Quotes About Interdependence

John Donne, the sixteenth-century poet, wrote these familiar but profound words: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

That word means 'earth-dream'. And, depending on how you use it, it means we, the people, are dreaming the earth into being. And it also means the earth is dreaming us, the people, into being. We are dreaming each other. And making each other real. And it means other things, too, that I don't understand. That I might never understand. But I am going to keep learning.

Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against the starvation. We survived because we trusted one another.

I would never have written it without you. (Erin) And I would never have lived without you. (V'Aiden)

If I give Susan a new Cuisinart then she'll be happy ... If she's thankful to me, my life will be better ... she will do something for me.

My spirit life is also the medium in which I live. It's not something that comes and goes. Without one the other wouldn't exist.

The problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces a Separation Cosmology, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.

Everything we do impacts someone else's life.

People are intimately bound up with the diversity of life on Earth.

If you never put your life in someone else's hands, then you can't really expect them to put theirs in yours. In the long run, never trusting anyone is a hard way to live.

Happily, though we must each walk through life on our own, we don't have to do it alone.

You are dependent if you allow the weaknesses of other people to ruin your emotional life!

Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result.

Humans are just another form. You're another lifeform of energy. You think you're independent of life, and you can't be that way. You're causing death. You're causing a lot of death and it's your own. And we're trying to help you, but we came and we were killed by many of you.

If you and another person had exactly the same values, one of you would not be necessary!

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Yet each country had items that the other needed. The Arridi had reserves of red gold and iron in their deserts that the Toscans required to finance and equip their large armies. Even more important, Toscans had become inordinately fond of kafay, the rich coffee grown by the Arridi.

Lions, wolves, and vultures don't live together in herds, droves or flocks. Of all animals of prey, man is the only sociable one. Every one of us preys upon his neighbor, and yet we herd together.

the strands that connect us are frail, so don't hang great weights on slender wires...

Steps to an Ecology of Mind.7 Bateson

if I see myself only in terms of myself, I am always going to be wrong. To fully understand who I am and what I am capable of, I need to always see myself in terms of a community.

London created the Underground, and the Underground created London.

A man who is not as evolved as the woman he is with will hold her back, drain her spirit, and prevent the film of her life playing out to its intended conclusion.

All of life is relationship. We relate to people, things, and ideas, and our actions reflect the tone and substance of each relationship. How we relate to money, to the ideal of love, to nature, to our concept of death, and to our spouse reveals, in the moment, the truth of ourselves.