Social Interdependence Quotes

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

I'm socially awkward in life, and that's one of the reasons why I do what I do. I'm more about interpreting other people's words.

The nature of man is intricate. The objects of society are of the greatest complexity and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs.

All animals communicate. What's special about gossip is that it's not about the here and now. You don't gossip about lions. You don't gossip about clouds. You only gossip about other people. And once you do, you can keep track of many more people - this is the basis for forming larger communities.

Men are beginning to realize that they are not individuals but persons in society, that man alone is weak and adrift, that he must seek strength in common action.

All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

My walk is a public one. My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.

People are hungry for community. They're hungry for meaning in a society that is oriented around the production and consumption of consumer goods.

Some cultural phenomena bear a striking resemblance to the cells of cell biology, actively preserving themselves in their social environments, finding the nutrients they need and fending off the causes of their dissolution.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

One cannot live in society and be free from society.

Without the human community one single human being cannot survive.

You can't really divorce yourself and your life from the world you live in.

I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.

I could go days, weeks, without talking to another human being.

Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.

The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.

I haven't isolated myself. I am not living on a yacht somewhere. I am not tucked away or behind a gate somewhere. I am not flying on a private plane. I am going to the airport, I am with people, some of the interactions are good, some of them are not so good, but it keeps me in touch with being, you know, part of society.

Man's society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it.

There's this tendency to think of the individual and the collective are somehow at odds or separate. But I think that's really false. We're all both. And when the individual suffers, the collective suffers, and vice versa.

The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.

Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving, and receiving.

More and more of us live segmented, compartmentalized lives. This isn't natural. For millions of years, our forebears knew everyone around them and everyone knew them.