Quotes About Community

How do we move from a growing culture of cruelty to a culture of compassion where we not only perceive and relate to our fellow Americans with a sense of solidarity, but in which public policy reflects community, mutual kindness and concern, and where the idea of the common good is revived so as to replace the alienating, disconnected individualism that threatens to destroy us?

When we first draw breath outside the womb, we inhale tiny particles of all that came before, both literally and figuratively. We are never merely individuals; we are never alone; we are always in the company of others, of the past, of history.

And contrary to popular kindergarten doctrine, talk to as many strangers as possible.

They didn't hide by day and only come out at night. They were people who held their communities together, bankers and merchants, lawyers and doctors, coaches and teachers, servants of God and shapers of opinion.

Steve and Barr also launched poison squads, as they were known on the inside. This was a disinformation brigade—clucks and gossips, but the best-known clucks and gossips in every community, so that false stories could be plausibly true.

Isn't it strange that with all our educational advantages," noted the Hoosier writer Meredith Nicholson, so many "Indiana citizens could be induced to pay $10 for the privilege of hating their neighbors and wearing a sheet?

The preacher said Madge's spirit belonged to Irvington, and Irvington must be there for her memory: "Let us not forget that in coming here today we have not fulfilled our obligations of friendship," he said. In the days, weeks, and years ahead, the family "will need us as never before

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us," Leopold wrote later. "When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Indiana embraced him, even after news of his assault had made its way into the state.

The vices of these savages are very few when compared to ours... One does not see here greed for another man's wealth, because articles of prime necessity are very few and all are common. Hunger obliges no one to rob on the highways, or to resort to piracy. The natural bounty was so great that the natives actually fought some wars with food, trying to outdo one another with culinary gifts at their potlatches.

In Marion County, every major elected official but two was a Klansman.

Fully half the town of 30,000 belonged to the Klan, including mayor, prosecutor, police force, and school board.

Kokomo has seen with its own eyes the class of people who comprise the Klan," the Fiery Cross wrote in its report of the biggest day in the history of the Ku Klux Klan. "It saw staunch American farmers with their wives; merchants of repute; bankers of integrity; honest and hard-working mechanics, and ministers and devout church members.

In church they sang "Gott is de liebe" and made such a month-long fuss over Christmas that customs in America changed as well. They

No one was ever charged with a lawless execution witnessed by thousands of Hoosiers in the public square.

Most days, Bam didn't care what people said to him or about him. Gossip in town wasn't worth a cup of curdled spit.

The Negro is among us and the race should be encouraged to progress, but that path should never lead to social mingling," warned the Indianapolis Star in 1921.

A handful of Hoosiers were heroic—two rabbis, an African American publisher born enslaved, a fearless Catholic lawyer, a small-town editor repeatedly beaten and thrown in jail, a lone prosecutor.

The 6,000 or so Black residents were forced into tenements and shacks in Baptisttown, a shank of the city without electricity or indoor plumbing. They were constantly harassed. Memories of a 1903 slaughter—twelve Blacks murdered and four saloons burned to the ground by a white mob—still haunted.

We are the law itself—the same boast would be heard in Indiana

At day's end, he was sitting on his front porch when a member of the Klan walked up the steps of a house nearby and plopped into a chair on the veranda. Once the mask was off, the boy could see that the now visible congregant of the Invisible Empire was his neighbor, Mrs. Crousore.

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn't making you stronger, they're making you weaker.

Da igual cuánta gente no te entienda. Lo importante es cuánta gente sí lo hace.

The first is to push yourself harder than you believe you're capable of. You'll find new depth inside yourself. The second is to put yourself in groups who share difficulties, discomfort. We used to call it 'shared privation.' You'll find that when you have been through that kind of difficult environment, that you feel more strongly about that which you're committed to. And finally, create some fear and make individuals overcome it.