Quotes About Community

Passing on the good news of Jesus is not equivalent to saying "I'm better than you." Rather, as the famous saying goes, it's like one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

Today, many American Christians seem to mix up church and state. They believe the community of genuine believers in America is the people of God— both in heaven and on earth. But the nation of America isn't the people of God; we don't live in a theocracy. The sooner Christians realize this, the sooner the church can make a deeper impact as salt and light in society.

The neighbors... hadn't, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbor who'd kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they'd visited on other people.)

To Londoners, bombs and riots were just an extreme form of weather.

Look for women who speak the truth in love, laugh easily at themselves, talk openly about their faith, are trailblazers in their own lives, and can both celebrate and cry with other people. You are looking for Balcony Women: women who will cheer you on and give you courage and confidence by hanging over the railing of your life, declaring, "I believe in you! You can do it!

While the crisis lasted, people loved each other," she wrote in her autobiography. "It was as though they were united in Christian solidarity.

My feeling was that there are no victories when you're a geek. Actually, I take that back. There is a victory: you still have your friends, and you've gotten through the experience alive. That's the biggest victory you can have in high school.

Television, I'm afraid, has isolated us more than race, class, or ethnicity.

When we have no families, we must find support elsewhere. Sometimes in strangers. We're all alone on this earth. We must take any hand that's offered us. I offer you mine...I'll be your friend, if you wish. The faithful kind. —Elva

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band.

Community gardens] were oases in the urban landscape of fear, places where people could safely offer trust, helpfulness, charity, without need of an earthquake or hurricane...Community gardens are places where people rediscover not only generosity, but the pleasure of coming together. I salute all those who give their time and talents to rebuilding that sense of belonging.

The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends. Here you have a million crabs living in a million crevices.

There, too, you are one among millions. But there at least you know your neighbors. Here, one cannot say that. The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends.

I used to try to patch up the whole world. For thirty-six years I worked for different groups, promoting world government, setting up conferences on pacifism, raising money, stuffing envelopes. Not that I've given up the fight. I've just switched battlefields, from the entire planet to this corner of Cleveland. Sometimes I've actually had more effect on the world since I [have].

But of one thing I am sure; so long as any of us take it upon only our own shoulders to solve a problem, we will be limited in how well we solve it.

Free action is to live in the present society as though it were a natural society.

Education is a natural community function and occurs inevitably, since the young grow up on the old, towards their activities, and into (or against) their institutions; and the old foster, teach, train, exploit and abuse the young. Even neglect of the young, except physical neglect, has an educational effect -- not the worst possible.

Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders.

One of the less publicized benefits of the open source movement is that it has made it easier to learn to program.

Programmers tend to be divided into tribes by the languages they use. More even than by the kinds of programs they write.

Users are a double-edged sword. They can help you improve your language, but they can also deter you from improving. So choose your users carefully, and be slow to grow their number. Having users is like optimization: the wise course is to delay it.

In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose. But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids make one out of nothing.

So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know.

Yes, Saul Alinsky, icon of the political left, whose admirers include Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, commenced his magnum opus—the one for which he is hailed by progressives, a book not only read by Clinton but used as a text by Obama in Chicago as a teacher of community organizing—with an acknowledgement of the devil.