Commonality Quotes

• The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

  Barbara Deming

  Peace, Real, Diversity

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• The commonality in the human experience is the same. We have the same sorrows, and the same triumphs. Joy is joy is joy.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Joy, Sorrow, Triumph

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• One should not focus on the differences between people but look for commonality and similarity.

  Theodore Levitt

  Differences, People, Focus

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• God has given us many faiths but only one world in which to co-exist. May your work help all of us to cherish our commonalities and feel enlarged by our differences.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Differences, Tolerance, World

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• We are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other, when we celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together tear down the mighty walls of injustice.

  Cynthia McKinney

  Teamwork, Wall, Powerful

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• If each of us can learn to relate to each other more out of compassion, with a sense of connection to each other and a deep recognition of our common humanity, and more important, to teach this to our children, I believe that this can go a long way in reducing many of the conflicts and problems that we see today.

  Dalai Lama

  Children, Believe, Compassion

  The Dalai Lama, Howard C. Cutler, Dalai Lama (2010). “The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World”, p.198, Hachette UK

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• Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself.

  Thomas Berry

  Integrity, Mean, Charity

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• In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Blood, Land, Differences

  Shashi Tharoor (2005). “Bookless In Baghdad”, p.102, Penguin Books India

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• What's important is to be able to see yourself, I think, as having commonality with other people and not determine, because of your good luck, that everybody is less significant, less interesting, less important than you are.

  Harrison Ford

  Good Luck, Thinking, People

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. January 20, 2010.

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• As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.

  John-David F. Bartoe

  Country, Ocean, Two

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• There is the sky, which is all men's together.

  Euripides

  Nature, Men, Sky

  Euripides (2013). “Euripides IV: Helen, The Phoenician Women, Orestes”, p.59, University of Chicago Press

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• A good teacher sees the commonality of all human beings
  and helps each individual find his uniqueness.

  T. K. V. Desikachar

  Teacher, Helping, Individual

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• Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.

  Sara Ahmed

  Pain, Struggle, Commitment

  Sara Ahmed (2013). “The Cultural Politics of Emotion”, p.189, Routledge

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• Among the most striking things that I have learned is how much we have in common. I've sat down with people everywhere, discussing what was in their hearts and on their minds. And it doesn't take long to find commonality, which is often overlooked, ignored, dismissed, and rejected otherwise.

  Hillary Clinton

  Funny Inspirational, Heart, Long

  "Frontlines and Frontiers: Making Human Rights a Human Reality". Hillary Clinton's remarks at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland, December 6, 2012.

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• A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality.

  Andrew O'Hagan

  Struggle, People, Principles

  "The age of indifference" by Andrew O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. January 9, 2010.

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• I don't understand racism. We are all the same and I have the perfect hypothesis to prove it. I play to all those countries and they cry in all the same places in my show. They laugh in the same places. They become hysterical in the same places. They faint in the same places and that's the perfect hypothesis. There is a commonality that we are all the same.

  Michael Jackson

  Country, Play, Racism

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• No two wars are ever the same. Some are just, some are unjust, but the basic commonality shared between them all is that young men and women heeded a call to service, overcame their fear, and fought for their side

  Bob Riley

  War, Men, Two

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• The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing.

  Edward Tufte

  Art, Science, Design

  "Hollyweird Science: The Next Generation: From Spaceships to Microchips". Book by Kevin R. Grazier and Stephen Cass, p. 89, 2017.

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• Technological measures are important, but equally important is... a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

  Vaclav Havel

  Responsibility, Important, Climate

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• Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Years, Class, Soul

  Speech at trial, Cleveland, Ohio, 14 Sept. 1918

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• While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Equality, Class, Diversity

  Speech at trial, Cleveland, Ohio, 14 Sept. 1918

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• Solidarity is not a matter of altruism. Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in the oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable.

  Aurora Levins Morales

  Integrity, Heart, Self

  Aurora Levins Morales (1998). “Medicine Stories: History, Culture, and the Politics of Integrity”, p.125, South End Press

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• We have to have a commonality and purpose. We have to understand that each of us is dependent on the success of the others in the organization to reach the goals we're trying to accomplish. It's never an easy thing.

  Rick Welts

  Organization, Goal, Trying

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• The thing that binds us together is the commonality of our dreams, not our skin tone.

  T. D. Jakes

  Dream, Skin Tone, Skins

  "T.D. Jakes Talks: Second Chances, Humble Beginnings & Knowing Your Worth". Interview with Zon D’Amour, lasentinel.net. September 21, 2016.

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• Growing marriages aren't determined by how much you have in common but by how graciously you deal with your differences.

  Rick Warren

  Differences, Growing, Determined

  Twitter post from Dec 23, 2010

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