* The interdependency of humankind, the relevance of relationship, the sacredness of creation is ancient, ancient wisdom. -- Rebecca Adamson * The indigenous understanding has its basis of spirituality in a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, a holistic and balanced view of the world. -- Rebecca Adamson

The indigenous understanding has its basis of spirituality in a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, a holistic and balanced view of the world. All things are bound together. All things connect. What happens to the Earth happens to the children of the earth. Humankind has not woven the web of life; we are but one thread. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
-- Rebecca Adamson

In a society where all are related, simple decisions require the approval of nearly everyone in that society. It is society as a whole, not merely a part of it, that must survive. This is the indigenous understanding. It is the understanding in a global sense. We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along. -- Rebecca Adamson

* The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. -- Jane Addams We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class. But we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all [people] and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having. -- Jane Addams

* [People] may be said to resemble not the bricks of which a house is built, but the pieces of a picture puzzle, each differing in shape, but matching the rest, and thus bringing out the picture. -- Felix Adler

* "...if globalization is to realise its potential as a force for good, we have to look more closely at the means by which we handle our growing interdependence. We do not have a world government, but we do have an increasingly complex network of institutions that are concerned with global governance. They are central to our future and international human rights law..." -- Gro Brundtland

* Our mission in this new century is clear. For good or ill, we live in an interdependent world. We can't escape each other. Therefore, we have to spend our lives building a global community of shared responsibilities, shared values, shared benefits. ~ Bill Clinton * Let's create an integrated global community where we have shared benefits and responsibilities, and we don't fight because of our differences. ~ Bill Clinton

We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.
~ Bill Clinton

“Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent.”
~ Bill Clinton

We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.
~ Bill Clinton

* When I think about the world I would like to leave to my daughter and the grandchildren I hope to have, it is a world that moves away from unequal, unstable, unsustainable interdependence to integrated communities - locally, nationally and globally - that share the characteristics of all successful communities.
~ Bill Clinton

* I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. -- Jacques Cousteau

Interdependence is a fact, it's not an opinion.
-- Peter Coyote

* The reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. - Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama - Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama

* The reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. - The Dalai Lama

I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one's own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.
- Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama

* "...we are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another." -- Marian Wright Edelman

A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labor of other [people], living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labor of my fellow [people]. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally. -- Albert Einstein

 

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

* The only real nation is humanity. -- Dr. Paul Farmer

* Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* To resolve such conflicts peacefully in our interdependent – or what I would like to call our intra-interdependent – world requires not just well-chosen words but sustained and unified action. ~ Prince Hassan bin Talal

* I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent. -- Martin Luther King, Jr

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* A spiritual sensibility encourages us to see ourselves as part of the fundamental unity of all being. If the thrust of the market ethos has been to foster a competitive individualism, a major thrust of many traditional religious and spiritual sensibilities has been to help us see our connection with all other human beings. -- Michael Lerner

* "All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." ~ Aldo Leopold

* "The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another." -- Thomas Merton

* I propose that there is another kind of power based not on resources, things, or attributes, but rooted in the social and cooperative relations in which people are enmeshed by virtue of group life. -- Frances Fox Piven

* We should be evolving into a new age of business with a worldview that maintains one simple proposition—that all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected and interdependent. -- Anita Roddick

* We should be evolving into a new age of business with a worldview that maintains one simple proposition—that all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected and interdependent. -- Anita Roddick

* Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone -- Margaret J. Wheatley We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity. -- Margaret J. Wheatley

* For everyone of us that succeeds, it's because there's somebody there to show you the way out. The light doesn't always necessarily have to be in your family; for me it was teachers and school. -- Oprah Winfrey

 

  SEE ALSO
Interconnection Quotes

Interdependence Day - September 12
Community Day - November 4

PRINT OUT SET OF INTERDEPENDENCE QUOTES HANDOUTS