Quotes About Interdependence

If a person is not living for others, it does not mean he knows how to live for himself. One prefers anyone - a mother, a lover, a friend - who knows how to live for herself. Such knowledge is not selfishness.

Childhood companionship is forced upon the children (...) Childhood friendship, though is has ti meet the same geographical and temporal prerequisites, is something rarer: a child does not seek to bond with another child. The bond, defying knowledge and understanding, either is there, or is not; once a bond comes into existence, no child knows how to break from it until the setting is changed.

Healing yourself is connected with healing others.

Each planet has its own orbit agenda. Think of people close to you as planets. Sometimes it's nice to just watch them orbit and shine.

The world has no meaning apart from relationships. Some are just messier than others, some are seasonal, others are difficult, and a few are easy, but every one of them is important.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.

It takes a tribe to raise a human.

Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction.

Chad could put a solar panel on every roof in the country and yet become a barren desert due to the irresponsible environmental policies of distant foreigners. Even powerful nations such as China and Japan are not ecologically sovereign. To protect Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo from destructive floods and typhoons, the Chinese and Japanese will have to persuade the Russian and American governments to abandon their "business as usual" approach.

Yet since these triumphs actually result from mass cooperation, it is far less clear why they should make us revere individual humans.

Cuando aparecieron la agricultura y la industria, la gente pudo basarse cada vez más en las habilidades de los demás para sobrevivir, y se abrieron nuevos «nichos para imbéciles».

We are living in a global world, and whether we like it or not our lives are intertwined with the lives of people on the other side of the planet. They grow our food, they manufacture our clothes, they might die in a war fought for our oil prices, and they might be the victims of our lax environmental laws. We should not ignore our ethical responsibilities to people just because they live far away.

Zealous nationalists who cry "Our country first!" should ask themselves whether their country by itself, without a robust system of international cooperation, can protect the world—or even itself—from nuclear destruction.

in 1987, Thatcher said, "There is no such thing as society. There is [a] living tapestry of men and women…and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves."1

It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favored those capable of forming strong social ties.

When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up.

Just as there is no barrier between humans and other beings, neither is there a strict hierarchy. Non-human entities do not exist merely to provide for the needs of man. Nor are they all-powerful gods who run the world as they wish. The world does not revolve around humans or around any other particular group of beings.

Particularly in a xenophobic dog-eats-dog world, if even a single country chooses to pursue a high-risk, high-gain technological path, other countries will be forced to do the same, because nobody can afford to remain behind. In order to avoid such a race to the bottom, humankind will probably need some kind of global identity and loyalty.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word 'domesticate' comes from the Latin domus, which means 'house'. Who's the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It's the Sapiens.

Cuando se trata del clima, los países ya no son soberanos. Se encuentran a merced de acciones que otras personas efectúan en la otra punta del planeta.

We do not trust the stranger, or the next-door neighbour – we trust the coin they hold. If they run out of coins, we run out of trust.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me; but if I am only for myself, of what value am I?

Things joined by profit, when pressed by misfortune and danger, will cast each other aside.

Many women could learn from men to accept some conflict and difference without seeing it as a threat to intimacy, and many men could learn from women to accept interdependence without seeing it as a threat to their freedom.