• "The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother, and living close to him in community so we can show our love for Him."
    — Dorothy Day in Seeds of the Spirit by Richard Bell and Barbara Battin
  • "In African society, a person is first and foremost a member of the community and second an individual. A person's life, therefore, is to be focused on the well-being of the community. This is summed up in one of the most significant African proverbs: 'I am because we are; we are because I am.' "
    — Joseph G. Healey in Once Upon a Time in Africa
  • "Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there."
    — Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies
  • "Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us."
    — Henri J. M. Nouwen in Finding My Way Home
  • "Spiritual community gives a sense of meaning and direction, and of life that's bigger than one's own. It's healing without therapy."
    — Rabbi Omer-Man in Working on God by Winifred Gallagher

  • "Community and individuality are not an either/or choice, any more than life and death are. Instead, they are the poles of another great paradox. A culture of isolated individualism produces mass conformity because people who think they must bear life all alone are too fearful to take the risks of selfhood. But people who know that they are embedded in an eternal community are both freed and empowered to become who they were born to be."
    — Parker J. Palmer in The Active Life
  • "Like humility, generosity comes from seeing that everything we have and everything we accomplish comes from God's grace and God's love for us. In the African understanding of ubuntu, our humility and generosity also come from realizing that we cannot be alive, nor could we accomplish anything, without the support, love, and generosity of all the people who have helped us to become the people we are today. Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others."
    — Desmond Tutu in God Has a Dream