Quotes about Community

The only happy people I know are people I don't know well.

The best way to combat racism is to have blacks and whites relate to one another as individuals, rather than as racial abstractions.... It becomes much harder to make a nasty generalization about another group after you have spent time in the home of one if its members.

If we are to save a society in deep trouble, many changes are necessary. In terms of rights, two changes are mandatory. First, far more Americans need to ask what is good for society? before asking what is good for my group? Second, we need people to speak up on behalf of the one truly helpless group—children. For this to happen, people must start to think of children as human beings, not as property.

But the human being is a social creature. We don't merely want companionship, we need it to survive.

At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It's about what you've given back.

You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.

We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are. (...) The concept of Ubuntu says: A person is a person through other persons.

It is true that when we harm others, we harm ourselves; but it is just as true that when we help others, we also help ourselves.

A person is a person because she recognizes others as persons.

Thus to forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, that greatest good, communal harmony that enhances the humanity and personhood of all in the community.

Only in restoring the web of connection can we find peace. I'm sure it is possible to heal in a mountaintop cave alone, but for most of us the quickest and deepest healing happens in the embrace of others.

After all, we are created in the image of a God who is a diversity of persons who exist in ineffable unity.