Quotes About Community

Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits.

In fact, the confidence of the people is worth more than money.

This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible.

When a white man sees persons of his own race tending downward to a level of disgrace he does not rest until he works out some plan to lift such unfortunates to higher ground; but the Negro forgets the delinquents of his race and goes his way to feather his own nest, as he has done in leaving the masses in the popular churches.

Facing this undesirable result, the highly educated Negro often grows sour. He becomes too pessimistic to be a constructive force and usually develops into a chronic fault-finder or a complainant at the bar of public opinion. Often when he sees that the fault lies at the door of the white oppressor whom he is afraid to attack, he turns upon the pioneering Negro who is at work doing the best he can to extricate himself from an uncomfortable predicament.

At that time men went off to school to prepare themselves for the uplift of a downtrodden people. In our time too many Negroes go to school to memorize certain facts to pass examinations for jobs. After they obtain these positions they pay little attention to humanity. This attitude of the "educated Negro" toward the masses results partly from the general trend of all persons toward selfishness,

The Negro church, however, although not a shadow of what it ought to be, is the great asset of the race.

Some one recently inquired as to why the religious schools do not teach the people how to tolerate differences of opinion and to cooperate for the common good. This, however, is the thing which these institutions have refused to do.

When you hear a man talking, then, always inquire as to what he is doing or what he has done for humanity. Oratory and resolutions do not avail much. If they did, the Negro race would be in a paradise on earth.

ANOTHER factor the Negro needs is a new figure in politics, one who will not concern himself so much with what others can do for him as with what he can do for himself. He will know sufficient about the system

If memory is the thread of personal identity, history is the thread of community identity.

The world of the society or group becomes our whole world; our little job assumes a ridiculous importance; we lose sight of the Universe; and presently that little world of ours—did we but know it—resembles a beehive where the queen is continually stroked and flattered and soothed by the others to keep her going. Once again we have been untrue to the first love and have lost the Divine Child.

No league or conference or committee or group can put life into the world: it can only be born into the world, and only individuals can give birth.

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.

Remember where you are, Trooper," Chief Marshall reminded him. "This is Provincetown. Residents let their freak flag fly around here. If we investigated everyone's sexual predilections around town, Lord knows what else we'd find.

I think it's a very firm part of human nature that if you surround yourself with like-minded people, you'll end up thinking more extreme versions of what you thought before.

It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me: and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum of human cities torture.

We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

You may say we're all dreamers, And you're not the only one, But if you care to join us, Then the world will be more fun.

Be useful where thou livest.

Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.

Kneeling ne'er spoil'd silk stocking: quit thy state. All equal are within the church's gate.

People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with.