Quotes About Community

Chi è incapace di servire il prossimo, vuole dominarlo.

The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.

The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.

Home is not a place, but rather, the people who love you.

What you know isn't nearly as important as who you know. Who will miss you. Who you will miss.

Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don't fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you've ever known is being part of the group.

Where there is support, there is no grief.

On one side of the seesaw is my education. My nursing certification. My twenty years of service at the hospital. My neat little home. My spotless RAV4. My National Honor Society-inductee son. All of these building blocks of my existence, and yet the only quality straddling the other side is so hulking and dense that it tips the balance every time: my brown skin.

Unlike the characters in the book, however, these different sorts of people don't seem to mix well. It is like the salad dressing Jessamyn makes: a little bit of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and some red wine vinegar. If whipped, they combine. But leave them to their own devices and they will sort themselves out again. I don't really understand this. When you have so many people, each one inevitably fascinating, why would you limit yourself to only those like you?

They look up at me and see a rich lady in maternity clothes. They don't realize I am one of them.

Home isn't a where, Olive. It's a who.

When I run across something so incredible that I want to show it to someone else. The problem is, when you make the choice to be a loner, you lose that privilege.

Having a family means you're never alone.

In so many ways my entire career has been about untangling the knots that society tangles itself in as we futilely attempt to separate the us from the them.

I had once left Coop because I wanted to see if I could be the best, if I could make my own way in the world. But living for months with the Fishers made me se the value of intrinsically knowing there was someone to help me up if I stumbled. -Ellie, Plain Truth

So you tell me... did this execution really make you feel safer? Did it bring us all closer together? Or did it drive us further apart?

When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the one person who doesn't.

On the second Thursday of the month, Mrs. Dombrowski brings her dead husband to our therapy group.

You know... how it feels to sit at a bar and not be judged- to just have a drink and let it all hang out. Why can't the church be more like that? Why can't you walk in and say, Oh, God, it's just you. Cool. I can be myself now. Not in a way that ignores our sins- but in a way that makes us accountable for them.

I don't really understand this. When you have so many people, each one inevitably fascinating, why would you limit yourself to only those like you?

We [the Amish] look alike. We pray alike. We live alike. ...But none of these things mean we all think alike.

That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

Death is scary and confusing and painful, and facing it alone shouldn't be the norm.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, Dr. King had said, what are you doing for others?