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.
Feels Like Things Are Falling Apart? They Might Be Falling Into Place
Psychologist, author, and life coach Ralph Smart has said that at the moments in your life when it feels as though everything is falling apart, things might actually be falling into place. I am here to expand on Ralph's view with a personal story of my own.
Feels Like Things Are Falling Apart? They Might Be Falling Into Place
At the beginning of last month I reached rock bottom financially. I couldn't afford the rent for my house, let alone transport or sufficient food, since the dregs of my overdraft had been drained by the deposit for the house; I wrote articles every night, partly because my own positive advice was the only thing keeping me sane, but also because it would help pay rent; and I had to do something I hoped I'd never have to do again: ask family members for whatever money they could lend me in the meantime just to keep my feet on the ground.
I'm sure many of you can relate to the risk of having to put your security in the hands of your loved ones.
How life taught me to count my blessings
Beyond this, my childhood also lacked. I grew up in a starved-of-space, three-bedroomed house with four other siblings raised by a single mother who had no support. Sacrifices were made, part-time jobs taken on when I turned 16, and pocket money non-existent.
Would I go back and change any of this given the chance? No. Because I am, as Susan Jeffers put it, one of the "lucky ones in life." I am someone who has had to overcome hardships again and again, and thus been able to "emerge a much stronger person" as a result.
My childhood taught me empathy. It taught me that people have it bad in life, even worse than me, and yet still find the strength to overcome. Like my mother did. She spent the majority of her childhood alone and worried and fending for herself, being carted back and forth between children's homes and foster families. She in particular taught me the bravery it takes to rise and stand in the moments that make your knees shake.
And the past month taught me that life has a way of falling into place even when you initially thought it was falling apart.
Things fall apart... the better to fall back into place
Things fell into place this month when I paid my rent and still had money to buy food.
For some, this may seem like a tiny win, or perhaps not even a "win" at all. But for me, it was one of my greatest triumphs. Because, in the process, I had to ask for the tricky things. I had to ask for loans. Extra hours at work. I put my security in the hands of others. I had to be vulnerable. I had to persevere.
And, as Smart predicted, everything has fallen into place.
All obstacles moved out of the way so that I could afford my rent. I am one with Paulo Coelho's concept that when you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Everybody's doubts dissolved when I held my head up high and said, "paid."
And, unusually, I came out the other end of this setback not more cynical, but rather even more grateful than I was before. A first for me.
What adversity awakens
Having to savor every penny made me thankful even for the smallest of things... The fact I have breath in my lungs; that I get to wake up in a bed; that I get to have a job; that I get to express myself through the written word.
Or that I get to live in the city I've dreamt about since I was 14, working towards the one thing I want from life more than anything: to become a professional actor.
This is not me claiming that things won't fall apart again. To the contrary. I know that they could fall apart on an even grander scale next time, for when you are putting yourself in more risky situations every day, naturally, the magnitude of failure will increase. Still, that's okay with me -- because as Susan Jeffers phrased it in Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, "Whatever happens, I'll handle it!"
It is important to remember that there can be no joy without despair, no prosperity without poverty. If you feel like you are being tested, keep going. If your inner compass is moving you towards something, you'll know that quitting on your path is an option you will only later regret.
Your family, friends, teachers, loved ones, will all doubt you whenever you reach a pitfall. Be sure of it. They love you, and so they will send along their doubts (shrouded as heartfelt kiss-on-the-cheek concerns) without apology – and when that happens, I advise to you to change the channel. Just. Stop. Listening.
Unless of course you come from a family of Nobel Prize-winning experts in your desired field. But even THEN, only you know what is best for you.
So when things fall apart, let them fall.
I have learnt to trust that it'll be eventually clear they were just falling into place.