Quotes on Belonging & Community
"Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
— Mother Theresa, Saint Teresa of Calcutta
"When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible."
— Dr. Brené Brown
“Belongingness entails an unwavering commitment to not simply tolerating and respecting difference, but to ensuring that all people are welcome and feel that they belong.”
— john a. powell
"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself."
— Maya Angelou
“We belong to each other. We are sister and brother. Born to love one another.”
— Garth Brooks
“True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.”
— Dr. Brené Brown
“You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
— Dr. Brené Brown
“We believe that the only viable solution to the problem of othering is one involving inclusion and belongingness. The most important good we distribute to each other in society is membership.”
— john a. powell
“True belonging doesn’t require that we change who we are. It requires that we be who we are.”
— Dr. Brené Brown
"One of the most important things about being a human being is feeling like you belong. If you get signals from your parents or your classmates that you don't belong… it can really have a profound impact on your mental and physical health."
— Dr. Bruce Perry
“I dreamed about a culture of belonging. I still dream that dream. I contemplate what our lives would be like if we knew how to cultivate awareness, to live mindfully, peacefully; if we learned habits of being that would bring us closer together, that would help us build beloved community.”
— bell hooks
“Let us all be from somewhere. Let us tell each other everything we can.”
— Bob Hicok
“What matters is that should difference enter the world of beloved community, it can find a place of welcome, a place to belong.”
— bell hooks
“What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? Who will we be to each other?”
— Krista Tippett
"If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life."
— Barack Obama
“The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation— speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities discovering a genesis of hope.”
— Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.”
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
‘“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
— Hebrews 13:2
"The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don't talk anymore, they don't sit down to talk and listen. They go to the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, update their status on the internet, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories."
— Paul Coehlo
"A lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other.”
— Ronald Reagan
“It used to be that people were born as part of a community, and had to find their place as individuals. Now people are born as individuals, and have to find their community.”
— Bill Bishop
“We found that a single, approximately 10-minute conversation with a stranger produced large reductions in prejudice.”
— David Broockman & Joshua Kalla
“We are not a country that is divided, we are a country that is disconnected."
— Pastor Bland Jr.
“The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.”
— Fred Rogers
“I've learned that it's harder to hate up close.”
— Michelle Obama
“The only way we’re going to make it is in the company of others. We need each other. In all ways.”
— Mia Birdsong
“I believe that we are here for each other, not against each other. Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life — whoever you are, whatever our differences.”
— John Denver
"We have survived apart, and distance has created many problems. We now have a greater challenge; we must learn to live together. It’s a greater challenge than surviving apart, but infinitely more rewarding.”
— Rev. Jesse Jackson
“Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples — while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.”
—George W. Bush
“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say, ‘It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”
—Fred Rogers
“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships — the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world, at peace.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
“What if parenting became less about telling our children who they should be, and more about asking them again and again forever who they already are?”
— Glennon Doyle
“The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”
— Dr. Brené Brown
“Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”
— Dr. Brené Brown
“Giving connects two people, the giver and the receiver. And this connection gives birth to a new sense of belonging.”
—Deepak Chopra
“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
— Howard Zinn
“We are a community of possibilities, not a community of problems. Community exists for the sake of belonging and takes its identity from the gifts, generosity, and accountability of its citizens.”
— Peter Brock
“I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Imagine a circle of compassion and no one is standing outside of it.”
— Father Gregory Boyle
“Dismantle the barriers that exclude.”
— Father Gregory Boyle
“Let your kindness flood the world.”
— Pema Chödrön
“Society is a conversation scored for many voices. But it is precisely in and through that conversation that we become conjoint authors of our collective future.”
— Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Conversation – respectful, engaged, reciprocal, calling forth some of our greatest powers of empathy and understanding – is the moral form of a world governed by the dignity of difference.”
— Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Stay awkward, brave & kind.”
— Dr. Brene Brown
“The greatest threat to civility — and ultimately to civilization — is an excess of certitude. It has been well said that the spirit of liberty is not being too sure you are right.”
— George Will
“You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one / I hope someday you'll join us / And the world will live as one.”
— John Lennon
“Use your freedom to serve one another in love.”
– Galatians 5:13
“Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify (build up) another.”
— Romans 14:19
“Turn soft and lovely any time you have a chance.”
— Jenny Holzer
“An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.”
— Bryan Stevenson
“Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.”
— Micah 6:8
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
— Winston Churchill
“We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.”
— Bryan Stevenson
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
— Nelson Mandela
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
— Nelson Mandela
“I thought about the meaning of pluralism in a world where the forces that seek to divide us are strong. I came to one conclusion: We have to save each other. It’s the only way to save ourselves.”
— Eboo Patel
“Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear. When I really want to hear another person's story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling.”
— Valarie Kaur
“When we choose to wonder about people we don’t know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of those we see as part of us.”
— Valarie Kaur
“Right relationship is knowing that we are interconnected and finding a form of connection that allows us peace.”
— Valarie Kaur
“We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Our goal is to create a beloved community, and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The larger your beloved community, the more you can accomplish in the world."
— Thich Nhat Hanh
“Get proximate. If you are willing to get closer to people who are suffering, you will find the power to change the world.”
— Bryan Stevenson
“Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just one step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
"When we know we are the bridge, we understand just how important we are, and why our impact must never be taken for granted. We are the beneficiaries of those who have come before us, and the custodians of those who will come after we are gone. We are bridges of hope. How can I become a good ancestor?"
— Layla Saad
“We must remain hopeful that a universal ethic of courage, caring, sharing, respect, radical compassion, and love will make a difference. We can never be too generous or too kind."
— Marc Bekoff