Community Quotes

“I've been proud to call Southern Nevada home for more than 35 years and it's been an incredible place to work, raise a family, care for my parents and volunteer in the community.”

“By international standards, many of the U.K.'s policies for civil society are exemplary. However, there are concerns about constraints on civil liberties - particularly restrictions on free assembly and about the rising tide of everyday regulation has seriously impeded community activity - from organising street parties to helping children.”

“Climate change is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room that the media dances around. But in the scientific community, it's a settled question: 95 percent of scientists believe this is happening with 100 percent confidence temperatures are rising.”

“AIDS is a very, very, very vicious disease, particularly in the black community.”

“In the midst of this utopia, which only your fellow lone voyagers would perceive, you used to transgress society’s rules unknowingly, and no one would hold you accountable for it. You would mistakenly enter private residences, go to concerts to which you had not been invited, eat at community banquets where you could only guess the community’s identity when they started giving speeches. Had you behaved like this in your own country, you would have been taken for a liar or a fool. But the improbable ways of a foreigner are accepted. Far from your home, you used to taste the pleasure of being mad without being alienated, of being an imbecile without renouncing your intelligence, of being an impostor without culpability.”

“If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.”

“I think the main thing is to find something you care about. A cause. I think it starts with others. Who do you look up to? Who do you want to help? Start in your own community.”

“Members of the LGBT community should feel welcome and know their rights are protected regardless of what state they reside in.”

“It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.”

“I am excited to partner with Rastaclat and give back to the Los Angeles community in a cool and creative way. It is incredible that Rastaclat changes something as simple as my football cleat laces into a work of art.”

“I was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, about 20 miles from Kalamazoo. I lived around there for about seven years. That community is one that I really care about.”

“Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.”

“Behind closed doors they had what were legendary battles I hear but when the doors opened there was absolute unity. Not a crack could be found. No separation whatsoever. They were locked together for the good of the community.”

“People who are starving and dressed in rags don’t want to hear someone read a list of propositional “good news.” They want to see the good news in action. The church doesn’t hold revival meetings and call it a day — we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, dig wells, and staff medical clinics. Social action isn’t an optional part of evangelism; it is evangelism. This is an important correction to the overspirituality that dominated evangelical Christianity just a generation ago. But the both/and of holistic mission still misses the heart of Jesus if we don’t see that the church needs the poor as much as the poor need the church. Jesus didn’t embrace the poor only because he pitied them or because he knew he had the resources to help them. Jesus embraced the poor because they were rushing into the kingdom ahead of the scribes and Pharisees — those who called themselves God’s people. Jesus welcomed people who knew poverty because they were ready to receive what he had to offer. Religious people, he said, could learn something from them. Our spiritual lives are linked to the material conditions of our life. When we feel like we don’t need much materially, we often have trouble remembering why we need God. We comfortable Americans can go through an entire day without thinking of God. But Jesus gave the poor more than food to eat and relief from their sickness. He restored them to God’s beloved community.”

“It's important to invest in our kids who are going to go to college or community college or a trade school.”

“I started to realize that there are a lot of people who are unaware of deaf culture, and I've been given a great platform to reframe the deaf community.”

“Google and Apple offer the image of a pseudo-commons to Internet users. That image recalls Nick Dyer-Whiteford's claim that, in light of the structural failures of neoliberal policies, capital could "turn to a 'Plan B', in which limited versions of commons, pollution trading schemes, community development and open-source and file-sharing practices are introduced as subordinate aspects of a capitalist economy, where voluntary cooperation subsidizes profit. One can think here of how Web 2.0 re-appropriates many of the innovations of radical digital activists, and converts them into a source of rent." Indeed, with the rise of the trademarked Digital Commons software platform and with the proliferation of university-based digital and media commons (which are typically limited to fee-paying and/or employed university community members), the very concept of the digital commons appears to be one of these reappropriations. But if, as part of what James Boyle describes as the "Second Closure Movement," this very rhetorical move signals the temporary defeats of the after-globalization and radical hacker movements that claimed the language of the commons, perhaps the advocacy for ownership of digital wares (or at least a form of unalienable, absolute possession, whether individual or communal) would provide a strategic ballast against the proprietary control of large swathes of information by apparently benevolent corporations and institutions. While still dangling in mid-air, the information commodity's consumption might thereby be placed more solidly on common ground.”

“Youth theatre isn't just about a precocious child that wants to sing and dance in front of people. It's for everyone; it's about a community, it's about being supported by your peer group. You learn skills - not just acting but all the other sides - working in the TV, film, and theatre industry.”

“People in the tech community may not like politics because it seems less interesting or less pure than what they're doing. But you see the result of not caring about politics. This is no longer an abstract problem.”

“The stuff that the cops do and the stuff that happens, what bothers us, the black community, is it's so blatant... It's so out in the open that if you can't see it, then you are part of the problem because it is very obvious.”