Community Quotes

“None of us are bad people. We float around and we run across each other and we learn about ourselves, and we make mistakes and we do great things. We hurt others, we hurt ourselves, we make others happy and we please ourselves. We can and should forgive ourselves and each other for that.”
― Dan Harmon

“My cat brought me a toy. I thanked her and threw it. She sat there gave me a look that made me realize people and dogs are the crazy ones.”
― Dan Harmon

“Don't be so hard on yourself, don't put pressure on yourself, life is just a chain of experiments and results, and you'll be perfect when you're dead.”
― Dan Harmon

“I've discovered a new video game called owning my home.”
― Dan Harmon

“As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.”
― Sonia Sotormayor

“God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need.”
― Shane Claiborne, Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said?

“Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent on who we were—that is, our genes. It depended on the decisions we made—on what we chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I wish people used wishes to modify themselves instead of others. Wish to be low maintenance. Wish to be autonomous, even.”
― Dan Harmon

“Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas.”
― Dan Harmon

“Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to each of us.”
― Deitrich Bonhoeffer

“She was drowning—in friendliness, in community—and she was starting to think she didn't want to get pulled out.”
― Tricia Goyer, Love Finds You in Glacier Bay, Alaska

“Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader: each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm a community of which he or she is a part. When I write I can imagine a child in California wishing to give away what he’s just seen- a wild animal fleeing though creosote cover in the desert, casting a bright-eyed backward glance or three lines of overheard conversation that seem to contain everything we need understand to repair the gaping rift between body and soul. I look back at that boy turning in glee beneath his pigeons and know it can take a lifetime to convey what you mean, to find the opening. You watch, you set it down. Then you try again.”
― Barry Lopez, About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory

“In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the heart of the gospel. Instead of being 'salt' and 'light' -images of a permeating and penetrating action-Christians and Christian institutions become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within.”
― Os Guinness, The Call

“The telling and hearing of stories is a bonding ritual that breaks through illusions of separateness and activates a deep sense of our collective interdependence.”
― Annette Simmons, The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling

“The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.”
― Sonia Sotormayor

“An enlightened person raises the level of the consciousness of the entire community.”
― Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir

“As humans, reality for us is largely based on other people's perceptions. If there's 20 bodies in your crawl space but you haven't been caught yet, you tell yourself you're still a birthday clown, and that's how you keep doing it.”
― Dan Harmon

“To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.”
― Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions, and Eternity: A Comprehensive Guide to What the Bible Says about Financial Stewardship, Generosity, Materialism, Retirement, Financial Planning, Gambling, Debt, and More

“Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.”
― Leon Krier, The Architecture of Community

“Viewed from a certain distance and under good light, even an ugly city can look like the promised land.”
― Leon Krier, The Architecture of Community

“The relationship between any two communities in the global economy is not unlike a marriage. As couples counselors advise, relationships falter when two partners are too interdependent. When any stress affecting one partner - the loss of a job, an illness, a bad-hair day - brings down the other, the couple suffers. A much healthier relationship is grounded in the relative strength of each partner, who each should have his or her own interests, hobbies, friends, and professional identity, so that when anything goes wrong, the couple can support one another from a position of strength. Our ability to love, like our ability to produce, must be grounded in our own security. And our economy, like our love, when it comes from a place of community, can grow without limit.”
― Michael H. Shuman, The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition

“I'm always trying to gain and keep the audience's respect. I always want them to know that the show doesn't think they're stupid for watching.”
― Dan Harmon

“You can't tell the audience — well, you can, but I don't like to tell the audience — that anything they're watching doesn't matter.”
― Dan Harmon

“I expect the audience to assume TV is stupid. I accept that it's my job to overcome it.”
― Dan Harmon

“Garry Shandling has always been a pioneer of… meta entertainment. He's always been a defender of the creative right to use the frame as part of the painting.”
― Dan Harmon

“As an introverted person, I struggle even writing about community because I know how difficult it often is for me to walk across the room to converse with people. People often drain the energy out of me, and too often I prefer to protect myself rather than engage in relationships with people. For some of us who are more extroverted, community is a way of life, yet I wonder how intentional even the most extroverted person is about making community a holiness-shaping thing. Community with God’s people ultimately shapes us to reflect more of who God is.”
― Tyler Braun, Why Holiness Matters: We've Lost our Way--But We Can Find it Again

“The goal of using our voice is not just to be noticed, but with humility to gracefully be fully present in relationships. Deferring to another person does not require that we be ignored; allowing that is cowardice. Hiding, a form of dishonesty, prevents true community.”
― Rosalie De Rosset, Unseduced and Unshaken: The Place of Dignity in a Woman's Choices

“Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.”
― Leon Krier

“The rigidity of a bottle's form does not affect the fluidity of the liquid it contains.”
― Léon Krier, The Architecture of Community

“Superabundant piety/righteousness (and its practices) is that form of life that enhances the individual and the community simultaneously.”
― Michael Joseph Brown