* What made traditional economies so radically different and so very fundamentally dangerous to Western economies were the traditional principles of prosperity of Creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed, of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights, and of sustainability versus growth. -- Rebecca Adamson

Viewed with one disposition, history has so far been a horrible accumulation of oppression and suffering. Viewed with another disposition, however, history has chronicled humans discovering their own finer potentials and together mounting heroic offensives to attain them - against monarchy, feudalism, slavery, Jim Crow racism, apartheid, sexual subjugation, second class citizenship, sexism, heterosexism, dictatorship, one party rule, capitalism, and coordinatorism (calling itself socialism) - and seeking, in their place, equity, justice, and freedom. The gains humans have made have been steady and plentiful. Now a major leap is possible. Consistent with past efforts, we can now attain fully liberatory goals, including, I think, participatory economics and also alternative structures for polity, culture, and kinship. We have only to make the effort.
-- Michael Albert

* Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -- Eugene V. Debs

Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy. -- Mohandas Gandhi

"Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling." -- Abraham Lincoln * The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds. -- Abraham Lincoln

Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general.
They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.
--Abraham Maslow

"What I really want to say is that what the world needs is a feeling of kinship.
Everybody: stars, laborers, blacks, Jews, Arabs - we're all brothers!"
~ Marilyn Monroe

"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness
but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world.
Both attitudes are within our power . . .
a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him."
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn