Quotes about Community

We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsible within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone. (pg. 134, The Body and the Earth)

The principle of neighborhood at home always implies the principle of charity abroad. (pg. 260, The Idea of a Local Economy)

You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time. But, you see, I have well considered that possibility myself, and am prepared o submit to correction by anybody who cares about a community, who can show me how the world is improved by that community's dying.

The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don't.

I loved the different voices all singing one song, the various tones and qualities, the passing lifts of feeling, rising up and going out forever. Old Man Profet, who was a different man on Sunday, used to draw out the notes at the ends of verses so he could listen to himself, and in fact it sounded pretty.

A good community, in other words, is a good local economy.

For agrarians, the correct response is to stand confidently on our fundamental premise, which is both democratic and ecological: the land is a gift of immeasurable value. If it is a gift, then it is a gift to all the living in all time. To withhold it from some is finally to destroy it for all. For a few powerful people to own or control it all, or decide its fate, is wrong.

As strange as it sounds, broken people are fixed by other broken people. It's God's economy.

Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging.

All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need... To be known.

We, all of us, have been affected by war, hurricanes, drought, economic hardship. The result is a disease—an epidemic—called 'hopelessness.' It's carried on the air around here, and I am fighting it."

Lord, You're the only one here who knows what You're doing, so we ask that You come hang out with us a bit. Be the guest of honor at this table. Fill our conversations, our time, and our hearts. For"—Charlie pointed his voice in my direction—" they are the wellspring of life.