Quotes about community

A collection of quotes on the topic of community, communication, people, other.

Quotes about community

Paul J. Alessi photo

“Communication is an essential factor in any type of relationship; friend, romantic, or business.”

Paul J. Alessi (1968) Actor / Producer

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/communication-is-an-essential-factor-in-any-type-of-relationship-friend-romantic-or-business-paul-j-alessi-q--10696117851703955/?mt=login
Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1568493/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_qt_sm#quotes

“We cannot deny that people who know more about the educational needs of local people are those who work and live within that community.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

All for Education
Source: :http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001221/122102Eo.pdf Page53-56

Martin Buber photo

“The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

As quoted in Encounter with Martin Buber (1972) by Aubrey Hodes, p. 135

Frank Zappa photo

“Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Zen Masters : The Wisdom of Frank Zappa (2003)

Joseph Goebbels photo
Dorothy Day photo

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

The Long Loneliness (1952), p. 286
Source: The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist

Nikola Tesla photo

“What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment…”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)
Context: While I have not lost faith in its potentialities, my views have changed since. War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only though annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.

Audre Lorde photo
José Mourinho photo

“I studied Italian five hours a day for many months to ensure I could communicate with the players, media and fans. [Claudio] Ranieri had been in England for five years and still struggled to say ‘good morning’ and ‘good afternoon.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2009/02/23/1122426/italy-v-england-10-classic-jose-mourinho-quotes
Chelsea FC

Jim Carrey photo

“Communication, hardest thing in the world.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Jim Carrey's Unnatural Act (1991)
Context: Communication, hardest thing in the world. Y'know, I can look at you guys, I can communicate to you all night, but, one-on-one, I'm terrible. It's just, there's certain things about communicating that really bother me. Like whenever I meet somebody new I say, "Hi! How are you!" Most of the time when people hear that they'll say, "Good! And yourself?", or "Fine! Thank you very much!" But sometimes they like to surprise you, "I've got no dream, man! I'm all dead inside!"

Angelina Jolie photo

“These problems do not disappear just because we do not hear about them. There is so much more happening around the world than what is communicated to us about the top stories we do hear.”

Notes from My Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador(2006)
Context: These problems do not disappear just because we do not hear about them. There is so much more happening around the world than what is communicated to us about the top stories we do hear. We all need to look deeper and discover for ourselves.... What is the problem? Where is it? How can we help to solve it?

Lemmy Kilmister photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Context: Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.

Michael Parenti photo

“Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

The Anti-Communist Impulse http://books.google.com/books?id=i6V2AAAAMAAJ&q=%22Our+fear+that+Communism+might+someday+take+over+most+of+the+world+blinds+us+to+the+fact+that+anti-communism+already+has%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage (1970)

Jean Vanier photo

“The great thing about people with intellectual disabilities is that they’re not people who discuss philosophy… What they want is fun and laughter, to do things together and fool around, and laughter is at the heart of community.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

The Gift of Living With the Not Gifted http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gift-of-living-with-the-not-gifted-1428103079 Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2015
From interviews and talks

George Orwell photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Sunisa Lee photo

“My community supports me a lot. I don’t want to let them down so I go out and compete for them.”

Sunisa Lee (2003) American artistic gymnast; first Hmong American Olympic gold medalist

"Sunisa Lee reflects on recent success, while looking ahead to possible Olympic run" in MPR News (14 August 2021) https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/08/14/sunisa-lee-reflects-on-recent-success-while-looking-ahead-to-possible-olympic-run

Vladimir Lenin photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Leonard Bernstein photo

“Music… can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist
Bobby Fischer photo

“First of all, we have to understand what communism is. I mean, to me, real communism, the Soviet communism, is basically a mask for Bolshevism, which is a mask for Judaism.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Press Conference, September 1 1992 http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/92fs$$.htm
1990s

Charles Manson photo
Werner Heisenberg photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
Richard Wurmbrand photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo

“I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because humanity is for me unthinkable without liberty.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937) by E.H. Carr, p. 356<!-- New York: NY, Vintage Books -->
Context: I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because humanity is for me unthinkable without liberty. I am not a Communist, because Communism concentrates and swallows up in itself for the benefit of the State all the forces of society, because it inevitably leads to the concentration of property in the hands of the State, whereas I want the abolition of the State, the final eradication of the principle of authority and the patronage proper to the State, which under the pretext of moralizing and civilizing men has hitherto only enslaved, persecuted, exploited and corrupted them. I want to see society and collective or social property organized from below upwards, by way of free association, not from above downwards, by means of any kind of authority whatsoever.

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream. … Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia. That's what I want for me.

Karl Marx photo

“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals.”

Vol. I, Part 4.
The German Ideology (1845/46)
Context: Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.

Alfred Freddy Krupa photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Keanu Reeves photo
George Orwell photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Hans-Hermann Hoppe photo

“Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"Reflections on State and War" (2 December 2006) http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe17.html

Oscar Wilde photo

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I
Context: There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Context: Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Context: It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti photo
Andrew Carnegie photo
Anthony Robbins photo

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”

Variant: To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
Source: Unlimited Power (1986), p. 237

Edward Bernays photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

BBC Radio broadcast, Russian service, as quoted in The Listener (15 February 1979).

Pol Pot photo

“When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

September 2018
Nate Thayer interview (1997)

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Heydar Aliyev photo

“In reality, the Khojali tragedy is one of the greatest human atrocities of the 20th century. Every effort must be made to seek the world community's unbiased and resolute position regarding this genocide.”

Heydar Aliyev (1923–2003) Soviet and Azerbaijani politician

Azerbaijan International (7.1) Spring 1999 http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/topics/Quotes/quote_aliyev.heydar.html

Barack Obama photo
Leymah Gbowee photo

“Regardless of whom you pray to, during war our experiences as a community and as mothers are the same.”

Leymah Gbowee (1972) Liberian peace activist

Gruber Foundation, Women's Rights Prize (2009)

Anna Kingsford photo
James Burke (science historian) photo

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Michael Jackson photo
George Orwell photo
Karl Marx photo
Hermann Göring photo

“The Russians are primitive folk. Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system. The delusion that all men are equal is ridiculous. I feel that I am superior to most Russians, not only because I am a German but because my cultural and family background are superior. How ironic it is that crude Russian peasants who wear the uniforms of generals now sit in judgment on me. No matter how educated a Russian might be, he is still a barbaric Asiatic. Secondly, the Russian generals and the Russian government planned a war against Germany because we represented a threat to them ideologically. In the German state, I was the chief opponent of Communism. I admit freely and proudly that it was I who created the first concentration camps in order to put Communists in them. Did I ever tell you that funny story about how I sent to Spain a ship containing mainly bricks and stones, under which I put a single layer of ammunition which had been ordered by the Red government in Spain? The purpose of that ship was to supply the waning Red government with munitions. That was a good practical joke and I am proud of it because I wanted with all my heart to see Russian Communism in Spain defeated finally.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman photo
Malcolm X photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“The language of communication will always need to be renewed.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

Saul Leiter photo

“I didn’t try to communicate any kind of philosophy since I am not a philosopher. I am a photographer. That’s it.”

Saul Leiter (1923–2013) American photographer

Saul Leiter: The Quiet Iconoclast (2009)

John of the Cross photo
Talcott Parsons photo
Clemens August Graf von Galen photo

“I encouraged them, each who was able, to serve the Fatherland…I have done this [volunteered] because I believe I must be a good example for my community.”

Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878–1946) German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal, important figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism

Galen to his mother, August 3 1914.

Norbert Wiener photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
George Orwell photo
Gregor Strasser photo
George Orwell photo
Thomas Paine photo
Jan Tinbergen photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it, for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just as man in general, having declared himself the centre of existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of today's ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.
Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as a humble apprentice beneath God's heaven; then, however, his responsbility for everything that is written or drawn, for the souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But, in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in misfortune, and even at the depths of existence — in destitution, in prison, in sickness — his sense of stable harmony never deserts him.
But all the irrationality of art, its dazzling turns, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on human beings — they are too full of magic to be exhausted by this artist's vision of the world, by his artistic conception or by the work of his unworthy fingers.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Ali al-Hadi photo

“The world is like a market; one community reaps benefit in it while another one faces loss.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 368.
General

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“We are exiting from communism in a most unfortunate and awkward way.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Interview with Joseph Pearce, Sr. (2003)
Context: We are exiting from communism in a most unfortunate and awkward way. It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed. Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme. The name of "reform" simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

Nikita Khrushchev photo

“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

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

Disputed
Source: Udall, U.S. Rep. Morris K., Khrushchev Could Have Said It, 2016-04-06, originally published in The New Republic, 1962 http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/udall/khrushch_htm.html,

Helen Keller photo

“Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.”

Optimism (1903)
Context: The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

George Orwell photo

“What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: Dickens's attitude is easily intelligible to an Englishman, because it is part of the English puritan tradition, which is not dead even at this day. The class Dickens belonged to, at least by adoption, was growing suddenly rich after a couple of centuries of obscurity. It had grown up mainly in the big towns, out of contact with agriculture, and politically impotent; government, in its experience, was something which either interfered or persecuted. Consequently it was a class with no tradition of public service and not much tradition of usefulness. What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.

Giovanni Morassutti photo

“Creating the kind of connections between people that lead to collective civic action, political expression, community dialogue, shared cultural experiences.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

Quoted in "Connected by a Thread: Arts Territory Exchange Residency in Sustainable Practice" by Gudrun Filipska, CSPA Quarterly periodical (January 25, 2019) http://www.sustainablepractice.org/2019/01/25/connected-by-a-thread/.

Jonathan Sacks photo
Eliphas Levi photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Nathuram Godse photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Fulton J. Sheen photo

“Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Second Series, p. 122
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)

Karl Marx photo

“Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto

Mitch Albom photo

“Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
Context: So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Jimmy Carter photo