Quotes About Community

Choosing a standard, in other words, is to commit oneself to others.

People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will. They number in the millions, these mortals, but they don't make it into the history books much. They don't do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually.

Moses explained, "the goat will bear all their faults away with it into a desert place."1 In his classic study of religion and violence, René Girard argued that the scapegoat ritual defused rivalries among groups within the community.2

Muhammad preached his farewell sermon to the Muslim community. He reminded them to deal justly with one another, to treat women kindly, and to abandon the blood feuds and vendettas inspired by the spirit of jahiliyyah. Muslim must never fight against Muslim.

people derived their faith in Jesus from the experience of living together in a close-knit, minority community that challenged the unequal distribution of wealth and power

We have a duty to get to know one another, and to cultivate a concern and responsibility for all our neighbors in the global village.

He was simply a nadhir, a messenger with a warning, and should approach the Quraysh humbly, avoid provocation, and be careful not to attack their gods. This is what the great prophets had done in the past.28 A prophet had to be altruistic; he must not trumpet his own opinions egotistically or trample on the sensibilities of others, but should always put the welfare of the community first. A

Surely, argued the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–73), it was better for a Breton to accept French citizenship "than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage remnant of past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of the world.

If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must treat him like one of your own people and love him as yourselves, for you were strangers in Egypt.

It was not violence and self-assertion, but the spirit of mercy, courtesy and tranquillity that would cause the ummah to grow, "as a seed that puts forth its shoot and strengthens it and it grows stout and raises straight upon its stalk, pleasing the owners.

if we harm our neighbors, we also inflict damage on ourselves. There

Las mujeres de las primeras umma (comunidad) de Medina tomaban parte plenamente en la vida pública, y algunas de ellas, de acuerdo a la costumbre árabe, luchaban al lado de los hombres en el campo de batalla. No parece que entonces experimentaran el islam como una religión opresiva, aunque más tarde, como sucedió con el cristianismo, los hombres tomaron el control de la religión y la adaptaron al patriarcado dominante.

In the Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and worship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God.

Animal sacrifice, for example, the central rite of nearly every religious system in antiquity, preserved prehistoric hunting ceremonies and continued to honor a beast that gave its life for the sake of humankind. One of the functions of ritual is to evoke an anxiety in such a way that the community is forced to confront and control it. From the very beginning, it seems, religious life was rooted in acknowledgment of the tragic fact that life depends upon the destruction of other creatures.

When these impoverished, indebted folk asked him what they should do, he told them to share what little they had with those who were even worse off—an ethic that would become central to Jesus's movement: "Whoever has two shirts must share with him who has none, and whoever has food must do the same."12

One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem.

Holiness in Islam was inclusive rather than exclusive.

we sometimes fail to recognize the signs of poverty, loneliness, grief, fear, and desolation in our own city, our own village, or our own family.

If they were to go away from their land, they must have people round them who had known it, and so could testify to their identity.

When we share love with the lonely, the boomerang of blessing lands right back in our lap.

One good thing that comes from living the nomadic life demanded by an expedition is that one sheds the fake skin donned from living too closely among society. For those of us who live for the freedom of such a lifestyle, that skin is dry and itchy and ill fitting. From my observances, that skin is much like a callus caused by the pure irritation of being forced to spend so much time with one's fellow man. Thank God I am spared such nonsense.

Women provide the only true link to civilization. Men simply are not ruthless enough to survive on their own.

Coffee is the elixir of life.

In the dolphin family, if one is lost, all are lost.