Community And Nature Quotes & Sayings

The tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive.It is the taking by the community for the use of the community of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. — Henry George

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls 'world opinion.' For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. "Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction. — Sebastian Marshall

We all, parents, educators, community leaders, and every ... citizen, need to come together to find new ways to engage children with the natural environment. — Laura Bush

Continually question climbing pursuits. Do they draw one back to the climbing community? Or do they lead along the [inner-directed] path? This questioning generates a tension that is heightened by disillusionment. Ultimately, one reaches an
emptiness, and this is where our basic spontaneous nature leads to the beginning of the path... Thereafter one can continually stand apart from the outer world of climbing, yet at times be fiercely involved in it. Philosophical and mystical dimensions emerge when the two worlds are brought together. — Jon Krakauer

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. — Edmund Burke

We might expect intelligent life and technological communities to have emerged in the universe billions of years ago. Given that human society is only a few thousand years old, and that human technological society is mere centuries old, the nature of a community with millions or even billions of years of technological and social progress cannot even be imagined ... What would we make of a billion-year-old technological community? — Paul Davies

Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations' true nature is that of a community of humans. — Arie De Geus

The Luddites ... asserted the precedence of community needs over technological innovation and monetary profit; ... The victory of industrialism over Luddism was overwhelming and unconditional; it was undoubtedly the most complete, significant, and lasting victory of modern times. ... To this day, if you say you would be willing to forbid, restrict, or reduce the use of technological devices in order to protect the community -- or to protect the good health of nature on which the community depends -- you will be calle4d a Luddite, and it will not be a compliment. ... Technological determinism has triumphed. — Wendell Berry

The further truth that the undivided mind is aware of experience as a unity, of the world as itself, and that the whole nature of mind and awareness is to be one with what it knows, suggests a state that would usually be called love. For the love that expresses itself in creative action is something much more than an emotion. It is not something which you can "feel" and "know," remember and define. Love is the organizing and unifying principle which makes the world a universe and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character of mind, and becomes manifest in action when the mind is whole. — Alan W. Watts

It crosses my mind that our generation may leave problems that are simply too hard for human society in the generations that follow. The structures that separate civilisation from disorder are thin and fragile. (But) I am not gloomy by nature so don't presume that the global community will fail the young people. — Ross Garnaut

While devastation created by nature, such as wildfire, tornadoes, and hurricanes, can be far reaching and cause cataclysmic losses, the trauma that haunts our dreams and is the most feared is man-made. Acts of violence and depravity committed by one human being on another are personal in nature and leave those affected by them asking the questions, "Why did it happen to me?" or "Why did it have to happen at all?" With the advent of technology, the general public can view a new atrocity every day on the nightly news somewhere close to their community. — Karen Rodwill Solomon

In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray. — Barbara Brandriff Crabb

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep, corrosive, obstinate differences - radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. — Lyndon B. Johnson

We may be entering a new phase of history, a time when we begin to rediscover ... the traditional teaching that power must entail restraint and responsibility, the ancient awareness that we are interdependent with all of nature and that our sense of community must take in the whole of creation. — Donald Worster

You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there, obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there, kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth. — Richard Grossman

Our choices at all levels-individual, community, corporate and government-affect nature. And they affect us. — David Suzuki

How can we share the gifts of nature? By sharing the monetary value that human beings assign to nature. The fundamental thing we need to abolish is the mechanism by which people unfairly profit from land. The solution is simple: Property owners merely need to pay the communities from which they receive benefits through their exclusive use of land the exact market value of the benefits they receive.

When land users pay significant proportions of the rental value of land to their local communities, they rightfully reimburse their communities. These can be called Community Land Contributions.

Unlike, land value taxes, CLCs relate to the rental value (which subsumes all natural and social benefits) not land price. Also, a tax implies land users are being taxed on their land values while CLCs emphasize that land is a community good. — Martin Adams

I have, by God's grace, learned as a member of the Christian community what is the nature of God's mercy, which does not leave me to overcome my sin by my own effort, so I have something to say to the fellow-sufferer who does not know where to look for hope. And what I have to say depends utterly on my willingness not to let go of that awareness of myself that reminds me where I start each day - not as a finished saint but as a needy person still struggling to grow. — Rowan Williams

A month before the Treasure Fleet's maiden voyage, at the age of thirty-four, Zheng He commissioned an epitaph inscribed on a stone pillar over his father's grave in Yunnan province. He worshiped his father, who had died in battle. The epitaph, one of only three known testimonials from the admiral, described his father's character:

'He was content as an ordinary commoner, but he was brave and decisive in his ordinary life. There was no one in this community who did not look up to him. When he encountered the unfortunate, including widows, orphans, and others with no one to rely on, he routinely offered protection and aid. He cherished the bestowal of extraordinary favours. By nature, he was fond of doing good.'

This revelation of a softer version of manhood as the ideal in much of Asia provided another piece of the answer to the question of how Westerners came to perceive Asians as less masculine. — Alex Tizon

The world's religions are tribal and xenophobic by nature, serving to regulate moral rules within the community but not seeking to embrace humanity outside their circle. Religion, by definition, forms an identity of those like us, in sharp distinction from those not us, those heathens, those unbelievers. Most religions were pulled into the modern Enlightenment with their fingernails dug into the past. Change in religious beliefs and practices, when it happens at all, is slow and cumbersome, and it is almost always in response to the church or its leaders facing outside political or cultural forces. — Michael Shermer

[Faculty ... ] insisted that the lecture and live demonstration was a sacred space. Faculty talked about the importance of debating with students, responding to questions, and presenting a model for how to argue a point and respect differences. They talked about the sanctity of live demonstrations - the importance of doing science in real time. They wanted students to watch live, imperfect lectures and demonstrations and feel part of an in-person community. They say the classroom as a place where you learned to love the 'as-is' of nature as much as you love the 'as-if' of the virtual. — Sherry Turkle

Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values. — Michael Lewis

We must have increasing participation within the scientific community and reasonable scientific discussion, putting aside the stigma that UFOs are voodoo science before any real advances can be made in understanding the real nature of the UFO phenomenon. — Larry Holcombe

Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christianity community. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Show me a healthy community with a healthy economy and I will show you a community that has its green infrastructure in order and understands the relationship between the built and the unbuilt environment. — Will Rogers

Social Ecology:
The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man ... But it was not until organic community relation ... dissolved into market relationships that the planet itself was reduced to a resource for exploitation. This centuries-long tendency finds its most exacerbating development in modern capitalism. Owing to its inherently competitive nature, bourgeois society not only pits humans against each other, it also pits the mass of humanity against the natural world. Just as men are converted into commodities, so every aspect of nature is converted into a commodity, a resource to be manufactured and merchandised wantonly. ... The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital. — Murray Bookchin

The freedom or immunity from coercion in matters religious, which is the endowment of persons as individuals, is also to be recognized as their right when they act in community. Religious communities are a requirement of the social nature both of man and of religion itself. — Pope Paul VI

Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future. — Terry Tempest Williams

Perhaps because of the special nature of the TIA, or perhaps because of the limitless human capacity for technical fascination, programmers have continued to hack at and develop original VCS games. There is a thriving hobbyist community that has picked up the Atari VCS, using and refining emulators, writing disassemblers and development tools, and even manufacturing cartridges and selling them, complete with boxes and manuals. This "homebrew" scene could be seen, strictly speaking, as continuing the commercial life of the Atari VCS, but the community is not very corporate. It operates on the scale of zines and unsigned bands, with most recent ROMs offered for free online - even if they are also sold in limited releases of a few hundred copies in cartridge form. — Nick Montfort

Being LGBT is not a choice. It's not about "a sexual proclivity." It's not a "lifestyle," as you put it. It's about our identity. Pride is a time when we come together to celebrate our community and when others do, too. Just as we do for other racial, ethnic, and religious groups that are part of the "tossed salad" nature of our society. — Steven Petrow

To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose. — Russell Kirk

The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing
all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. — Thomas Berry

We look at the world through our own eyes, naturally. But by looking from the inside out, we see an inside-out world. This book takes the perspective of the world outside us - a world in which humans are not the measure of all things, a human race among other races ... In our estrangement from nature we have severed our sense of the community of life and lost touch with the experience of other animals ... understanding the human animal becomes easier in context, seeing our human thread woven into the living web among the strands of so many others. — Carl Safina

I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart. So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and — Charles Dickens

Pure community is a matter of no interest to any will; but a community which pursues a common good is of supreme interest to all wills; and what we have here said is that whatever the nature of that common good ... it must contain the development of individual powers, as a prior condition for all other goods. — William Ernest Hocking

As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of moralityonly by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits. — Stefan Zweig

Religious freedom certainly means the right to worship God, individually and in community, as our consciences dictate. But religious liberty, by its nature, transcends places of worship and the private sphere of individuals and families. — Pope Francis

Ifa teaches when a person engages in the development of good character altered states of consciousness evolve organically and become a tool for serving the community. The spiritual discipline of Ifa involves the development and elevation of our essential nature. consciousness are discipline they are a byproduct of alignment with our essential nature. — Fa'lokun Fatunmbi

Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self. — Criss Jami

The Big Book's chapter We Agnostics draws a line in the sand: God either is or He isn't. What was our choice to be (Alcoholics Anonymous, 53)? Nature abhors a vacuum and a state of nothing can't exist in either the material or spiritual world. This kind of binary thinking made sense in the autocratic world of 1939. But in a democratic, pluralist society, all-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion - a philosophical assumption that everything is right or wrong, good or evil, superior or inferior. In this millennium, people can hold opposing views and be equals in the same community. Our Traditions, lovingly and tolerantly, make room for more than one truth. That's a good thing, because the only problem with the truth is that there are so many versions of it. — Joe C.

When you break up the individuals from a community into individual units, they become disempowered because it's the collective consciousness and the collective energy of the group from which power comes. The principal driving force that lies before us is that we have to recognize the nature of community as the evolutionary step that we just took a step backwards from in the last century. — Bruce H. Lipton

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise. — Aldo Leopold

One of the criticisms we get is, 'Does the world need more plastic crap?' But you have to look beyond the plastic crap, to the design, to the experience, to the empowering nature of the MakerBot and the community. — Bre Pettis

Nature - the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful - offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. — Richard Louv

Being materialistic is part of the hip-hop community's nature, because jazz and blues and rock 'n' roll, when they started out in the urban communities, were about the American Dream, and the lack of opportunity in that structure. So they talked about everything - uplifting and getting what is perceived as success in America. — Russell Simmons

The Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group strongly supports green-line policies, because the only way to attract top level employees and their families is to protect the region's open space and environment. We want to build a community that is demonstrates smart growth rather than a model for L.A.-type growth. — Carl Guardino

From the late eighteenth century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society. — Raymond Williams

Neither has the wealth of a country any bearing on the valuation of its money. Nothing is more erroneous than the widespread habit of regarding the monetary standard as something in the nature of the shares of the State or the community.
Such observers fail to recognize that the valuation of the rnonetary unit does not depend upon the wealth of the country, but upon the ratio between the quantity of money and the demand for it, so that even the richest country may have a bad currency and the poorest country a good one. — Ludwig Von Mises

The Conservation Buck Challenge was designed to engage and mobilize the hunting community to preserve the outdoor experience for future generations. Our members will be ambassadors for ethical hunting, respect for private property rights, support for conservation funding and programs that give our children the chance to learn the valuable lessons of nature. — Gary Morris

All we can thus far say about the duration of the units of [the business cycle] and each of [its] two phases is that it will depend on the nature of the particular innovations that carry a cycle, ... and the financial conditions and habits prevailing in the business community in each case. — Joseph A. Schumpeter

Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation. In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones. All neighbors are included. (pg. 202-203, Conservation and Local Economy) — Wendell Berry

A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words Never Again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time. — Paul Rusesabagina

Nonviolent actions are by their nature androgynous. In them the two impulses that have long been treated as distinct, 'masculine' and 'feminine,' the impulse of self-assertion and the impulse of sympathy, are clearly joined; the very genius of nonviolence, in fact, is that it demonstrates them to be indivisible, and so restores human community ... — Barbara Deming

In every bio-region, one of the most urgent tasks is to rebuild the community of naturalists - so radically depleted in recent years, as young people have spent less time in nature, and higher education has placed less value on such disciplines as zoology ... ... The times are right for the return of the amateur, twenty-first-century, citizen naturalist. To be a citizen naturalist is to take personal action, to both protect and participate in nature. — Richard Louv

Faith is a quality of being: of being in touch with oneself, with life, and with the universe. It is a sense of belonging to one's community, to one's country and to the earth. Above all it is a feeling of being grounded in one's body, in one's humanity, and in one's animal nature. It can be all of these things because it is a manifestation of life, an expression of the living force that unites all beings. It is a biological phenomenon and not a psychic creation. — Alexander Lowen

The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends. — Thomas Berry

As stripped of our ancestral knowledge as we Settlers seem to be, we defy the position of patriarchal dominance and undermine the notion of cultural superiority when we reclaim the roots of our authentic indigenity. It is our birthright as human beings to declare our true status as People of the Earth (as it is for all cultural groups), and if we collectively reject the delusional separation from nature that Empire has forced upon us, we move back into right relationship with Earth Community. Anchoring ourselves deeply into our earth-honoring culture and reclaiming our EIK (European Indigenous Knowledge) is a powerful blow against the monolith of cultural imperialism. (Page 43, Chapter 6, "We All Have IK") — Pegi Eyers

I dreamed about the nature of man, and about a courteous, reasonable, and respectable community of men - while the ghastly bloody feast went on in the temple behind them. Were they courteous and charming to one another, those sunny folk, out of silent regard for that horror? — Thomas Mann

The nature of men and of organized society dictates the maintenance in every field of action of the highest and purest standards of justice and of right dealing ... By justice the lawyer generally means the prompt, fair, and open application of impartial rules; but we call ours a Christian civilization, and a Christian conception of justice must be much higher. It must include sympathy and helpfulness and a willingness to forego self-interest in order to promote the welfare, happiness, and contentment of others and of the community as a whole. — Woodrow Wilson

Though Christians have long blamed the Jewish leaders for the death of Jesus, in fact, he was executed for a political crime, sedition. The charge against him, posted on a placard over his head on the cross, read, "King of the Jews" The early Christian community, eager to deflect negative attention from the Romans, muted the political nature of Jesus' crime and thereby
contributed to what has become a long, horrible history of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus and of persecuting them because of it. — Howard R. Greenstein

We are the canaries in the mine. If we go, the last ecosystems go. So does the wisdom of how to sustain resources, live in balance with nature, and create communities based on cooperation, not competition. I think the rest of the world is searching for these values. I know we're here to share them. But we can only share them if we're here. — Rebecca Adamson

The Realistic Vision recognizes the
need for strict moral education through parents, family, friends, and
community because people have a dual nature of being selfish and selfless,
competitive and cooperative, greedy and generous, and so we need rules
and guidelines and encouragement to do the right thing. — Michael Shermer

The wall that separates insiders from outsiders is not born of human nature but methodically built, brick by brick, by tribal convention. The "wall" about which I will often speak in this book is not an organism or a membranous extension of some inborn aspect of "human nature". It is a mechanistic process-a barrier meticulously constructed by erratic community decrees as a means of identifying those who are part of the group and marking those who are not. It is not difficult to imagine the chauvinism that require a community to mark its territories and distinguish its members from its enemies. It is far more difficult to understand the kind of "outsiders" who are the subjects of this book-those who are part of the group and yet are rejected by their peers and cast into a terrible internal exile. It is an exile called "alienation". — Jamake Highwater

The true joy of humankind is in doing that which is most proper to our nature; and the first property of people is to be kindly affected towards them that are of one kind with ourselves. — Marcus Aurelius

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

When I speak of knowledge of nature, I do not mean industrial science, which argues that nature is inert and can be understood only to enable humans to manipulate it. I mean that sense of nature that Aldo Leopold had in mind when he said, A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, wrong when it tends otherwise. — Kirkpatrick Sale

When we are cut off from the fulfillment of our basic needs we seek out substitutes to temporarily ease the longing. Bereft of connection to nature, connection to community, intimacy, meaningful self-expression, ensouled dwellings and built environment, spiritual connection, and the feeling of belonging, lots of us over-consume, overeat, over-shop, and over-accumulate. How much do you need to eat, to compensate for a feeling of not belonging? How much pornography to compensate for a deficit of intimacy? How much money to compensate for a deep sense of insecurity? No amount is enough — Charles Einstein

Man was not intended by nature to live in communities and be civilized. — Epicurus

One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus - which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right - cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe - from circa 1100 onward - Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead ... — Joseph Campbell

I think one of the most important investments an organization like TNC [The Nature Conservancy] can make is in helping build local capacity - supporting the growth of a global network of small community-based entities. Help people who live within critical ecosystems help themselves and their neighbors to design a better future relationship between themselves and their natural resources. — Edward Norton

When you look at the Pueblo communities along the Rio Grande, when you talk to the Navajo people, the Ute people, and certainly the native peoples of California who still have their communities intact, it is what they have always known: that we are not apart from nature but a part of it. — Terry Tempest Williams

The new science takes us from a colonial vision of nature as an enemy to pillage and enslave, to a new vision of nature as a community to nurture. The right to exploit, harness, and own nature in the form of property is tempered by the obligation to steward nature and treat it with dignity and respect. The utility value of nature is slowly giving way to the intrinsic value of nature. — Jeremy Rifkin

Naturally and logically, people who forage rather than herd domestic beasts and tend crops for a living - that is, people who depend utterly on wild as opposed to agriculture nature for their welfare - inevitably come to view themselves as merely an element of it all, one member of an egalitarian community, alternately eating and being eaten. — David Petersen

The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve.

At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature. — Ian Breward

Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. — Johann Georg Hamann

The greatest solution of all is to live and work in partnership with yourself, your family and friends, your work and community, your nation, your world, nature, and spirit. — Marc Allen

In geometry, as in nature, the circle is the archetypal shape of wholeness and inclusion. It is an effective shape for nonprofits or community-focused efforts. — Maggie Macnab

My hope is that we can navigate through this world and our lives with the grace and integrity of those who need our protection. May we have the sense of humor and liveliness of the goats; may we have the maternal instincts and protective nature of the hens and the sassiness of the roosters. May we have the gentleness and strength of the cattle, and the wisdom, humility, and serenity of the donkeys. May we appreciate the need for community as do the sheep and choose our companion as carefully as do the rabbits. May we have the faithfulness and commitment to family as the geese, and adaptability and affability of the ducks. May we have the intelligence, loyalty, and affection of the pigs and the inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and playfulness of the turkeys.
My hope is that we learn from the animals what it is we need to become better people. — Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

The anti-psychiatrists held various, sometimes conflicting views but one particular line of reasoning is attributable to all of them - they all pitched their arguments against the power of the psychiatric establishment. They argued that the psychiatric diagnosis is scientifically meaningless. It is a way of labeling undesirable behaviour, under the guise of medical intervention. Those who are diagnosed ill are subjected to treatment which is a violation of human rights and dignity. The situation amounts to psychiatry having a mandate to declare some citizens unfit to live in an 'ordinary' community. It claims to cure but the supposed beneficiaries of that cure are often held in hospitals against their will. Within a structure like this it is impossible to understand the real nature of mental suffering and it is just as impossible to develop a coherent system of help. — Zbigniew Kotowicz

On a certain level, homeschooling is all about socialization. Whatever the teaching methods used in school or homeschool, it is ultimately the social environment itself that distinguishes homeschooling from conventional school. This social environment includes the nature and quantity of peer interaction; parental proximity; solitude; relationships with adults, siblings, older children, younger children, and the larger community; the ways in which the children are disciplined and by whom; and even the student-teacher ratio and the overall environment where the children spend their time. — Rachel Gathercole

The best places to live, work, and visit are those places that are willing to uphold their standards in the face of pressure to allow lowest common denominator development ... Successful communities understand that when they say no to development that is contrary to the long-term health of their community, they will almost always get better development in its place. — Ed McMahon

So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts. — Frances Power Cobbe

It is an act of homophobia to believe that people in the LGBT community are either too sinful to respond to God's call on their life, or to believe that people in the LGBT community have a fixed nature that will never, according to the blustering, unfounded, and uncharitable declarations of secular psychology, change by the power of God's command. What does God change? Our heart. That is where it all starts. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

What if more and more parents, grandparents and kids around the country band together to create outdoor adventure clubs, family nature networks, family outdoor clubs, or green gyms? What if this approach becomes the norm in every community? — Richard Louv

The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature — Graham Greene

In hunting and agriculture work had been a sacred function, one of collaborating with the forces of nature, and invoking the gods of fertility and organic abundance to countenance with their favor the efforts of the human community: pious exaltation and cosmic wonder mingled with strenuous muscular exercise and meticulous ritual. But for those who were drafted into the megamachine, work ceased to be a sacred function, willingly performed, with many pleasurable rewards in both the act and its fruition: it became a curse. — Lewis Mumford

Whenever we take the focus off ourselves and move it outward, we benefit. Life's most fortunate ironies are that what's best for the long run is best now, and selflessness serves our interests far better than selfishness. The wider our circle of considerations, the more stable we make the world - and the better the prospects for human experience and for all we might wish. The core message of each successive widening: we are one. The geometry of the human voyage is not linear; it's those ripples whose circles expand to encompass self, other, community, Life, and time. — Carl Safina

But in the early 1970s, we were not birdwatching. We were birding, and that made all the difference. We were out to seek, to discover, to chase, to learn, to find as many different kinds of birds as possible - and, in friendly competition, to try to find more of them than the next birder. We became a community of birders, with the complications that human societies always have; and although it was the birds that had brought us together, our story became a human story after all. — Kenn Kaufman

As one grows older, the sense of separateness is slowly reduced. Old people do not live on an ego level. Their concerns are not about their individuality but about the river of life, the family, the community, the nation, people, animals, nature, life. They can die easily if they are assured that life will continue positively, for they feel part of the river again, and soon they will be part of the ocean. When they are very old, they no longer belong to our time and space, but to all time and all space. — Alexander Lowen

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature - an aspect that is as deep, important, and interesting as sexuality or language (which we study intensely). Here's another treasonous thought: If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. That's the topic of the final chapter. — Jonathan Haidt

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by these emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience.
The aristocratic nature of art, however does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary, because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well as in idea as in fact, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior than those of the Community and founded more immediately in nature. — Pope Leo XIII

[I]ndividual readers may conceivably choose (or be led) to regard a given text as literary in cases where such a response is not shared by others, but until their individual responses lose their idiosyncratic nature by being adopted by a larger interpretive community, such responses will be regarded as being to a greater or lesser degree aberrant, and the offender will be regarded as lacking in good taste or good sense or both. — Patrick O'Neill

Mistaken
regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human
life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as
are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the
unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race. — Madison Grant

I don't think we ever get away from the fear of labels and being different. It's human nature to want to be part of a community. That's why excommunication and solitary confinement are such brutal forms of punishment. — Matte Bach

This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy.

--In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family. — George Saunders

Every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilisation; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered — Theodore Roosevelt

The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember. Children can grow up having no knowledge of the indiscretion of their father in his youth or the illegitimate sibling who lives fifty miles away and bears another man's name. History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. That's how life goes on; protected by the silence that anaesthetises shame. — M.L. Stedman

Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Contexts become wrong by being too small - too small, that is, to contain the scientist or the farmer or the farm family or the local ecosystem or the local community - and this is crucial. — Wendell Berry