Sunday, May 17, 2020 – Getting It Together
Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. ~ D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’s selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, A Square Deal
If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving. ~ Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. ~ John Donne
One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to know shame at the sight of poverty which is not of our making. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, as we place our stone, that we are contributing to the building of the world. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness. ~ Bertrand Russell
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. ~ George Bernard Shaw
“Independence” is middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. ~ George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. ~ William James
I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized. ~ John Stuart Mill
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
In the end, poverty, putridity and pestilence; work, wealth and worry; health, happiness and hell, all simmer down into village problems. ~ Martin H. Fischer
Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers. ~ Howard Thurman
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good. ~ Samuel Johnson
For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice. ~ Erwin Schrodinger
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature. ~ Edmund Burke
When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. ~ Oscar Wilde
Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. ~ Virginia Woolf
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth. ~ Thorstein Veblen
Any young man who is unmarried at the age of twenty one is a menace to the community. ~ Brigham Young
Community begins in mystery and ends in administration. Leaders move away from people and into paper. ~ Jean Vanier
In 1950, when the Giants signed me, they gave me $15,000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn’t drive, but I had it in the parking lot there, and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing. ~ Willie Mays
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules. ~ Alan Bennett
One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who’ve gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits. ~ Rita Dove
In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community’s armed might as well as its pride of place and clan. ~ John Thorn
Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell. ~ Renata Adler
Individuals can resist injustice, but only a community can do justice. ~ James J. Corbett
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
Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death. ~ Eugene V. Debs
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. ~ Eric Hoffer
When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that. ~ Gertrude Stein
This world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing. ~ Emily Dickinson
Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community. ~ Adelaide Hoodless
Just Above Sunset 