were copied and enforced all over the land, prohibiting the stuff of community from intrusion into residential areas.

urban planning which meets the needs of children and the elderly will be nice for everybody, but truer words are rarely written

citizen participation in planning and well understands that that can happen only at the neighborhood level.

How many Americans having "surfed" all the channels and, bored by it all, wouldn't like to slip on a jacket and walk down to the corner and have a cold one with the neighbors? Ah, but we've made sure there's nothing on the corner but another private residence . . . indeed, nothing at all within easy walking distance.

We are an open mixing place for the general public, but we are strongly committed to bringing together people who may not normally spend time together in the hope that they will become friends, seeking deeper relationships with each other and with the community. A sign I once saw in an old café window proclaimed, "There are no strangers here, just friends who haven't met," and that pretty much captures what we're about.

The theory of "diffusion"—ideas spreading from top down, from the few to the many—still informs much of our telling of history. But that's not always the way history works. Except in totalitarian societies, people (even common people) tend to pursue, of their own volition, their personal interests and the interests of their communities. This was certainly true during the years leading up to the American Revolution.

Sarah Hodgkins neither signed petitions nor shamed men into battle; instead, she served her country, as most women did, within the context of her ceaseless labors and familial obligations

Americans in the 1770s were sharply divided according to religion, national origin, location, and even language. Scots Irish Presbyterians in North Carolina, English American Anglicans in Virginia, Dutch and German Mennonites in Pennsylvania, Scottish Highlander Catholics in New York, native-born Congregationalists in Massachusetts—each group had its own culture, its own beliefs, its own set of interests.

Quakers, Shakers, Moravians, Mennonites, Amish, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders—these radical spiritualists took the Reformation to heart by giving precedence to the life of the soul over the affairs of the state. Around 80,000 people, or one in every thirty free Americans, claimed membership in one of these communities at the eve of the Revolution.

It is not short of amazing, the power of a great idea to weld men together. There was in it a peculiar, intense, vital spirit if you will, that I have never felt before in any strike.

Covenant community, the hand of God will write

When the doctrine is clear and the culture is beautiful, that church will be powerful. But there are no shortcuts to getting there. Without the doctrine, the culture will be weak. Without the culture, the doctrine will seem pointless.

It is joyous for a church to stand together as one and say: "We don't know exactly how this is going to play out. But we're going to trust the Lord and move forward, because all that matters to us is the greater glory of Jesus in our world today.