Quotes about community
page 40

“The worldwide quest for community typified by the networks of the Aquarian Conspiracy is an attempt to boost that attenuated power. To cohere. To kindle wider consciousness.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing

Communication

“We will and concede for us and all our heirs and successors, by the common counsel, assent and consent of the prelates, magnates, earls and barons and communities of our realm in our parliament that the Kingdom of Scotland, shall remain for ever separate in all respects from the Kingdom of England, in its entirety, free and in peace, without any kind of subjection, servitude, claim or demand.”

Edward III of England (1312–1377) King of England

Letters-patent (1 March 1328), quoted in G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 333–334

Peace, Communication

“All over the world, children and young people are being exposed, via the communications revolution, to such ideas. They are not limited to the parochial beliefs of a single culture.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn, p. 321

Children, People, World, Communication

“[W]henever there have been periods when enough of the country organizes and resists, we see movements of people and communities breaking through power. Progress is made. Rights are won. Education and literacy increase. Oppression is diminished.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Breaking Through Power (2016)

People, Education, Communication, Country

“We really need to understand that the North Koreans are not as traumatized by things like the "Axis of Evil" remark or things like this Vinson flotilla as some people in the Pyongyang-watching community seem to think.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

People, Communication, Understanding, Thinking

“Communism is all about breaking down nationalism, about uniting workers around the world, and North Korea has always been about the opposite, it’s been about racial purity and pride, so remember North Korea was isolated even inside the old east-block, even inside the Soviet block.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Park Jin Keol (March 2012)

World, Communication

“By the end of the Second World War, every American past the age of 40 had been subjected to some 25 years of anti-communist radiation, the average incubation period needed to produce a malignancy. Anti-communism had developed a life of its own.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

Life, War, Age, World

“There are many roads to tyranny. “Democratic socialism” is but the subtlest and most benign sounding road to communism.”

Trevor Loudon New Zealand politician

Will ‘Democratic Socialism’ Lead to Communism? https://www.theepochtimes.com/will-democratic-socialism-lead-to-communism_2777705.html

Communication

“What characterises anthropological research today more than anything is the recognition of complexity; the world is complex, cultures are complex, communities are complex, and analytical strategies must acknowledge complexity.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 4 : Theories

World, Communication

“The guidelines for achieving wisdom consist of three leading maxims: 1) Think for yourself; 2) (in communication with other people) Put yourself in the place of the other person; 3) Always think by remaining faithful to your own self.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 95
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Wisdom, People, Faith, Communication

“Modern policing must of course be visible policing and that means community policing, localised policing and having police visibility that police officers are empowered to do their jobs. For too long we’ve had our police forces, police officers tied up with regulation and bureaucracy. I want them to feel free to get on and do their jobs, I want them to know that we will support them.”

Priti Patel (1972) British politician

Said in an interview with the Braintree and Witham Times. Priti Patel interview on stop and search, knife crime, social spending and terror comments https://www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/17832581.priti-patel-interview-stop-search-knife-crime-social-spending-terror-comments/ (14 August 2019) 2019

Feeling, Communication, Support

“The intensity of animal and human contact is becoming much greater as the world develops. This makes it more likely new diseases will emerge but also modern travel and trade make it much more likely they will spread. [...] We have these outbreaks and the international community flies in but in the case of Ebola the disease went under the radar for four months. It’s really crucial we start to change that and make sure local health care infrastructure is better developed. People on the ground are vital. They are our first line of defence.”

Marion Koopmans (1956) Dutch university teacher

As quoted in Scientists put on alert for deadly new pathogen – 'Disease X' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/world-health-organization-issues-alert-disease-x/ by Paul Nuki and Alanna Shaikh, 10 March 2018, The Daily Telegraph

People, Health, World, Making love

“Dictators may torture or kill us, but they shall not succeed in demoralizing the soul of our movement, in bringing it to a state where for the sake of saving its life it is willing to renounce its ideal. Our cause will conquer in spite of everything, for in economic life as well as in politics the highest ability to accomplish and to advance things belongs to communities and organizations of free men working in free cooperation. These free communities will far outstrip every collective body, every organization that is built on compulsion and that can be maintained only by brute force; and ultimately the communities based on oppression will perish.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship "Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Life, Men, Soul, Communication

“As it is not only written by a woman but by a woman who was born into the same community as mine, I intend to edit and publish it in a proper form.”

Bangalore Nagarathnamma (1878–1952) Indian singer

Firstpost Article - An early 20th century tale of censorship - 22 Mar 2020 https://www.firstpost.com/living/an-early-20th-century-tale-of-censorship-how-bangalore-nagarathnamma-fought-social-norms-to-revive-the-legacy-of-muddupalani-8132331.html Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20200415202057/https://www.firstpost.com/living/an-early-20th-century-tale-of-censorship-how-bangalore-nagarathnamma-fought-social-norms-to-revive-the-legacy-of-muddupalani-8132331.html About Radhika Santawanam (Appeasing Radhika)

Communication

“I’m more and more convinced it’s only through communism that we can become human.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote of Frida Kahlo, in her letter from US, during the 1930s, from https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/09/kah2-s11.html 1925 - 1945

Communication

“Telecenters are facilities where the general public can access computers for free. The computers are usually equipped with a variety of open source, and sometimes closed source, software and are connected to the internet. Some Telecenters offer computer lectures and workshops to communities in order to improve social and technical skills. Such activities are an attempt to promote use of the technology to fulfill individual and community needs, increasing human capital and employment. The government, NGOs, and the private sector operate Telecenter units.”

David Nemer

(p. 66)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Communication

“The post-pandemic world should be a world of international solidarity – without unilateral coercive measures. This is the moment for the international community to reaffirm the principles of multilateralism contained in the UN Charter and demand that unilateral coercive measures that cause death and suffering be condemned by the International Criminal Court as a crime against humanity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2020

Death, World, Communication, Suffering

“In a well-ordered state, the sovereign power must remain in one only, without communicating any part thereof unto the state (for in that case it should be a popular government and no monarchy). Wise politicians, philosophers, divines and historiographers, have highly commended a monarchy above all other commonweals. It is not to please the prince, that they hold this opinion; but for the safety and happiness of the subjects. And contrariwise, when as they shall limit and restrain the sovereign power of a monarch, to subject him to the general estates, or to the council; the sovereignty hath no firm foundation, but they frame a popular confusion, or a miserable anarchy, which is the plague of all estates and commonweals.”

Robert Filmer (1588–1653) English writer

Source: The Power of Kings, p. 325

Communication, Parting

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Truth, Books, Religion, Law

“This, then, was the American people's first experience of a new social phenomenon that had come upon the world, their introductory education about the Soviet Union and this thing called "communism."”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

The students have never recovered from the lesson. Neither has the Soviet Union.
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

People, World, Education, Communication

“The quaddies, he reflected, didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 9 (p. 166)

Way, Communication, Idea

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Loss of the Future"
The Long-Legged House (1969)

People, Communication, Knowledge, Freedom

“There can be no question of a general overriding ‘Germanic’ or ‘Celtic’ identity amongst the different barbarian groups. Shared language might have facilitated communication and alliance but there is no evidence for or reason to suppose a higher level of ethnic identity on this basis.”

Guy Halsall (1964) English historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (2007), p. 58

Communication, Question

“It is very difficult for one person to change the actions of a government, but for one person to have a strong impact on a group at the local level is not impossible. This is happening all the time. People with something to say, with ideas that the community thinks are good and practical, are changing life in every country in the world. It is happening whether we are aware of it or not.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

Life, People, World, Communication

“A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story to build up relationships, to shape us. People-watching. But also being aware of situations that are currently preoccupying people. Codes of conduct change, but what the human heart wants really doesn’t.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On what stirs her to write in “Interview with Joanna Trollope” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/41/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-joanna-trollope in Writers & Artists

People, Communication, Passion, Change

“The law, as to preserve life is that of individuals, is a set of rules and practices … intended to appropriate to the law-makers the produce of those who cultivate the soil, prepare clothing, or distribute what is produced among the different classes, and among different communities.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 46

Life, Law, Communication, Clothes

“I propose hermeneutic communism: non-dogmatic communism, weak communism. Only this can save us. [Is is] without essences, without absolutes to be realized at all costs. It is only an ideal of equitable society, a society that progressively weakens violence like dialectics.”

Gianni Vattimo (1936–2023) Italian philosopher, politician

"Only Weak Communism Can Save Us" (2013)

Communication

“I am Christian, therefore I am communist. The first Christian communities were very communist... except that they were expecting the immediate end of the world.”

Gianni Vattimo (1936–2023) Italian philosopher, politician

"Only Weak Communism Can Save Us" (2013)

World, Communication

“Soviet communism and Western capitalism share the same crazy ideology: forced industrialization of society.”

Gianni Vattimo (1936–2023) Italian philosopher, politician

"Only Weak Communism Can Save Us" (2013)

Communication

“What private property does is connect effort to reward,
creating an incentive for people to produce more.
Then, if there's a free market,
people will trade their surpluses to each other for the things they lack.
Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.”

John Stossel (1947) American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist

Source: The Tragedy of the Commons https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=3893247&page=1, ABC News (21 November 2007)

People, Making love, Communication, Effort

“You will be a Parliament for the whole community. We used to say that we could not trust an Irish Parliament in Dublin to do justice to the Protestant minority. Let us take care that that reproach can no longer be made against your Parliament, and from the outset let them see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from a Protestant majority. ... Let us take care that we win all that is best amongst those who have been opposed to us in this community. ... And so I say: from the start be tolerant to all religions, and, while maintaining to the last your own traditions and your own citizenship, take care that similar rights are preserved for those who differ from us.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/dup/pr290312.htm to the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast (4 February 1921), quoted in Geoffrey Lewis, Carson: The Man Who Divided Ireland (2006), pp. 227–28

Fear, Religion, Justice, Communication

“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”

Bill de Blasio (1961) American politician and mayor of New York City

Twitter, 11:35 AM · Apr 29, 2020 https://mobile.twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1255309615883063297

Disease, Communication, Time

“… I tried not to dwell on it: sensationalising something like that is simply unacceptable. But it happens in so many families, and it must be faced head on. I was saying, Look: even in these immigrant, hard working, well-respected communities, this happens.”

Roshi Fernando Sri Lankan writer

On writing about sexual abuse in "INTERVIEW by Gwen Davies" https://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=246 in New Welsh Reader (Issue 92)

Family, Communication

“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

Communication

“Farmers have their dignity, just as others do. It is fine to make efforts to make them react to markets, but you cannot then tie their hands and take away their choices. That is putting them in a straitjacket. ... I have always felt that the Community should be able to say 'No' to its big brother”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

America

On GATT, quoted in The Times (16 October 1992), p. 9
President of the European Commission

Making love, Communication, Effort

“Europe is a commercial giant and an economic power of the first rank, but it is a political dwarf. Political cooperation in the Community will grow. The question is whether the supply services will follow.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to the press (3 December 1980), quoted in The Times (4 December 1980), p. 5
Member of the European Parliament

Communication, Question

“Comint represents the effort to gain access to, intercept and process every important modern form of communication, in every significant sphere, and in many countries.”

David Lyon (1948) British sociologist

§6, p. 95
Surveillance society

Communication, Effort, Country

“An experience has to be formed, no doubt, before it is communicated, but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to be communicated.”

I. A. Richards (1893–1979) English literary critic and rhetorician

[Richards, I. A., Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924]
Principles of Literary Criticism

Communication

“When we have commited to a relationship, we have commited to communication.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Communication

“Coloured communities would like to see coloured representatives. That is not racism, that is how nature works.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Source: As quoted in The Sunday Star (29 November 1991), South Africa

Communication, Nature

“We can't communicate the incommuunicable,
we can't explain the inconceivable,
life's fullness forever lies in wait about each one of us,
and the lonely emptiness of existence is permanent,
but a star deep in our heart lead us the way home.”

alexis karpouzos

Life, Way, Home, Star

“Payoff will come when we make better use of computers to bring communities of people together and to augment the very human skills that people bring to bear on difficult problems.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/348/000/#annotations:AVM5A_shH9ZO4OKSlBtx

People, Making love, Communication, Problem

“Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

World, Communication

“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are. Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

'A savagely broken food system': Cory Booker wants radical reform ... now https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/a-savagely-broken-food-system-cory-booker-wants-radical-reform-now. The Guardian, September, 15 2020 2020

Food, Way, Communication, Thinking

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill 1830s

Wisdom, God, Youth, Age

“Atomic war is inevitable. It will destroy half of humanity: it is going to destroy immense human riches. It is very possible. The atomic war is going to provoke a true inferno on Earth. But it will not impede Communism.”

J. Posadas (1912–1981) Argentine Trotskyist (1912-1981)

Attributed
War is Not the End of the World, 1972

War, Communication

“When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city—Birmingham, Alabama—five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism.”

Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) American activist

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, 1967, p. 4, co-authored with Charles V. Hamilton

Children, Food, Communication, Baby

“[T]he great Distributing House or Department Store... may be permitted to represent the modern spirit of organization. It is to the writer the most interesting of all forms of business, and by its constant and necessary publicity it occupies perhaps the most conspicuous place in the public mind. It usually employs the greatest number of people... It frequently... pays out in salaries and wages a larger sum weekly than any other single business, and is more often approached by those seeking opportunity to work than any other. Its daily transactions are large in volume, its cash handled is very great. It is intimately associated with every family in the community in supplying them with the necessities of life, and thus... enters into the daily life of the city in which it is.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Life, People, Family, Communication

“this is what I've noticed so far about people, people are like
🌺 🌸 F L O W E R S 🌸 🌺 they come in different shapes and sizes and colors and come from different places were like flowers… were ✨ B E A U T I F U L ✨ no matter what you are. So DON'T let anyone make fun of the color of your skin or nationality or weight or height or if your part of the
🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈 community or the language you speak. 💕 L O V E 💕 💕 Y O U R S E L F 💕
💕 F O R 💕 💕 W H O 💕 💕 Y O U 💕 💕 A R E 💕”

BisexualBitch1121

People, Making love, Color, Girl

“[Indian Muslims are taught] “to vote communally, think communally, listen only to communal election speeches, judge the delegates communally...express their grievances communally.”

Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000) Canadian academic

W.C. Smith, 'Modern Islam in India': as quoted in Arun Shourie. “Falling Over Backwards.”
Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (1943, 1946, 1963), Victor Gollancz, London, ISBN 0-8364-1338-5

Communication, Thinking

“Fascism and Communism… Polar opposites—no, polar the same!”

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

Churchill's remark to his son, Randolph Churchill. Quoted in Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman, James C. Humes, Washington D.C., Regnery Publishing (2012), p. 137.
The 1930s

Communication

“I think we should have international, legal community studies of cybersecurity and necessary laws, and countries should be encouraged to adopt these laws through the United Nations just like they adopt laws to prevent the abuse of children and protect human rights.
There needs to be a multidimensional, multilayered and multi-azimuth defense. That is, defense has to look in all directions. When you're talking about cybersecurity, you're talking about being able to protect your points. It's not directed against a country, but to secure your points of access or specific end points or network access. It's not as though you're arming yourself against a specific threat — you're simply undertaking all aspects of protection.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

"Civilization's High Stakes Cyber-Struggle: Q&A With Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.)" by Richard Adhikari, TechNewsWorld (2 December 2009) https://www.technewsworld.com/story/68787.html

Children, Law, Communication, Thinking

“Life is given in its own way, in a completely unique way, even though this singular mode of givenness is universal. Life is given in such a way that what it gives is given to itself and that what it gives to itself is never separated from it, not in the least. In this way, what life gives is itself. Life is self-givenness in a radical and rigorous sense, in the sense that it is both life that gives and life that is given. Because it is life that gives, we can only have a share of this gift in life. No road leads to life except life itself. [...] Life is absolute subjectivity inasmuch as it experiences itself and is nothing other than that experience. It is the pure fact of experiencing itself immediately and without any distance. This is what constitutes the essence of every possible community. Again, what is shared in common is not some thing; instead, it is this original givenness as self-givenness. It is the internal experience that brings to life everything that is and makes what is alive in this experience become alive in and through it alone.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 120
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Life, Making love, Way, Communication

“The idea of community presupposes the idea of something in common as well as the idea of community members who have in common what is held in common. [...] Perhaps there is only one and the same reality, one and the same essence, of community and its members. Let us give a name right away to this single and essential reality of the community and its members: life. So, we can already say that the essence of community is life; every community is a community of living beings.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 118-119
Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Life, Communication, Idea, Reality

“Each of us can contribute, though. With our votes, our voices, our food choices, our skills and our dollars. We must overhaul both corporate practices and government policies. We must transform culture. Building community around solutions is the most important thing. I am never going to give up working to protect and restore this magnificent planet. Every bit of habitat we preserve, every tenth of a degree of warming we prevent, really does matter. Thankfully, I'm not motivated by hope, but rather a desire to be useful.”

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (1980) American marine biologist and policy expert

Source: A love story for the coral reef crisis https://www.ted.com/talks/ayana_elizabeth_johnson_a_love_story_for_the_coral_reef_crisis (April 2019)

Food, Hope, Communication, Motivation

“Inasmuch as the essence of community is affectivity, the community is not limited to humans alone. It includes everything that is defined in itself by the primal suffering of life and thus by the possibility of suffering. This pathos-with is the brosdest form of every conceivable community.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 133-134
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Life, Communication, Suffering