A community is more than just people sharing a space. It’s a living, breathing network of connections and shared experiences. While it’s usually defined as “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common,” genuine community runs deeper.

Good Neighbors

When searching for a new place to call home, we hope to stumble upon neighbors who can transform a neighborhood into something meaningful. We all need to be surrounded by people who genuinely care for the well-being of others. Only this type of people can create a community that is more than just a bunch of individuals living next to each other.

Diversity

It doesn’t matter how different we are. What matters in building a community is the desire to live in a peaceful and caring environment, despite all our differences.

Building a strong community starts with individual contributions, no matter how small. As long as you are kind and willing to help others in need, you’ll be a great community member. In exchange, your community will give you a sense of belonging and the feeling that you are never alone.

These 45 quotes capture the essence of what makes communities special — community building, service, engagement, involvement, and support

Quotes about community building

We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.
CICERO

It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility, and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children’s future.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY

Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and know the other.
DAVID SPANGLER

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

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
DOROTHY DAY

The minute we become an integrated whole, we look through the same eyes and we see a whole different world together.
AZIZAH AL-HIBRI

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Quotes about the community coming together

One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn’t as individuals.
JEAN VANIER

There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
MARGARET J. WHEATLEY

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
HERMAN MELVILLE

Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.
HELEN KELLER

There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.
IDOWU KOYENIKAN

Our generation has the ability and the responsibility to make our ever-more connected world a more hopeful, stable and peaceful place.
NATALIE PORTMAN

Quotes about community support

In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.
CORETTA SCOTT KING

As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
AUDREY HEPBURN

Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.
STEVE MARABOLI

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.
JACQUELINE WOODSON

One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.
SHANNON L. ALDER

Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.
PAUL RYAN

No man can become rich without himself enriching others.
ANDREW CARNEGIE

Quotes about community service, engagement, and involvement

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.
MUHAMMAD ALI

Community service gives me a valuable opportunity to walk into a different community that is less familiar to me but just as colorful and most importantly, in need.
CAROLINE LANDRY

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
MAHATMA GANDHI

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.
ALICE WATERS

Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless.
SHERRY ANDERSON

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
MARGARET MEAD (more Margaret Mead quotes)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
LEO BUSCAGLIA

The purpose of life is not to be happy, but to matter to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.
LEO ROSTEN

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ANNE FRANK

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
DR. SEUSS

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.
H. JACKSON BROWN JR.

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
OSCAR WILDE

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
MARTIN LUTHER KING

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
MAYA ANGELOU

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
JOHN F. KENNEDY

Quotes about community health

The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.
MARK HYMAN

For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people’s love and concern for each other.
MILLARD FULLER

Communities and countries and ultimately the world are only as strong as the health of their women.
MICHELLE OBAMA

When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources, public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children.
GWEN MOORE

And I believe that the best buy in public health today must be a combination of regular physical exercise and a healthy diet.
JULIE BISHOP

These quotes remind us of the joy of being part of something bigger than ourselves.