One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress.

strength helping community welcome distress

About Jean Vanier

Portrait of Jean Vanier

Jean Vanier (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ vanje], September 10, 1928 – May 7, 2019) was a Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian. In 1964, he founded L'Arche, an international federation of communities spread over 37 countries for people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them. In 1971, he co-founded Faith and...

More quotations from Jean Vanier

To say that we are all equally important seems a redundancy, and yet how often do any of us act as if it were true?

importance redundancy

I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: "Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?

violence source message

More quotations tagged with “community”

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.

socialization community domination

For the Dargara people, death results in simply a different form of belonging to the community. It is a lesson… that change is the norm, that the world is defined by eternal cycles of decline and regeneration.… Death is not a separation but a different form of communion, a higher form of connectedness… providing an opportunity for even greater service.

—Malidoma Somé

death connection community belonging regeneration reincarnation communion

As one reads history… one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

history crime cruelty punishment community

God creates men, but they choose each other.

—Niccolo Machiavelli

God creation community

But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.

—Martha Nussbaum

trust community

History

26 Mar 2016 Added