Quotes About Interconnectedness

The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon—such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas.

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling.

There is an underlying unity in all things

She sensed that in some strange tangential way, he needed her shade as much as she needed his. And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.

They had always fitted together like pieces of an unsolved (and perhaps unsolvable) puzzle

Anyone who understands systems will know immediately that optimizing parts is not a good route to system excellence

Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.

There is no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not lead single issue lives.

Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.

We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

We are nothing mankind is all

It would be difficult to write about Véra without mentioning Vladimir. But it would be impossible to write about Vladimir without mentioning Véra.

Nie wystarczy, by?my byli szcz??liwi - trzeba jeszcze, by nieszcz??liwi byli inni!

In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess—we connect with Her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves.

The Judeo-Christian heritage has left us with the view of a universe composed of warring opposites, which are valued as either good or evil. They cannot coexist. A valuable insight of Witchcraft, shared by many earth-based religions, is that polarities are in balance, not at war.

Were mind and matter me, I would come and go like them. If I were something else, They would say nothing about me. —N?G?RJUNA, M?lamadhyamaka-k

As ??ntideva puts it in the Bodhicary?vat?ra: When both myself and others Are similar in that we wish to be happy, What is so special about me? Why do I strive for my happiness alone? And when both myself and others Are similar in that we do not wish to suffer, What is so special about me? Why do I protect myself and not others?

Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies

When the evening was over Alistair Cooke shook my hand goodbye and held it firmly, saying, 'This hand you are shaking once shook the hand of Bertrand Russell.' 'Wow!' I said, duly impressed. 'No, No,' said Cooke, 'It goes further than that. Bertrand Russell knew Robert Browning. Bertrand Russell's aunt danced with Napoleon. That's how close we all are to history. Just a few handshakes away. Never forget that.

Fifteen years ago I had an odd dream. In it, a medicinal plant that I was interested in, an Usnea lichen that is ubiquitous on trees throughout the world, told me that while it was good for healing human lungs it was primarily a medicine for the lungs of the planet, the trees. When I awoke, I was amazed. It had never occurred to me in quite that way that plants have some life and purpose outside their use to human beings.

Symbiogenesis is the formation of more complex life-forms from the union of two dissimilar, simpler ones.

Gaia does not use top-down control over the parts that make up the whole. that approach is the least adaptable and least functional of all

Goethe put it over two centuries ago . . . Life as a whole expresses itself as a force that is not to be contained within any one part. . . . The things we call the parts in every living being are so inseparable from the whole that they may be understood only in and with the whole.