Quotes about community
page 28

“When Rome fell, the Christian answer was, "Create our own communities."”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Amir Taheri photo
David Horowitz photo

“The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

[David, Horowitz, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1153, Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too, FrontPageMagazine.com, January 3, 2001, 2007-02-17]
2001

“After being murdered at Stalin's orders, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, alias Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), lived on for decades as the unassailable hero of aesthetically minded progressives who wished to persuade themselves that there could be a vegetarian version of communism.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Leon Trotsky', p. 747
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

Eric Holder photo
Sam Harris photo

“The treatment of women in Muslim communities throughout the world is unconscionable.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Bombing Our Illusions" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html (10 October 2005)
2000s

Warren Farrell photo

“An earlier version of this volume was originally contracted for and produced as a monograph by Warner Modular Communications, Inc., a subsidiary member of the Warner communications and entertainment conglomerate. The publishing house had run a relatively independent operation up to the time of the controversy over this document. The editors and publisher were enthusiastic about the monograph and committed themselves to put it out quickly and to promote it with vigor. But just prior to publication, in the fall of 1973, officials of the parent company got wind of it, looked at it, and were horrified by its “unpatriotic” contents. Mr. William Sarnoff, a high officer of the parent company, for example, was deeply pained by our statement on page 7 of the original that the “leadership in the United States, as a result of its dominant position and wide-ranging counter-revolutionary efforts, has been the single most important instigator, administrator, and moral and material sustainer of serious bloodbaths in the years that followed World War II.” So pained were Sarnoff and his business associates, in fact, that they were quite prepared to violate a contractual obligation in order to assure that no such material would see the light of day. […] they decided to close down the publishing house […]. The history of the suppressed monograph is an authentic instance of private censorship of ideas per se. The uniqueness of the episode lies only in the manner of suppression. Usually, private intervention in the book market is anticipatory, with regrets that the manuscript is unacceptable, perhaps “unmarketable.””

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Sometimes the latter contention is only an excuse for unwillingness to market, although it may sometimes reflect an accurate assessment of how the media and journals will receive books that are strongly critical of the established order.
Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, pp. xiv-xvii.

Laisenia Qarase photo

“Reconciliation between our communities, following all the hurt and distress of 2000, is a critical part of the reconstruction of the country.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Excerpts from an address to the Commonwealth Workshop in Nadi, 29 August 2005

Arthur James Balfour photo
Maithripala Sirisena photo
Norbert Wiener photo
J.M. Coetzee photo
Phillip Blond photo
Howard Bloom photo

“The real core of communication is what information theory's founder, Claude Shannon calls "meaning." And meaning is not covered in information theory.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

Tommy Robinson photo
Adlai Stevenson photo

“Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Urbana, Illinois (1951); as quoted in Adlai's Almanac: The Wit and Wisdom of Stevenson of Illinois (1952), p. 20

Adolf Hitler photo

“To put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism. … the basic principle of my Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the principle of authority… the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourgeoisie is tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me?… Today’s bourgeoisie is rotten to the core; it has no ideals any more; all it wants to do is earn money and so it does me what damage it can. The bourgeois press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the devil.”

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

Hitler's interview with Richard Breiting, 1931, published in Edouard Calic, ed., “First Interview with Hitler, 4 May 1931,” Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews, New York: John Day Co., 1971, pp. 31-33. Also published under the title Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931, published by Chatto & Windus in 1971
1930s

Charlton Heston photo

“NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine. "Don't come here"? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

NRA annual meeting opening remarks http://www.nrawinningteam.com/meeting99/hestsp1.html, Denver, Colorado, 1999-05-01
Mayor Webb asked the NRA not to hold this meeting, which fell shortly after the Columbine High School massacre on 1999-04-20.
In

Jeremy Rifkin photo
George Mason photo
Salvador Dalí photo

“.. the paint marks [in Impressionist paintings] placed apparently without order and which suddenly became magnificently ordered if one knew how to make the right distance.... to communicate a deep, sun-drenched image of a stream, landscape or face.... My eyes were popping out of my head.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

as cited in The Unspeakable confessions of Salvador Dali, Parinaud, ed. W. H. Allen, London 1976, p. 42
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Comment on deviant Dali, les aveux inavouables de Salvador Dali

Rick Santorum photo

“So the gay community said, "He's comparing gay sex to incest and polygamy, how dare he do this," and they have gone out on a, I would argue, jihad against Rick Santorum since then.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Campaign stop in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2011-08-26, quoted in * Santorum: Gay community on 'jihad' against me for stance on marriage
The Hill
2011-08-29
Justin
Sink
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/178543-santorum-gay-community-on-jihad-against-me-for-stance-on-marriage
2011-09-01

Werner Herzog photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo
John Gray photo
George Holyoake photo

“Mr. Owen looked upon men through the spectacles of his own good-nature. He seldom took Lord Brougham's advice "to pick his men." He never acted on the maxim that the working class are as jealous of each other as the upper classes are of them. The resolution he displayed as a manufacturer he was wanting in as a founder of communities…. No leader ever took so little care as Mr, Owen in guarding his own reputation. He scarcely protested when others attached his name to schemes which were not his. The failure of Queenwood was not chargeable to him. When his advice was not followed he would say : "Well, gentlemen, I tell you what you ought to do. You differ from me. Carry out your own plans. Experience will show you who is right." When the affair went wrong then it was ascribed to him. Whatever failed under his name the public inferred failed through him. Mr. Owen was a general who never provided himself with a rear guard. While he was fighting in the front ranks priests might come up and cut off his commissariat. His own troops fell into pits against which he had warned them. Yet he would write his next dispatch without it occurring to him to mention his own defeat, and he would return to his camp without missing his army. Yet society is not so well served that it need hesitate to forgive the omissions of its generous friends. To Mr. Owen will be accorded the distinction of being a philosopher who devoted himself to founding a Science of Social Improvement and a philanthropist who gave his fortune to advance it. Association, which was but casual before his day, he converted into a policy and taught it as an art. He substituted Co-operation for coercion in the conduct ot industry and the willing co-operation of intelligence certain of its own reward, for sullen labour enforced by the necessity of subsistence, seldom to be relied on and never satisfied.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Woodrow Wilson photo
Mark Zuckerberg photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Qian Xuesen photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“I do not like to hear people talking of England, Germany and Italy forming up against European communism.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Charles Corbin (French Ambassador to Britain) (31 July 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 782
The 1930s

Rachel Carson photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Roger Scruton photo
Errico Malatesta photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Herbert Morrison photo

“It is because I have confidence in the reasoned appeal the Socialist Party can make to all sections of the community – manual workers and black coats alike – that I have decided to go to East Lewisham, if I am selected, emphasizing by this action my conviction that the soundest socialist appeal is that which is most universal in its scope.”

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965) British Labour politician

The Times, 10 January 1945.
Morrison abandoned his safe seat in Hackney South for Lewisham East in the 1945 general election despite it being a Conservative-held seat that had never previously returned a Labour MP. The move paid off, and he was elected there.

Larry Hogan photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Colin Wilson photo
Harold Innis photo
Sam Harris photo

“To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2010s, Lying (2011)

Reuven Rivlin photo

“The communities in Judea and Samaria [referring to West Bank settlements] do not threaten our existence, they guarantee our existence.”

Reuven Rivlin (1939) Israeli politician, 10th President of Israel

Israel National News http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/157986#.U5gRyvldXs9, 18 July 2012

Thomas Kuhn photo
Alexander Hamilton photo
Eric Holder photo
Derek Mahon photo

“It's practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude: the stifling and consolations of community. Also, the consolations of solitude.”

Derek Mahon (1941) Poet

Paris Review 154, Spring 2000 http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/732/the-art-of-poetry-no-82-derek-mahon

Albert Einstein photo
Kofi Annan photo

“The international community... allows nearly 3 billion people—almost half of all humanity—to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Awake! magazine, May 22, 2002; Can Globalization Really Solve Our Problems?

Arun Shourie photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Gabrielle Giffords photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Rick Perry photo
Angela Davis photo
John Gray photo

“Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.”

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 262-3)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Syed Ahmed Khan photo
Abbie Hoffman photo
David Brewster photo

“The only sure mode of acquiring sound ideas of our relation to the Creator is to begin with the study of ourselves, and to view God as a Father and Friend, dealing with us in precisely the same way as we would deal with others over whom we exercise authority. Conscience, that infallible Mentor "that sticketh closer than a brother," tells us that we are responsible beings; and in the domestic, as well as the social circle, we speedily feel the discipline and learn the lesson of rewards and punishments. The law written in man's heart points to the past as pregnant with events which may affect the future; and in the earnestness of his aspirations, and the activity of his search, he is gradually led to the mysterious history of his race. He learns that on tables of stone have been engraven the same law to which his heart responded; -that when all were dead, one died for all; and in the contemplation of the great sacrifice, he obtains a solution of the interesting problem of his individual destiny. The Sacred record which is now his guide, speaks to him of fore-knowledge and predestination, while, in perfect consistency, it records the ministration of descending spirits, and the holier communings of God with man. The Divine decrees no longer perplex him. They transcend, indeed, his Reason - but that Reason, the faithful interpreter of Conscience, does not falter in proclaiming the Freedom of his Will, and the Responsibility of his Actions.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

Charles Edward Merriam photo

“This volume is an analysis of the American party system, an account of the structure, processes and significance of the political party, designed to show as clearly as possible within compact limits what the function of the political party is in the community. My purpose is to make this, as far as possible, an objective study of the organization and behavior of our political parties. It is hoped that this volume may serve as an introduction to students and others who wish to find a concise account of the party system; and also that it may serve to stimulate more intensive study of the important features and processes of the party. From time to time in the course of this discussion significant fields of inquiry have been indicated where it is believed that research would bear rich fruit. In the light of broader statistical information than we now have and with the aid of a thorough-going social and political psychology than we now have, it will be possible in the future to make much more exhaustive and conclusive studies of political parties than we are able to do at present. The objective, detailed study of political behavior will unquestionably enlarge our knowledge of the system of social and political control under which we now operate. But such inquiries will call for funds and personnel not now available to me.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

Source: The American Party System, 1922, p. v; Preface lead paragraph

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“We are told that we are a pack of Socialists and faddists, and that common sense is on the side of the Unionist party. Well, for my part, I am for going in for all progressive legislation step by step. I do not believe in the short cuts. If Socialism means the abolition of private property, if it means the assumption of land and capital by the State, if it means an equal distribution of products of labour by the State, then I say that Socialism of that stamp, communism of that stamp, is against human nature, and no sensible man will have anything to say to it. But if it means a wise use of the forces of all for the good of each, if it means a legal protection of the weak against the strong, if it means the performance by public bodies of things which individuals cannot perform so well, or cannot perform at all, then the principles of Socialism have been admitted in almost the whole field of social activity already, and all we have to ask when any proposition is made for the further extension of those principles is whether the proposal is in itself a prudent, just, and proper means to the desired end, and whether it is calculated to do good, and more good than harm.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech to the Home Counties Division of the National Liberal Federation (13 February 1889), quoted in 'Mr. J. Morley At Portsmouth.', The Times (14 February 1889), p. 6.

Ali Zayn al-Abidin photo
Matt Taibbi photo
Hermann Hesse photo

“For a long time one school of players favored the technique of stating side by side, developing in counterpoint, and finally harmoniously combining two hostile themes or ideas, such as law and freedom, individual and community. In such a Game the goal was to develop both themes or theses with complete equality and impartiality, to evolve out of thesis and antithesis the purest possible synthesis. In general, aside from certain brilliant exceptions, Games with discordant, negative, or skeptical conclusions were unpopular and at times actually forbidden. This followed directly from the meaning the Game had acquired at its height for the players. It represented an elite, symbolic form of seeking for perfection, a sublime alchemy, an approach to that Mind which beyond all images and multiplicities is one within itself — in other words, to God. Pious thinkers of earlier times had represented the life of creatures, say, as a mode of motion toward God, and had considered that the variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Similarly, the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality. ”

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Alija Izetbegović photo
Zach Braff photo

“As a Jew I think it's really important to come to this place. There is such a tremendous sense of community, tremendous bond for obvious reasons. I don't know if Israelis have a sense of it because they live here, but I love it.”

Zach Braff (1975) American actor, director, screenwriter, producer

On visiting Israel. Ha'aretz http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/scrubs-star-zach-braff-falls-in-love-with-tel-aviv-1.258101 (Nov. 24, 2008).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Manuel Castells photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“Partly what you need to do is decide what your highest value is. It's the star. What are you aiming for? You can decide. But there are some criteria. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward. Maybe it should be good for you in a way that's also good for your family, as well as for the larger community. It should cover the domain of life. There's constraints on what you should regard as a value, but within those constraints you have the choice. You have choice. The thing is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the load. And they think, 'well, I won't carry any load.' Ok, fine, but then you'll be like the slead dog that has nothing to pull. You'll get bored. People are pack animals. They need to pull against a wait. And that's not true for everyone. It's not true for conscientious people. For the typical person, they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load. This is why there's such an opiate epidemic among so many dispossessed white, middle aged, unemployed men in the U. S. They lose their job, and then they're done. They despise themselves. They develop chronic pain syndromes and depression. And the chronic pain is treated with opiates. That's what we're doing. And you should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before. Rights, rights, rights, rights. Jesus. It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man. That's where the meaning in life is.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Abby Stein photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Rockwell Kent photo
Jacques Maritain photo

“A community of free men cannot exist if its spiritual base is not solely law.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Christianity and Democracy (1943), p. 43.

Nathanael Greene photo
Béla H. Bánáthy photo

“The degree to which they are a community is marked by the degree of effort they devote to attain their purpose, the degree of their commitment to it, and the degree of their commitment to each other.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 231; About the essence of the design community

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Newton Lee photo
David Cameron photo

“Every one of the communities that has come to call our country home has made Britain a better place.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Muhammad Iqbál photo
Carol Moseley Braun photo
Sam Harris photo

“The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam, Harris, Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks, Huffingtonpost.com, 19 March 2011, 5 May 2008 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/losing-our-spines-to-save_b_100132.html, (updated 25 May 2011)
2000s