“Community cannot feed for long on itself; it can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them — unknown and undiscovered brothers.”

—  Howard Thurman

The Search For Common Ground : An Inquiry Into The Basis Of Man's Experience Of Community (1971), p. 104

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Community cannot feed for long on itself; it can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming…" by Howard Thurman?
Howard Thurman photo
Howard Thurman 20
American writer 1899–1981

Related quotes

“I am really interested in the different ways that language functions… When language begins to break down a little bit, it becomes exciting and communicates in nearly the simplest way that it can function: you are forced to be aware of the sounds and the poetic parts of words. If you deal only with what is known, you’ll have redundancy; on the other hand, if you deal only with the unknown, you cannot communicate at all. There is always some combination of the two, and it is how they touch each other that makes communication interesting.”

Bruce Nauman (1941) American artist

Source: Christopher Cordes, ‎John Yau (1989), Bruce Nauman, 1989 Bruce Nauman, prints 1970-89: a catalogue raisonné, p. xx: In answer of the question "How does your work reflect your views on the use of language today?"

Jerome Frank photo

“True, no man can be wholly apart from his fellows. But, if each of us is a promontory, yet the promontory reaches out beyond the social mainland to a point where others cannot intrude. Beyond that point lies an unexplorable lonesomeness, a unique privacy. It is a no-other-man's land, for others can't penetrate it, can't communicate with it.”

Jerome Frank (1889–1957) American jurist

Judge Learned Hand, reprinted in A Man's Reach: The Philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank (1965), page 49.

Giacomo Leopardi photo

“The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one's own knowledge is not to overstep them.”

Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) Italian poet, philosopher and writer
Jean Vanier photo

“Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal. We are not striving for perfect community. Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we would want them to be. Community means giving them space, helping them to grow. It means also receiving from them so that we too can grow. It is giving each other freedom; it is giving each other trust; it is confirming but also challenging each other. We give dignity to each other by the way we listen to each other, in a spirit of trust and of dying to oneself so that the other may live, grow and give.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, 1992, pp 35-36
From books

Barry Goldwater photo

“Where fraternities are not allowed, communism flourishes.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 36-37, as having appeared in the Baltimore Catholic Review.
Misattributed

Anaïs Nin photo

“Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve”

Anaïs Nin book Collages (novel)

Collages (1964), p. 116
Context: Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.

Nikita Khrushchev photo

“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can aid their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until suddenly they awake to find that they have communism.”

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Allegedly said shortly before his 1959 visit to the United States. Subsequent investigation by the Library of Congress and the US Information Agency found no source. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (following Lenin in State and Revolution) considered socialism a necessary transitional stage to communism, and Khrushchev affirmed this position in regard to existing communist-led states, not the United States. See " Khrushchev Could Have Said It http://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/online-exhibits/files/original/809230f1ccf3f96b76341d3a02b6506b.pdf" by Morris K. Udall.
Disputed

Brandon Sanderson photo

“Authority doesn't come from a rank.," Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket.
"Where does it come from?"
"From the men who give it to you. That's the only way to get it.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Parker Palmer photo

“When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself—and me—even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), pp. 49-50

Katharine Hepburn photo

“Children need boundaries, so they can know how far they have to go to get beyond them.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Related topics