* 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. 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

* “SixDegrees.org is about using the idea that we are all connected to accomplish something good. It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something more than a game or a gimmick. It will also be a force for good, by bringing a social conscience to social networking.” -- Kevin Bacon

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
-- Frederick Buechner

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration -- Pearl S. Buck

A diverse ecosystem will also be resilient, because it contains many species with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another. When a particular species is destroyed by a severe disturbance so that a link in the network is broken, a diverse community will be able to survive and reorganize itself... In other words, the more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be. -- Fritjof Capra

No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity.
-- Hugo Chavez

* 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

* 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

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security -- Albert Einstein

Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. -- Albert Einstein

* “...the world is a giant community now. This excuse of distance, time, doesn’t work...We’re all so connected. We can’t spend every second of our lives worrying about another family miles away but we somehow have to factor it in where we can." -- Ralph Fiennes

Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole.
-- Murray Gell-Mann

* You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. ~ Jane Goodall

We can all be ourselves, be true to ourselves, and all be together. -- Herbie Hancock

* It's really important to me to show the interconnectedness of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism, humanitarianism, animal rights -- all those things -- are one and the same. -- Daryl Hannah

* It's really important to me to show the interconnectedness of things. I always try to illustrate how environmentalism, humanitarianism, animal rights -- all those things -- are one and the same. -- Daryl Hannah

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.
-- Herman Hesse

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all. -- Helen Keller

* 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. -- Martin Luther King, Jr

We are all connected to everyone and everything in the universe. Therefore, everything one does as an individual affects the whole. All thoughts, words, images, prayers, blessings, and deeds are listened to by all that is.
-- Serge Kahili King

"Our vision of interconnectedness resonates with new networks of world citizens in nongovernmental organizations linking from numberless centers of energy, expressing the emergence of a new organic whole, seeking unity within and across national lines... If governments and their leaders, bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp the implications of an emerging world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability, they may become irrelevant." ~ Dennis Kucinich

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

 

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

 

* “When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives." -- Yo-Yo Ma

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
-- Herman Melville

* When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ~ John Muir Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe. ~ John Muir

We have a stake in one another ... what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and ... if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done for the people with whom we share this Earth. -- Barack Obama

We don't accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.
-- Sandra Day O'Connor

Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilise the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty. -- Jeffrey Sachs

Isn't everyone a part of everyone else?
-- Budd Schulberg

All things are connected like the blood that unites us, We did not weave the web of life. We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. ~ Chief Seattle "Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the people of the earth." ~ Chief Seattle What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. ~ Chief Seattle

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static "snapshots." It is a set of general principles -- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management.... During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility -- for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.
-- Peter Senge

* "Independence"... middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. -- George Bernard Shaw

"I see a world in the future in which we understand that all life is related to us and we treat that life with great humility and respect." -- David Suzuki

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

I am a part of all that I have met.
-- Lord Tennyson

"We are faced with having to learn again about interdependency and the need for rootedness after several centuries of having systematically—and proudly—dismantled our roots, ties, and traditions. We had grown so tall we thought we could afford to cut the roots that held us down, only to discover that the tallest trees need the most elaborate roots of all."
-- Paul L. Wachtel

* "There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." -- Margaret J. Wheatley 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

 

The oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread that holds us together. -- Muhammad Yunus

 

Interdependence Day - September 12
Community Day - November 4