community quotes

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.

We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Among us, who is above must be in service of the others. This doesn’t mean we have to wash each other’s feet every day, but we must help one another.

I think your values are always influenced by your family and your community.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.

There’s pros and cons of a big church. Cons is I don’t get to know everybody, I don’t get to go to their ballgame, I don’t get to marry everybody, but the pros are you get all this community, 800 ushers come in to serve, getting there at 7 in the morning on their day off and coming in on Saturday to make all those wafers.

Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

Look folks, we know who built this country and we know who is going to rebuild it. It’s you. Instead of vilifying you, we should be thanking you. We owe you.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

I have a big gay and lesbian following and they’ve been very loyal and kind to me.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

Where I grew up – I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights – that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.

Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious.

My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl’s grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That’s my real dream.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

Ours is a nation of laws: of citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them. So, to a community in Ferguson that is rightly hurting and looking for answers, let me call once again for us to seek some understanding rather than simply holler at each other. Let’s seek to heal rather than to wound each other.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

So while an incredible amount of progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you – and fight alongside you – until the job is done. Until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

Hate has no place in the house of God.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

I know why we’re strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it’s because there’s always been a growing middle class.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

I’ve known for years that the university underserved the community, because we assumed that university education is for 18- to 22-year-olds, which is a proposition that’s so absurd it is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone ever conceptualized it. Why wouldn’t you take university courses throughout your entire life?

My doorman is more important to me than any head of any company. He keeps us safe.

The citizens of Tumortown are forever assailed with cures and rumors of cures.