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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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You Are Love: Reclaiming the Force and Beauty of Your Vulnerability
The truth of love lies in its purity and limitlessness. Love in its highest octave is a surging wave of strength; an undisguised energy that wears no masks, sees no barriers, and runs toward a call of need while everything else runs away. This is the love that is finely woven within us all. Every cell of our being is forged with a deep-seated urge to feel and give love, from our birth to death. Love shapes our entire spiritual and physical design; it is undeniable and fortuitous -- a chemistry of hope, creativity, acceptance and great passion.
Love illustrates to us the depth of who we are at our most fragile yet fearless. Love says that we are stronger and not weaker through her light. We can only love others with the same fibres of love that we have nurtured heroically from within, and so our love for self inspires us to love others with the same wholeheartedness. Hearts connect through an open dialogue of truth and authenticity, and we can only ask of love no more or less than we are first willing to give.
You Are Love: Reclaiming the Force and Beauty of Your Vulnerability
Love uncovers what fear attempts to hide away. Its essence resides in the distinct openness and giving space of our vulnerability -- the site of our most intrinsic strength. When we deny our vulnerability, we forsake ourselves. When we hide from love, we ultimately mask ourselves, and in that same obscurity inadvertently suppress all our gifts and inner treasures. Love needs an illuminating nakedness, a total stripping away of every fearful layer and veil of faintheartedness. How can we ask that love wraps us in her arms when we do not at first dare to expose her from our own darkness and fear to be seen? When we reveal ourselves to love, love unconditionally shows up.
The mechanics of our heart
Our hearts are configured to our own electro-magnetic rhythm and resonance. Hearts collide, feel and connect through an honest and tenacious exchange of higher love. Some may say that to love so openly is to show weakness, yet the infinite depth of a boundless love is the greatest measure of strength. Our elemental fragility is a bestowal we all carry -- it is the trademark of our humanity. When we shut down that inner brilliance as if it were a broken piece of our heart's engine, we lock ourselves out of life and every worthwhile experience that stems from it.
A locked out heart does not take chances, fight for dreams, or breathe in the wonders of living. Life essentially comes to a half-hearted halt. Fear casts an anxious shadow over our heart-space while love beams its amorous rays, and trust guides us through while suspicion keeps us asking questions. When we realize the capacity of our heart's true call, then we gain an idea of our vital inner strength and unique impression on all that we touch... and all that has the courage to touch us back.
Attachments to past wounds and old hurts
We deny our heart when we hold on to past wounds and the specters of old pain, some of which we may have never really recovered from. That inner pain erects another layer over the source of our vulnerability; it creates a sharper edge over what was once softer and imbued with love. The fears that we all feel at being exposed arise like scaffolding from the base of our being and cut right through the center of our heart. We allow fears and old ghosts to set up home in our space that was always intended as love's abundant abode.
We lose the truth of love when we encourage what has hurt us to overstay its welcome. When we cling to historic pain, it only tightens its grip on our heart. Our pain does not need our protection, it simply needs our love. When we patiently sift through inner anguish and weeping wounds, we can direct them to an exit point of rest and release. We move back to the nakedness of our soul when we can begin to peel back each layer of upset from every sword that left its mark. Liberating old wounds helps us find a pathway back to our heart's true north.
Being a heart-led human
Our mind will always channel fear and foreboding into our mind-space as a means of protection from us disclosing too much of our heart. Yet to refind the reality of love, we can swim towards an openness that we experienced before we felt heartbreak, betrayal, manipulation, and emotional weariness. We can reach that place of valiant vulnerability when we revert back to the loving intention we hold within; one that is resilient and mighty; electric and compelling.
We find revelation when we strip back our fears and tainted illusions. We are guided by our heart-led compass when we consciously rediscover each part of our intuitive tenderness. It is the love within us that flows like water, breathes in the newest air, and embraces each nuance and seemingly imperfect part of who we are. To know love, we must first be love -- unafraid, devoted and assured.
The beauty of vulnerability
As adventure-driven children, we innately knew love's value, and loved fearlessly, with our hearts wide open. We understood that its magic is free and expansive, with an all-consuming yearning that remains tucked away within us all; our fine blueprint.
Search for the blueprint by first acknowledging that it exists. We redefine love by being the most authentic expression and mirror of it -- propelled from within, with a velvety warmth that is intensely strong, yet exquisitely soft.
For more inspirational messages, check out theselove quotes