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Belonging Quotes

Browse 944 quotes about Belonging.

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Belonging Quotes

“So far I’ve been describing a process of getting to know someone as if we live in normal times. I’ve been writing as if we live in a healthy cultural environment, in a society in which people are enmeshed in thick communities and webs of friendship, trust, and belonging. We don’t live in such a society. We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust. We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating.”

CommunityTrustIsolationConnectionBelongingDistrustAnimosityDehumanizationCrisesSocial Breakdown
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“We thrive on our sense of belonging to families, neighbourhoods and all kinds of groups and communities. We utterly depend upon our social connections for our emotional and physical security, for our sense of well-being, being accepted and taken seriously. [p57]”

SocialAcceptanceTrustBelongingCredibilityEmotional WellnessNeighbourhoodCommmunityPhysical Security
Book:The Kindness Revolution: How we can restore hope, rebuild trust and inspire optimism
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“Human connection is based on trust, and it is trust that is continually violated when people do not practice setting aside their narrow self-interests in consideration of the needs and interests of others, such as their coworkers, family, neighbours, and community.”

WisdomCommunityRelationshipTrustConnectionBelongingSanctuaryHuman Connection
Book:Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It
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“April Jenkins' children's book Kirby of the Serengeti is an amazing fantasy adventure across the plains of the Serengeti. The story beholds the bonding of the lion pride, yet the generosity that can still exist toward a lost baby zebra - a great lesson for life! The watchful eye of the butterfly gives the story a lightness and a guardian-angel perspective. As a veterinarian and guardian for Kirby, I thoroughly endorse this must-read for children and adults alike. — Dr. John Otto, DVM, University Animal Hospital, and Co-author of the best selling and award-nominated children's book Sarge: The Veteran's Best Friend, Marvin's Gift, and Marvin's Shining Star”

InspirationalKindnessCourageFantasyAdventureBelongingAnimalsPicture BookChildren SSavanna
Book:Sarge: The Veteran's Best Friend
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“I taught Language Arts in public schools from fourth through eighth grade, and I believe reading is the most valuable skill a person can develop. I've been a lifelong reader since an early age, exploring every genre there is. The most important thing is finding something that touches one's heart and soul. Books and the stories they tell can change a person's life. There are so many lessons within stories—lessons that children may not always see modeled at home or in everyday life. After reading April Jenkins' children's book Kirby of the Serengeti: A Lidog's Tail, I was an immediate fan. This story has everything needed to make it a classic. It carries love and compassion for everyone. Every character is included, no matter what they look like or believe. I would love to see this story read and shared everywhere young children are being taught. I can't wait for the next story in A Lidog's Tail to be released—I’ll be first in line! *Michael Jenkins, Educator, Lifelong Reader, and Proud Father of the Author”

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Author:Michael Jenkins
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“I never said it was easy to find your place in this world, but I’m coming to the conclusion that if you seek to please others, you will forever be changing because you will never be yourself, only fragments of someone you could be. You need to belong to yourself, and let others belong to themselves too. You need to be free and detached from things and your surroundings. You need to build your home in your own simple existence, not in friends, lovers, your career or material belongings, because these are things you will lose one day. That’s the natural order of this world. This is called the practice of detachment.”

WorldLoveLifeHomeNatureChangeSimpleExistenceGrowing UpYouthFriendsLoversSimplicitySeekingMaterialismBelongingBook QuotesFreeCareerSurroundingsDetachmentMinimalismFree SpiritLife AdviceCharlotte ErikssonFinding Home
Book:Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps
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“The principle of optimal distinctiveness: we look for ways to fit in and stand out. A popular way to achieve optimal distinctiveness is to join a unique group.... Studies show that people identify more strongly with individuals and groups that share unique similarities. The more rare a group, value, interest, skill, or experience is, the more likely it is to facilitate a bond. And research indicates that people are happier in groups that provide optimal distinctiveness.”

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Book:Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success
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“The French philosopher Camus used to tell himself quietly to live to the point of tears, not as a call for maudlin sentimentality, but as an invitation to the deep privilege of belonging and the way belonging affects us, shapes us and breaks our heart at a fundamental level.”

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Book:Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
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“You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.”

WorldLoveInspirationalCountryHomeRealityDesireSpaceConsciousnessBeautySelf EsteemTravelEmpowermentRootsSelf AwarenessIndependenceIndividualityProseSelf RespectAttachmentBelongingSelf DeterminationPresentSelf RelianceFarewellHomelessnessNationalityWanderlustSelf SufficiencySelf TrustSelf AssuranceSingapore LiteratureIreadbooksactuallyAnchoringBooksactuallySelf ContainmentSglitftwMelodiesSinglit
Book:The Desire for Elsewhere
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“Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.”

WorldLoveInspirationalCountryHomeRealityDesireMemoriesSpaceConsciousnessBeautyMusicSelf EsteemExpressionTravelEmpowermentRootsSelf AwarenessIndependenceIndividualityStrangerProseSelf RespectAttachmentBelongingSelf DeterminationPresentSelf RelianceFarewellHomelessnessNationalityWanderlustNamelessSelf SufficiencySelf TrustSelf AssurancePast LivesSingapore LiteratureIreadbooksactuallyAnchoringBooksactuallyInclinationsSelf ContainmentSglitftwMelodiesSinglit
Book:The Desire for Elsewhere
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“For people who feel disrespected and unseen, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. Politics seems to offer a comprehensible moral landscape. We, the children of light, are facing off against them, the children of darkness. Politics seems to offer a sense of belonging. I am on the barricades with the other members of my tribe. Politics seems to offer an arena of moral action. To be moral in this world, you don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow. You just have to be liberal or conservative, you just have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible. Over the past decade, everything has become politicized. Churches, universities, sports, food selection, movie awards shows, late-night comedy— they have all turned into political arenas. Except this was not politics as it is normally understood. Healthy societies produce the politics of distribution. How should the resources of the society be allocated? Unhappy societies produce the politics of recognition. Political movements these days are fueled largely by resentment, by a person or a group’s feelings that society does not respect or recognize them. The goal of political and media personalities is to produce episodes in which their side is emotionally validated and the other side is emotionally shamed. The person practicing the politics of recognition is not trying to formulate domestic policies or to address this or that social ill; he is trying to affirm his identity, to gain status and visibility, to find a way to admire himself. But, of course, the politics of recognition doesn’t actually give you community and connection. People join partisan tribes, but they are not in fact meeting together, serving one another, befriending one another. Politics doesn’t make you a better person; it’s about outer agitation, not inner formation. Politics doesn’t humanize. If you attempt to assuage your sadness, loneliness, or anomie through politics, it will do nothing more than land you in a world marked by a sadistic striving for domination. You may try to escape a world of isolation and moral meaninglessness, only to find yourself in the pulverizing destructiveness of the culture wars.”

PoliticsEmotionMoralityTherapyBelongingResentmentPartisanshipPartisan PoliticsUs Vs Them
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“This is a study of global interconnection, not only to the degree that the infrastructure and cultural flows of globalisation enable the kinds of imaginings and interactions I explore in the pages that follow, but equally in subjective perceptions of being connected to others, both far back in time and widely around the globe.”

ImaginationBelongingAnthropologyGlobalisation
Book:Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging
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“She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.”

InspirationalHomeFreedomSelf EsteemIdentityEmpowermentRootsSelf AwarenessIndependenceIndividualitySelf RespectAttachmentBelongingSelf DeterminationSelf RelianceHomelessnessNationalitySelf SufficiencySelf TrustSelf AssuranceAnchoringSelf Containment
Book:Of Marriageable Age
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“We are Henceforth-mongers, trying to make our Henceforth the most enticing. Because the secret of everyone who comes to London - who comes to any big city - is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home. The only way they will ever feel normal is if they hijack popular culture with their weirdness... and make the rest of the world suddenly wish to become as weird as them.”

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Book:How to be Famous
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“There’s something only those born and raised in a seaside town can understand, something indecipherable to others. Only we have this constant dialogue with this dimension rooted in our souls. The other, liquid half of the world, always there, reminding us, at every moment, of the possibility of an elsewhere.” — from There’s a Young Man Dressed in Blue”

PhilosophyHomeSeaIdentityRootsMemoryNostalgiaBelongingElsewhereSeaside Setting
Book:There's a Young Man Dressed in Blue
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“In such a people world, filled with a real, immediate, and tangible sense of belongingness, did I spend the earliest years of my life. I was not only wanted, I was loved. I was cherished. The adults in my world, no doubt, had their cares and their sorrows. But childhood, by its very nature, is a magic-filled world, egocentric, wonderfully carefree, and innocent. Mine was all these things and more.”

FamilyPovertyGrowing UpChildhoodBelongingSouth AfricaCaring For OthersCarefreeExtended FamilyLoving Childhood
Book:To My Children's Children
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“...ever since he was young there grew a sense that he did not belong. Somehow, he was not like the others, somehow, he spent his days somewhere else, outside space and outside time, to avoid those around him. Not because he wanted to, he was quite innocent then, but because he was forced to the outside of the circle: ostracized, an outcast. Now even in his older years it haunted him still. He wasn’t like the other students at the university.”

SchoolUniversityBelongingAcademiaOutsider
Book:Tales of the Sibling Not-So-Grim
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“Maybe my guard was up all the time and she was reacting to that. But I wish she had seen through it and I wish that once, just once, I had told her how I feel. That I feel safer when she is around. Sometimes I had tested her, wanting so desperately for her to let me down so then I would have an excuse to walk away. But she never did. I wish I could tell her it breaks my heart that I miss her more than I ever missed my mother and that the thing that frightens me the most about next October when I graduate is not that I won't have home, but that I won't have her.”

LoveHeartHomeUnderstandingSadnessMissingMoving OnBelonging
Book:On The Jellicoe Road
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