Quotes about Community

It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.
- The Dalai Lama

I am a part of all that I have met.
- Alfred Tennyson

This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century -- solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
- Elie Wiesel

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
- George Bernard Shaw

The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.
- Lyndon B. Johnson

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.
- M. Scott Peck

Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

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

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
- Mitsugi Saotome

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been - a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.
- Starhawk

A first grader should understand that her or his culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society...Cultural relativity is defensible, attractive. It’s a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
- Rollo May

Quotes about Language

If you talk to [someone] in a language [he or she] understands, that goes to [the person's] head. If you talk to [somebody] in [his or her] language, that goes to [the] heart.
- Nelson Mandela

Being exposed to the existence of other languages increases the perception that the world is populated by people who not only speak differently from oneself but whose cultures and philosophies are other than one's own. Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry but by demonstrating that all people cry, laugh, eat, worry and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends.
- Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

How many languages are there in the world? How about 5 billion! Each of us talks, listens, and thinks in his/her own special language that has been shaped by our culture, experiences, profession, personality, mores and attitudes. The chances of us meeting someone else who talks the exact same language is pretty remote.
- Anonymous

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
- Gaston Bachelard

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.
- Ingrid Bengis

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.
- Orson Rega Card

To have another language is to possess a second soul.
- Charlemagne

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
- George Eliot

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.
- John French

Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
- Samuel Johnson

Language is the inventory of human experience.
- L. W. Lockhart

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.
- Dave Barry

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.
- Katherine Dunn

Language is wine upon the lips.
- Virginia Woolf

There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all.
- Anonymous

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

There is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!
- Maria Montessori

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
- Toni Morrison

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.
- Benjamin Lee Whorf

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
- Kofi Annan

We cannot be divided either by the languages we speak, by the faiths we profess or by the political views we choose.
- Viktor Yushchenko

At present, roughly 5,1000 languages are spoken around the globe.... Yet many indicators suggest that within a generation or two, not more than 100 of these languages will survive. Languages are dying out every bit as quickly as species. While in the latter case, plants and animals disappear from the history of nature never to be seen again, with the demise of languages, entire cultures are vanishing from the history of civilization never to be lived again.
- Wolfgang Sachs

If you like these quotes, check out the MotherTongues T-shirts that speak about community, cultivate cultural understanding, cherish connections and aim for peaceful relationships.