Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

- Bertrand Russell

The spiritual path is not a solo endeavor. In fact, the very notion of a self who is trying to free her/himself is a delusion. We are in it together and the company of spiritual friends helps us realize our interconnectedness.

- Tara Brach

Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.

- Virginia Burden

It is the peculiar boast of our country, that her happiness is alone dependent on the collective wisdom and virtue of her citizens, and rests not on the exertions of any individual.

- George Washington

We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

- Thomas Merton

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

- Vaclav Havel

Simply being with other people who are also seekers and who are involved in the same quest you are is very meaningful.

- Dan Wakefield

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.

- John Locke

Spirituality is allowing compassion and love to flourish. When belongness begins, corruption ends.

- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

First, we are challenged to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

- Marshall McLuhan

And when that person moves away, someone else arises to take his or her place.

- Parker J. Palmer

I accept relationship as my primary teacher about myself, other people, and the mysteries of the universe.

- Gay Hendricks

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe...
At every crossing of the threads there is an individual.
And every individual is a crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects
Not only the light from every other crystal in the net
But also every other reflection
Throughout the entire universe.

an adaptation of The Net of Jewels, or Indra's Net, one of the oldest written creations of humanity

- Anne Adams

Without community, there is no liberation.

- Audre Lorde

You can make it, but it's easier if you don't have to do it alone.

- Betty Ford



One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery



I do not go to a meeting merely to give my own ideas. If that were all, I might write my fellow members a letter. But neither do I go simply to learn other people's ideas. If that were all, I might ask each to write me a letter. I go to a meeting in order that all together we may create a group idea, an idea which will be better than all of our ideas added together. For this group idea will not be produced by any process of addition, but by the interpenetration of us all.

- Mary Parker Follett



Imagine creating organizations and life-serving systems responsive to our needs and the needs of our environment.

- Marshall Rosenberg



It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

- Thomas Mann



Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.

- Deborah Tannen



We are in community each time we find a place where we belong.

- Peter F. Block



There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

- Eric Hoffer



Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in the free market. But it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, of mutual responsibility. The idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. Americans know this. We know that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things we do better together.

- Barack Obama



The earth is ready, the time is ripe, for the authoritative expression of the feminine as well as the masculine interpretation of that common social consensus which is slowly writing justice in the State and fraternity in the social order.

- Anna Garlin Spencer



I have inherited a belief in community, the promise that a gathering of the spirit can both create and change culture. In the desert, change is nurtured even in stone by wind, by water, through time.

- Terry Tempest Williams



Often attributed to Lila Watson, who has said she was "not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process" - the attribution here is the one she accepts.

- Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s



Religion is a pilgrimage through ages of hard experience in quest of the good society.

- A. Eustace Haydon



Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other's faults and failures.

- Mother Teresa



I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.

- George H. W. Bush



An appropriate symbol for the process of celebrating life, enduring limits, and resisting injustice ... is the beloved community.... The beloved community names the matrix within which life is celebrated, love is worshipped, and partial victories over injustice lay the groundwork for further acts of criticism and courageous defiance. From within the matrix of beloved community, there is a solid basis for social critique and self criticism: the life-giving love constitutive of solidarity with the oppressed and love of oneself. [A Feminist Ethic of Risk]

- Sharon Welch



This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.

- Elie Wiesel



Resistance to oppression is often based on a love that leads us to value ourselves, and leads us to hope for more
than the established cultural system is willing to grant ... such love is far more energizing than guilt, duty, or self-sacrifice. Love for others leads us to accept accountability (in contrast to feeling guilt) and motivates our search for ways to end our complicity with structures of oppression. Solidarity does not require self-sacrifice, but an enlargement of the self to include community with others. [The Feminist Ethic of Risk]

- Sharon Welch



In leadership writ large, mutually agreed upon purposes help people achieve consensus, assume responsibility, work for the common good, and build community.

- Joseph Rost



Religion is a shared quest for the values of the good life, the age-long, groping effect of [humanity] to create the social order in which human powers may flower in joyous fulfillment.

- A. Eustace Haydon



The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds.

- Abraham Lincoln



The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

- Frederick Buechner



Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



What cannot be achieved in one lifetime will happen when one lifetime is joined to another.

- Harold Kushner



A world community can exist only with world communication, which means something more than extensive short-wave facilities scattered about the globe. It means common understanding, a common tradition, common ideas, and common ideals.

- Robert M. Hutchins



If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

- Mitsugi Saotome



The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

- Jane Addams



There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.

- M. Scott Peck



I am a part of all that I have met.

- Alfred Tennyson



We don't accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.

- Sandra Day O'Connor