#unity

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#libertarian #liberty #power #community

Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter? ↗

— Zadie Smith

#community

The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#knowledge #wisdom #community

Who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is the most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do. ↗

— Stephen King

#community

America’s education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequity from one generation to the next. ↗

— Nicholas Kristof

#generations #inequality #inequity #opportunity #united-states

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#unity #community

All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#unity #unity

Consider your own place in the universal oneness of which we are all a part, from which we all arise, and to which we all return. ↗

— David Fontana

#fontana #oneness #unity #zen #unity

What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me--that is what I understand. And these two certainties--my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle--I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope which I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition? ↗

— Albert Camus

#unity

I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#knowledge #siddhartha #unity #world #unity