Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
A community is so much more than people sharing a space. It's a living, breathing network of connections and shared experiences. While it's usually defined as “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common,” true community runs much deeper than that.
Diversity
It doesn’t matter how different we are. What matters in building a community is the desire to live in a peaceful and caring environment, despite all our differences.Good Neighbors
Good Neighbors
When searching for a new place to call home, we hope to stumble upon neighbors who can transform a neighborhood into something meaningful. We all need to be surrounded by people who genuinely care for the well-being of others. Only this type of people can create a community that is more than just a bunch of individuals living next to each other.
It Starts with One
Building a strong community starts with individual contributions, no matter how small. As long as you are kind and willing to help others in need, you’ll be a great community member. In exchange, your community will give you a sense of belonging and the feeling that you are never alone.
Here are 35 quotes on what makes communities special — community service, coming together, engagement, involvement, and support
Quotes about community coming together
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals.
JEAN VANIER
There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
MARGARET J. WHEATLEY
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
HERMAN MELVILLE
There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.
IDOWU KOYENIKAN
Our generation has the ability and the responsibility to make our ever-more connected world a more hopeful, stable and peaceful place.
NATALIE PORTMAN
Quotes about building community
We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.
CICERO
Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and know the other.
DAVID SPANGLER
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
KURT VONNEGUT
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
The minute we become an integrated whole, we look through the same eyes and we see a whole different world together.
AZIZAH AL-HIBRI
This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.
ORSON SCOTT CARD
Quotes about community service, engagement, and involvement
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.
MUHAMMAD ALI
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.
ALICE WATERS
Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless.
SHERRY ANDERSON
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
LEO BUSCAGLIA
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ANNE FRANK
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
DR. SEUSS
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
OSCAR WILDE
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
MAYA ANGELOU
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Quotes about community support
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.
CORETTA SCOTT KING
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.
JACQUELINE WOODSON
One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.
SHANNON L. ALDER
No man can become rich without himself enriching others.
ANDREW CARNEGIE
Quotes about community health
The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.
MARK HYMAN
For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people’s love and concern for each other.
MILLARD FULLER
Communities and countries and ultimately the world are only as strong as the health of their women.
MICHELLE OBAMA
When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources, public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children.
GWEN MOORE
And I believe that the best buy in public health today must be a combination of regular physical exercise and a healthy diet.
JULIE BISHOP
These quotes remind us of the joy of being part of something bigger than ourselves.
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Birth of the Butterfly: Our Inner Fuels for Change and Transformation
The power to change and transform is embedded within us all. We live as creatures of habit, yet change is the constancy that we all share. The energy of our universe vibrates with continuity, connection, and creation. A small change within one of us inevitably sends its ripples to another heart. When we fight against this cosmic flow, we step out of our dance with life, and are left bruised by the inner conflict and gasping for air in a breathless stagnation.
Our nature is to seek comfort on our journey. So when we find it, we stay in our comfort zone -- until we are pushed out, and forced back onto the path of our own evolution. Our continuous growth is an existential essential, and the only thing that propels us forward.
Birth of the Butterfly: Our Inner Fuels for Change and Transformation
We fear change after the warm glow of the well-known because it is intangible, something we cannot grip or physically touch. How can we trust something that is unapparent and ambiguous? When we lack trust from within, it naturally filters through, leaving us suspicious, afraid and uncomfortable. And yet, the beauty of life is the very mystery and wonder it keeps.
We have programmed ourselves to sit cocooned in the closet of comfort, preferring to cling to the falsity of the familiar rather than brave the power of possibility. For progress and growth, a deep awakening must often be forced upon us, through a painful occurrence or an inner upheaval and despair. Or an inner desire pushes us to finally emerge into the new, because the fear of staying rooted to the habitual overtakes the one for change -- inspiring us to finally and graciously break free of our cocoons.
Our catalysts and agents for change
We need to be moved quite harshly to be liberated from old habits and behaviors; inner turmoil and despondency prompt us to retreat and rediscover our innate power for reinvention. Our seeds of potential are not sewn in tight spaces; they are frequently found in shadowy open lands, hidden from light and elusively awaiting discovery. Transformation creates confusion and upset, distress and agitation, because a re-birth requires a great unsettling and an exit from what once was.
Life’s change agents act as catalysts for the shifts that are often much needed in our lives. Pain, loss, deep-seated fears, heartbreak, tough times and challenges serve to destabilize our foundations, ripping the comfort from our bones and sparking the light of transformation from deep within. It is only through an inner death, a finality to a certain way of being, that we are pushed toward a new way forward.
When we dull the echo of the inner voice that calls us to evolve and reach for new ground, we only encourage a more forceful push from the universe in some way. Catalysts are exertions and inner magnifications of desperation that knock us down, so we can better learn to fly.
Embracing our dance with life
When we anchor our thoughts, keeping them fixed and immutable, it whittles away our sense of openness, both in mind and heart. Our fear of change disrupts our need for movement and enrichment from new experiences. We move out of life’s dance when we remain rutted in thoughts and behaviors that are neither enlightening nor progressive. It is an inner struggle we all face, yet one that we can adapt to and flow with rather than battle against.
When we observe and liberate our thoughts we can adjust and amplify our mindset to one that does not lock us out of the fresh and unknown, but instead allows us to embrace it. Rather than fight against our challenges we can patiently and fervently guide ourselves through them. When we trust in ourselves we engage with the strength we have within; it becomes our backbone for fortifying our intuitive processes in alignment with a heightened sense of our inner being. Through an enhanced awareness of our transient nature we immerse ourselves into life’s beauty of continuity and rhythm.
The butterfly: a symbol of transformation
Butterflies are a symbol of transformation, joy and originality -- no two sets of butterfly wings are ever the same. They sweep into sun-soaked skies and swirl around petals of vibrant colors, moving swiftly from one to the next as they trust in their dance with beauty. Butterflies are the masters of metamorphosis and adaptability, facilitating change so that life continues. The caterpillar cocooned into her chrysalis does not fight to break the shell or resist her growth. She implicitly trusts in her own inherent timing and continuity of being. Only emerging free when her wings are strong enough to fly; out of the shell breaks the beautiful butterfly.
Butterflies teach us to seek our own flexibility and flow with life. To paint new pictures, brush stroke by brush stroke. We can understand that true beauty lies in our own unique reflection, and that through wakefulness emanates our natural pattern of existence. Just as the butterfly, we can gracefully acknowledge that change is necessary for unravelling our blossom of riches.
Birth of the butterfly
Chaos and conflict create the chemistry for transformation and propel an exodus of the inessential from our lives. We can choose to lace ourselves with a patient and unswerving trust that the new will bring growth and value to our journey. We learn and understand that the time of the faithful caterpillar expires only for the elegance and wonder of a butterfly’s wings to unfold -- transparent and assertive in its individuality, and dynamic in its new-found freedom.