“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, From Brokenness to Community, 1992, pp 35-36
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Jean Vanier36

Canadian humanitarian 1928–2019

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“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Thoughts in the Wilderness (London: William Heinemann, 1957), p. 201.

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) English theologian, chemist, educator, and political theorist

“Care in the community is a partnership. A partnership between skilled and caring professionals and a concerned and caring community. Working together, to find new ways of helping these people who've been excluded and connecting them with neighbours who will understand and accept them. By providing, proper funding for the homes they will need and the support they so rightly deserve, we can show them how much we care.”

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) First wife of Charles, Prince of Wales

The Princess of Wales' speech on care in the community (17 November 1993) http://www.settelen.com/diana_care_in_the_community.htm

“We are not against the Open Source movement, but we don't want to be lumped in with them. We acknowledge that they have contributed to our community, but we created this community, and we want people to know this.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)
Context: We are not against the Open Source movement, but we don't want to be lumped in with them. We acknowledge that they have contributed to our community, but we created this community, and we want people to know this. We want people to associate our achievements with our values and our philosophy, not with theirs. We want to be heard, not obscured behind a group with different views. To prevent people from thinking we are part of them, we take pains to avoid using the word "open" to describe free software, or its contrary, "closed", in talking about non-free software.

“To give the community of artists a particular purpose would mean … debasing the community of saints into a state.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Dem Bunde der Künstler einen bestimmten Zweck geben, das heisst ein dürftiges Institut an die Stelle des ewigen Vereins setzen; das heisst die Gemeinde der Heiligen zum Staat erniedrigen.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 49

“We say we are a community first and a company second. That doesn't mean we don't care about profit, but that's a means, not the end.”

Kent Thiry (1956) Business; CEO of DaVita

Insights by Stanford Business: Kent Thiry: Developing Successful Leaders Takes a Village https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/kent-thiry-developing-successful-leaders-takes-village (18 November 2011)

“Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy. It says "no" to some of the things that people sometimes want to do. There are users who say that this is a bad thing — that the GPL "excludes" some proprietary software developers who "need to be brought into the free software community."
But we are not excluding them from our community; they are choosing not to enter. Their decision to make software proprietary is a decision to stay out of our community. Being in our community means joining in cooperation with us; we cannot "bring them into our community" if they don't want to join.
What we can do is offer them an inducement to join. The GNU GPL is designed to make an inducement from our existing software: "If you will make your software free, you can use this code."”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Of course, it won't win 'em all, but it wins some of the time.
1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

“At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it "National Socialist.' We said to ourselves that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to build up the state and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Munich - Speech of April 12, 1922 https://archive.org/stream/TheSpeechesOfAdolfHitler19211941/hitler-speeches-collection_djvu.txt <br class="br">1920s

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Jean Vanier36

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