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The individual is important, powerful, and sovereign. But man is a social animal. All of our greatest accomplishments as a species — from the great works of architecture to the curing of disease to landing on the moon — are social accomplishments. People of great vision must ultimately convince others of the crucial quality of their vision. Without that ability to convince, to unite with others in common cause, a good idea is just that: an idea.
The companionship that we seek and hold is crucial to our own success as people. Surround yourself with those whose sights are set in the gutter and that’s where you’re going to end up. Surround yourself with people who seek to overcome and to self-actualize and they’re going to help you along that journey, as well as many others along the way.
What’s more, while you’re on your way up, it’s important to reach out and help others less fortunate than you. It’s not purely a question of this “feeling good” or being good for the soul in some abstract sense. Rather, enriching the lives of others also enriches your life, both by allowing you the opportunity to practice the skills you have acquired as well as to engage in your community and enrich yourself through working with others.
Here are some of our favorite quotes about the importance of community.
Proverbs 11:14
“Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellers there is safety.”
Jim Rohn
“Don’t join an easy crowd; you won’t grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform are high.”
– Jim Rohn
John Donne
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
Tony Robbins
“If we surround ourselves with people who are successful, who are forward-moving, who are positive, who are focused on producing results, who support us, it will challenge us to be more and do more and share more. If you can surround yourself with people who will never let you settle for less than you can be, you have the greatest gift that anyone can hope for.”
– Tony Robbins, Unlimited Power
David Whyt
“The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most average existence.”
[…]
“But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self; the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”
Kurt Vonnegut
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
English proverb
“Birds of a feather flock together.”
– English proverb, first citations appear in the 16th century
Aldous Huxley
“The function of the well-intentioned individual, acting in isolation, is to formulate or disseminate theoretical truths. The function of the well-intentioned individuals in association is to live in accordance with those truths, to demonstrate what happens when theory is translated into practice, to create small-scale working models of the better form of society to which the speculative idealist looks forward.”
– Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
Christopher Dawson
“Culture was actually humanity’s attempt to extend the womb.”
Aristotle
“Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.”
– Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Jeffrey Archer
“Some people stand by you in your darkest hour while others walk away; only a select few march towards you and become even closer friends.”
