National Community Quotes

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision. ~ Barbara Jordan

America is the sum of all our journeys as we search for our national community and our national culture. ~ Paul Tsongas

We must not become the new puritans and reject our society. We must address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a common national endeavor. It can be done. ~ Barbara Jordan

Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community. ~ John Taylor Gatto

Our cities of the present lack the outstanding symbol of national community which, we must therefore not be surprised to find, sees no symbol of itself in the cities. The inevitable result is a desolation whose practical effect is the total indifference of the big-city dweller to the destiny of his city. ~ Adolf Hitler

Non-citizen terrorist suspects are not members of the American national community, and they have no proper claim on the rights Americans accord one another. ~ Richard Perle

You will become reconciled with legality and with that root of roots, the national community, returning, like the prodigal son, to the paternal home. You are now a lawless city. You will not have a government to tell you what you should and should not do, how you should and should not behave, the streets will be yours, they belong to you, use them as you wish, there will be no authority to stop you in your tracks and offer you sound advice, but equally, and listen carefully to my words, there will be no authority to protect you from thieves, rapists and murderers, that will be your freedom, and may you enjoy it. ~ Jose Saramago

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total ... because it may well involve the whole world. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. ~ Barbara Jordan

Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It's tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny. ~ Barbara Jordan

People with banking experience haven't all flocked to the biggest banks; community banks and regional banks, along with smaller trading houses and credit unions, have some very talented people. ~ Elizabeth Warren

The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady. ~ William Wilberforce

We're afraid of everything. We're afraid for our children, and for our grandchildren, who don't exist yet. They don't exist, and we're already afraid. People smile less, they sing less at holidays. The landscape changes, because instead of fields the forest rises up again, but the national character changes too. Everyone's depressed. It's a feeling of doom. Chernobyl is a metaphor, a symbol. And it's changed our everyday life, and our thinking. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. It's about feeling connected and responsible for what happens. Humanity is our ultimate community, and everyone plays a crucial role. ~ Yehuda Berg

Socialism is an insurance policy bought by all the members of a national economy to shield them from risk. But the result is to shield them from knowledge of the real dangers and opportunities ... ~ George Gilder

Mitt Romney understands the importance of Alaska as a leader in our country's energy production and I look forward to working with him on such an important economic and national security matter. ~ Lisa Murkowski

As time goes by, I'm increasingly impressed by how very special and timely it was that we got the degree of national commitment needed to put people on the Moon. For the first time, this nation was united in trying to develop an interplanetary capability. We've been trying to repeat that situation ever since. ~ Buzz Aldrin

For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy. ~ Rick Larsen

The misconception about Hollywood is that it's a crazy drug and alcohol fueled place. It can be but there's also a huge sober community. ~ Tom Arnold

I love football and it's the sport I would really like to play. I've said on national television here that I would really love to play for one of our football clubs when I finished my tennis career. ~ Novak Djokovic

U.S. has been trying to encourage Iraq to pass a law that would provide money and training and weapons for a Sunni national guard that could be effective in places like Ramadi, like Mosul ~ David Ignatius

No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

What could possibly go wrong with faking love with a stranger on national TV? ~ Zoe Forward

Generally speaking, an Indian university must regard itself as one of the living organs of national reconstruction. It must discover the best means of blending together both the spiritual and the material aspects of life. It must equip its alumni irrespective of caste, creed or sex, with individual fitness, not for its own sake, not for merely adorning varied occupations and professions, but in order to teach them how to merge their individuality in the common cause of advancing the progress and prosperity of their motherland and upholding the highest traditions of human civilisation. ~ Syama Prasad Mukherjee

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police. ~ Robert H. Jackson

I didn't want to set up a women's studies program. I thought women should learn to operate in a coeducational atmosphere, because, especially in national security and international affairs, it's male-dominated. ~ Madeleine Albright

In History, stagnant waters, whether they be stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life and vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all. ~ Herbert Read

I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe. ~ Noam Chomsky

When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded. The mullahs have publicly sworn - to the United Nations and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency - that they are not cheating. As they unmask their batteries, they will be jeering at the very idea of an 'international community.' How strange it is that those who usually fetishize the United Nations and its inspectors do not feel this shame more keenly. ~ Christopher Hitchens

All the men of wealth should remember that everybody in a community has got, in some way, to be supported. I want to see them so that they can support themselves by their own labor. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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The Way of the Superior Man Quotes
The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida
The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to...
by David Deida
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Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine.

If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it.

Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured e ~ David Deida

Many will argue that there is nothing remotely spiritual in combat. Consider this. Mystical or religious experiences have four common components: constant awareness of one's own inevitable death, total focus on the present moment, the valuing of other people's lives above one's own, and being part of a larger religious community such as the Sangha, ummah, or church. All four of these exist in combat. The big difference is that the mystic sees heaven and the warrior sees hell. Whether combat is the dark side of the same version, or only something equivalent in intensity, I simply don't know. I do know that at the age of fifteen I had a mystical experience that scared the hell out of me and both it and combat put me into a different relationship with ordinary life and eternity.

Most of us, including me, would prefer to think of a sacred space as some light-filled wonderous place where we can feel good and find a way to shore up our psyches against death. We don't want to think that something as ugly and brutal as combat could be involved in any way with the spiritual. However, would any practicing Christian say that Calvary Hill was not a sacred space? ~ Karl Marlantes

I worked with the March of Dimes to enact legislation for a national birth defects prevention program to provide surveillance, research and preventive services aimed at reducing the rate of birth defects. ~ Solomon Ortiz

such communities we join with scores of faith-filled women and men to live the great political and theological as ifs. Politically, we live as if our nation were true to its foundational documents of liberty and justice for all; as if people mattered in themselves and not for their economic or social status; as if consumerism and the shopping mall did not determine the meaning of our lives; as if our way of life were not dependent on fossil fuel; as if we were a sister nation among all the other countries of the world; as if right made might and not the other way around. Living out these as ifs in the midst of community creates a prophetic possibility at a local level, the space for modeling how things could be, ought to be, and one day will be. The characteristics of St. Francis's communities on which we have been reflecting give us a blueprint for such as if living. ~ Marie Dennis

National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account. ~ Al Franken

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. ~ Sarah Schulman

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. ~ Thomas Love Peacock

We have one of our priests in prison right now, Steve Kelly, for his antiwar actions, and three of us in the community are forbidden to visit him because we're all convicted felons. ~ Daniel Berrigan

In my life, the stories I have heard from my family, my friends, my community, and from willing strangers all over the world have been the true source of my education. ~ Holly Near

In "Big Business," Lilienthal argues that not only the productive and distributive superiority of the United States but also its national security depends on industrial bigness; that we now have adequate public safeguards against abuses of big business, or know well enough how to fashion them as required; that big business does not tend to destroy small business, as is often supposed, but, rather, tends to promote it; and, finally, that a big-business society does not suppress individualism, as most intellectuals believe, but actually tends to encourage it by reducing poverty, disease, and physical insecurity and increasing the opportunities for leisure and travel. ~ John Brooks

To live faithfully in the time between the times is to walk a tightrope of moral discernment, claiming neither too much nor too little for God's transforming power within the community of faith. ~ Richard B. Hays

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps ~ Karl Marx

Fear binds people together. And fear disperses them. Courage inspires communities: the courage of an example - for courage is as contagious as fear. But courage, certain kinds of courage, can also isolate the brave. ~ Susan Sontag

I lost my second judo tournament. I finished second, losing to a girl named Anastasia. Afterward, her coach congratulated me.

"You did a great job. Don't feel bad, Anastasia is a junior national champion."

I felt consoled for about a second, until I noticed the look of disgust on Mom's face. I nodded at the coach and walked away.

Once we were out of earshot she lit into me. "I hope you know better than to believe what he said. You could have won that match. You had every chance to beat that girl. The fact that she is a junior national champion doesn't mean anything. That's why they have tournaments, so you can see who is better. They don't award medals based on what you won before. If you did your absolute best, if you were capable of doing nothing more, then that's enough. Then you can be content with the outcome. But if you could have done better, if you could have done more, then you should be disappointed. You should be upset you didn't win. You should go home and think about what you could have done differently and then next time do it differently. Don't you ever let anyone tell you that not doing your absolute best is good enough. You are a skinny blonde girl who lives by the beach, and unless you absolutely force them to, no one is ever going to expect anything from you in this sport. You prove them wrong. ~ Ronda Rousey

The White House has now released military documents that they say prove George Bush met his requirements for the National Guard. Big deal, we've got documents that prove Al Gore won the election. ~ Jay Leno

If colleges are going to justify themselves, they are going to have to thrive at those things that require physical proximity. That includes moral and spiritual development. Very few of us cultivate our souls as hermits. We do it through small groups and relationships and in social contexts. ~ David Brooks

Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise. As a community, far from being elitist (which would, in this context, mean excluding the unwashed masses), it is anti-elitist (which, in this context, means that expertise is not accorded any special respect, and snubs and disrespect of expertise is tolerated). ~ Larry Sanger

It's the flock, the grove, that matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals. ~ Sara Bonnett Stein

I think it's time for the media and our leaders to get real and start telling the truth about the impact of adultery on our national life. ~ Mike Pence

[T]he harm [Clinton AG] Reno did to American national security in the fight against terror was incalculable. ~ Dick Morris

My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind. ~ Tim Cahill

This communal parenting brought me out of the privacy of our foreign enclave and into the public life of the community. Here, parenting was everyone's responsibility; all adults were "aunties" and "uncles". ~ Aminta Arrington

Luz Castro "And then i explain that the world did know and remained silent. and that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. NEUTRALITY HELPS THE OPPRESSOR, NEVER THE VICTIM. SILENCE ENCOURAGES THE TORMENTOR, NEVER THE TORMENTED. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must- at that moment- become the center of the universe." Elie Wiesel (from his speech when given the Nobel Peace Prize.) ~ Elie Wiesel

Although few people will remember 3 June 1993, it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Centre, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country's first national, nonracial, one-person-one-vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders. ~ Nelson Mandela

Will you let me say, here and now, that the one thing which frustrated the whole attack from first to last was the remarkable solidarity and public spirit displayed by your college as a body. I think that was the last obstacle that X expected to encounter in a community of women. Nothing but the very great loyalty of the Senior Common Room to the College and the respect of the students for the Senior Common Room stood between you and a most unpleasant publicity. It is the merest presumption in me to tell you what you already know far better than I do; but I say it, not only for my own satisfaction, but because this particular kind of loyalty forms at once the psychological excuse for the attack and the only possible defense against it. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

If there's a golf course in heaven, I hope it's like Augusta National. I just don't want an early tee time. ~ Gary Player