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.
Live Like You Already Have It, and You Will
So many people, when asked about their goals, immediately sling them far off into some mythical "one day" and allow them to settle there. "I'll start getting up early when I have a job," they'll say. "I'll stop eating junk and start eating healthy when someone buys me a gym pass," they'll moan. "I'll give money to charity when I'm rich," they’ll vow. But this "when" is always vague. Why? Because the truth is that you are never going to reach the point where you feel like changing your life.
Live Like You Already Have It, and You Will
It's a tragedy that the prime trigger for human action is only when something goes terribly wrong. There are people around the world who give up smoking only when they get lung cancer; start searching for a job only when they have nothing left in the bank; start being grateful for their health only when it is challenged by a disease that has erupted beyond their control; start spending time with the friends who have always been there for them only after a devastating break up.
Of course, this behavior is the opposite of heroic. It's lousy. It unveils years of self-neglect in one big ugly back-to-back sitting.
It shows that we only care about ourselves when there's a problem – and we're all guilty of it.
So, what's the solution? What will spring us from this pit of self-neglect onto a plane of self-love?
Well, I'll tell you: the solution is for us to we start living like we already possess the change we want. And that we start now.
Put the guilt away -- today is a new day
There is great power in this method. Nobody demonstrates that power more than Jim Carrey, who as a young struggling actor wrote himself a check for 10 million dollars dated "Thanksgiving 1995," for "acting services rendered." He worked as hard as he possibly could toward that intention, and by Thanksgiving 1995 had received 10 million dollars for the hit comedy, Dumb and Dumber.
One way he achieved his goal – along with much more than he anticipated – was by having a relentless faith that what he desired was out there waiting for him, so long as he did the graft to bring it toward him.
The place most of us get stuck is one of thinking without acting. We imagine the ideal future for ourselves, then just expect it to turn up at our doorsteps like a generous party guest, bearing casual gifts of infinite wealth and health. The end result to such an assumption can only be doom and disappointment.
Visualization is not enough
Visualization only works when you are in alignment with the energy of what you want to attract. If you are slobbing about on the couch every day and night feeding junk to your body, do not expect your dream job/spouse/health state to come flooding into your life. You are not in alignment with your dream; you are in alignment with more debt, more rejection, and more disease.
The power lies not in what you do, but in the intention behind what you do. Had Jim Carrey just "worked hard" in general, maybe at a job he didn't like, or maybe worked on something unrelated to good acting like trying to please people, he would never have achieved all that he did.
Success like his back in 1995 comes from having that specific through-line: the services rendered. What services will you render? For, after all, receiving is just as much about giving. Hoarders are likely to never get much more – and if they do, they'll only be miserable because they'll never bring themselves to spend it on a deserving cause.
Serve the world and the world will serve you
Knowing what you can do for the world in return for abundance will help you live like you already have it. If your dream is to become a heart surgeon, the intention behind it should never be so you can afford beautiful holidays and flashy cars – those may be lovely by-products, but isn't the pride that comes with saving hundreds of lives the more fulfilling intention behind such a dream? Isn't that what will ultimately help you rest your head at night in peace?
To offer a personal example, a year ago, inspired by Carrey's story, in the midst of all of the volatile confusion, heartache, ecstasy and joy that comes with drama school auditions, I wrote out a template letter addressed to myself and dated it 31st May 2016, via which I had hypothetically been accepted onto a degree course in Acting.
The interesting part is that the date was completely random. I read the letter over and over for some time like Carrey suggested until I eventually forgot about it. I spent the year working extremely hard toward that goal, and – I still thank my lucky stars for this today -- in the end, I got a place. Over the past year I have grown more as an actor and a human being than I ever thought posssible. But that isn't the miracle...
The miracle was that I was accepted on the 31st May.
Make your own miracle
I only realized this a few months ago while reflecting on an old journal where the letter was crumpled inside. I glanced over the letter with a warm feeling of compassion for myself, because the institution I selected for my template was a school I received a call-back from but was ultimately rejected by. I laughed at how hard I tried.
Though it wasn't until I saw the date in the corner that I rushed for my actual acceptance letter -- and my eyes started to well up with tears. The dates on both letters matched! And I know in my gut it wasn't just a coincidence.
I had a goal, intended with all my might to achieve that goal, imagined myself having that goal, let go of it, and then all obstacles moved out of the way to bring about that goal.
As my beloved Oprah would word it, what I know for sure is this: when you are relentlessly in tune with a vision for yourself so much so that it motivates you to go about your life acting in a way that suggests you have already received that vision, eventually, you are going to achieve that vision.
It is law.