Ivy Baker Priest Quotes

There's no such thing as an independent person.

I know enough to know that no man is an island.

I am because other people are.

Most of my books have been about the complex ways an individual depends on community.

There is no one subsists by himself alone.

No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation.

Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, "It's my own business.

We live in community, and we're created in community. We're created out of the unity of two people, and then we're made into a family. It's just inherent in who we are.

We cannot think of ourselves save as to some extent social being. Hence, we cannot separate the idea of ourselves and our own good from our idea of others and their good.

Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful... but also when it comes to happiness.

When we're connected to others, we become better people.

I think coexisting with another life form is a very rich experience. It's why people keep plants and animals.

What you think and do affects all other people.

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic.

There is a Jewish notion that holiness is found with other people. To understand what life really is, one has to share it.

A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

People in a cluster are bound to each other automatically, and can see each other automatically.

We touch other people's lives simply by existing.

Men are not only together when they are with each other; even the distant and the dead live with us.

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

We all act as hinges-fortuitous links between other people.

All of our survival is tied to the survival of everyone.

If a person thinks he can be happy without making those around him happy, he's crazy.

In New York everyone just kind of knows each other.