Quotes About Community

Finally, it was time to go. At the doorway he said, as if it had just occurred to him: I don't understand how you can live here, and be an artist, among all this social noise and all of these people.

Everybody's got their tribe. Whose tribe are you in anyway?

I am a citizen as well as an individual soul and one of the things citizenship teaches us, over the long stretch, is that there is no perfectibility in human affairs.

Hey! 'Hey!' But there was no name to put on the end of Hey and a six foot two black man shouting Hey in a dense crowd does not create easiness wherever he goes.

I mean, if you want to help old people, you know, well, vote for a different government, don't send them cans of spaghetti.

Libraries are not failing 'because they are libraries'. Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

It's not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three-dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.

The single thing all women need in the world is inspiration, and inspiration comes from storytelling.

What is happening in Africa (& elsewhere) is because the men did not listen to the women & the women did not listen to the women either & because the people did not listen to each other & themselves & because nobody listened to the children & the poets. - Alice Walker

If you go out looking for friends, you're going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you'll find them everywhere.

Lonely people are terrible snobs about one another, I've found. They're afraid that consorting with their own kind will compound their freakishness.

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.

There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.

Make the attempt if you want to, but you will find that trying to go through life without friendship, is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.

They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.

one finds great comfort in good dinners

When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to.

All my skinfolk ain't kinfolk

We Afficans try raise our chillun right. When dey say we ign'nant we go together and build de school house. Den de county send us a teacher. We Afficky men doan wait lak de other colored people till de white folks gittee ready to build us a school. We build one for ourself den astee de county to send us de teacher.

Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!

Where is de house where de mouse is de leader?

John will never forsake the weak and the helpless, nor fail to bring hope to the hopeless. That is what they believe, and so they do not worry. They go on and laugh and sing. Things are bound to come out right tomorrow. That is the secret of Negro song and laughter.

Common danger made common friends.