Loss of Community Quotes

Who has suffered? The families of the dead, no doubt. But a greater loss was inflicted on Pakistan because, as I said, we lost the pillars of our society.

God drove Cain out of his presence and sent him into exile far away from his native land, so that he passed from a life of human kindness to one which was more akin to the rude existence of a wild beast.

When Katrina hit, my family lost everything - their homes, jobs, friends - and then it was a ripple effect, as so many others attached to them were affected. I had to come up with $12,000 per month to take care of everyone.

We shall no more see our kind friends around us, or enjoy the conveniences of civilized life, or go to the house of God with those that keep holy day; but swarthy countenances will everywhere meet our eye, the jargon of an unknown tongue will assail our ears, and we shall witness the assembling of the heathen to celebrate the worship of idol gods.

...Individualistic material progress and the desire to gain prestige by coming out on top have taken over from the sense of fellowship, compassion and community. Now people live more or less on their own in a small house, jealously guarding their goods and planning to acquire more, with a notice on the gate that says, 'Beware of the Dog.

Having buildings, growth models, having great progress, flyovers, and no human being is feeling for human being is a nightmare scenario.

Rousseau and his disciples were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lone lines.

A thing that really troubles me about a more polarized society is that you stop having a sense of society and citizenship.

My family went to the Hamptons, so I understand what happens when a slice of perfect utopia gets overdeveloped, when one way of living is replaced by another.

The hardest thing for me was leaving my friends and family behind.

You can work, shop, do everything from home, and I find this unsettling.

When the Internet really first started to hit, people felt this would be the death blow: after suburbs and long commutes and television and the death of the family dinner, this would be the last straw that would totally break society.

Remote villages and communities have lost their identity, and their peace and charm have been sacrificed to that worst of abominations, the automobile.

When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.

I had to move out of my home in New York when I was 13. I left all my friends, family, my dogs, and summer camp... all that stuff behind. I moved out to L.A. with my mom and brother. That was difficult for me. I think the hardest part was seeing all my friends graduate without me and go to college.

The consumer culture in general has washed over our civilization. For the last 50 years, if you've had a credit card and some access to money, you don't really need neighbors around you. And as a result, they dwindled. The average American has half as many close friends as they did in 1950. Three quarters of Americans don't know their next-door neighbor. They may know their name, but they have no real relationship with them. That's an utterly new place for human beings to find themselves in - I mean, we're a socially evolved primate.

We live in a time where there's an alienation factor. There's a certain disconnection. We don't have any real sense of community anymore.

In the United States, cheap fossil fuel has eroded communities. We're the first people with no real practical need for each other. Everything comes from a great distance through anonymous and invisible transactions. We've taken that to be a virtue, but it's as much a curse. Americans are not very satisfied with their lives, and the loss of community is part of that.

Exile is like death. You cannot understand it until it happens to you.

One of the problems with the fiasco of suburbia is that it destroyed our understanding of the distinction between the country and the town, between the urban and the rural. They're not the same thing.

Hinkley will be a ghost town. It will be another town lost in America due to pollution.

The biggest thing I lost when I left religion was that sense of community and the culture. It was an unexpected kind of free-falling. When I was in it, I didn't understand how much the community was a part of my life.

I have watched people who have nothing to do with the film business, but who have become part of the circle for a short period of time. They can be truly devastated when the film wraps and people leave.

I don't approve the informality in the world today, Mr. James. It's made strangers of us all.

When we moved to Seattle, everybody kind of disappeared into different corners of the city and it was a very difficult time for the band.