Quotes About Community

When humor goes, there goes civilization

Anthropologists have long known that when a tribe of people lose their feeling that their way of life is worth-while they may stop reproducing, or in large numbers simply lie down and die beside streams full of fish: food is not the primary nourishment of man.

Better not to be oneself, better to live tucked into others, embedded in a safe framework of social and cultural obligations and duties.

These are, in sum, the two great uniquenesses of human life—regularized food-sharing and cooperation with others—and they are unknown among the subhuman primates.

Our task for the future is exploring what it means for each individual to be a member of earth's household, a commonwealth of kindred beings. Whether we will use our freedom to encapsulate ourselves in narrow, tribal, paranoid personalities and create more bloody Utopias or to form compassionate communities of the abandoned is still to be decided.

For what are we born if not to aid one another?

The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be together.

I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe, the older waiter said. With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night. I want to go home and into bed. We are of two different kinds, the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night. I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe.

To go to bed at night in Madrid marks you as a little queer. For a long time your friends will be a little uncomfortable about it. Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night. Appointments with a friend are habitually made for after midnight at the cafe.

I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation.

In a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you.

He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them.

my family's going to eat as long as anybody eats. What they're trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That's what I hear. I hear they're buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they're going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists.

Nessun uomo è un'isola, completo in se stesso; ogni uomo è un pezzo del continente, una parte del tutto. Se anche solo una nuvola venisse lavata via dal mare, l'Europa ne sarebbe diminuita, come se le mancasse un promontorio, come se venisse a mancare una dimora di amici tuoi, o la tua stessa casa. La morte di qualsiasi uomo mi sminuisce, perché io sono parte dell'umanità. E dunque non chiedere mai per chi suona la campana: suona per te.

Don't bother with churches, government buildings or city squares, if you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars

With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.

We're no kin," Thomas Hudson said. "We just used to live in the same town and make some of the same mistakes.

But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.

That's two dollars and a half. Who can we borrow that from?" "That's easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a half.

he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

For what are we born if not to aid one another? And to listen and say nothing is a cold enough aid.

Nimeni n-ar trebui s? r?mân? singur când îmb?trâneÈ™te.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

never asks for whom the bell tolls;it tolls for you.