Interconnectedness Quotes

“You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.”
― Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations

“To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“When I've thought about him dying - which admittedly isn't that much - I always thought of it like you said, that all strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships think, or maybe we're grass - our roots are so interdependent that no one is dead as long as soneone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications...
I like the strings, I always have. Because that's how it feels. But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is...We are not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me imagine you as an actual person. But we're not different sprouts from the same plant. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well- but not quite perfectly, you know?
"Maybe, it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen-these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable...But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see each other, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never looking inside. But once the vessel cracks, the like can get in. The like can get out.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.”
― Nadeem Aslam, The Wasted Vigil

“That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.

- Book VI, 54.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“My brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side –a little happier, anyway– and children and all animals, if you yourself were nobler than you are now. It’s all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.”
― Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)”
― Yasutani Roshi

“When a person dies, they cross over from the realm of freedom to the realm of slavery. Life is freedom, and dying is a gradual denial of freedom. Consciousness first weakens and then disappears. The life-processes – respiration, the metabolism, the circulation – continue for some time, but an irrevocable move has been made towards slavery; consciousness, the flame of freedom, has died out.
The stars have disappeared from the night sky; the Milky Way has vanished; the sun has gone out; Venus, Mars and Jupiter have been extinguished; millions of leaves have died; the wind and the oceans have faded away; flowers have lost their colour and fragrance; bread has vanished; water has vanished; even the air itself, the sometimes cool, sometimes sultry air, has vanished. The universe inside a person has ceased to exist. This universe is astonishingly similar to the universe that exists outside people. It is astonishingly similar to the universes still reflected within the skulls of millions of living people. But still more astonishing is the fact that this universe had something in it that distinguished the sound of its ocean, the smell of its flowers, the rustle of its leaves, the hues of its granite and the sadness of its autumn fields both from those of every other universe that exists and ever has existed within people, and from those of the universe that exists eternally outside people. What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“We are taught to believe that the ‘alienation’ that we experience sometimes, when we withdraw from everything or feel alone, is a craving for something sexual, material, or in the physical - and can be cured by popping a pill in most cases. When in Truth, it’s the circuitry within our souls and minds that is hinting to be connected - to real flowing energy - outside of our TVs and computer monitors. What many of us mistaken for depression is actually a need to be understood, or to see desires come to fruition. There is absolutely nothing abnormal about feeling disconnected. Your sensitivity only means you are more human than most. If you cry, you are alive. I’d be more worried if you didn’t.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“In today's world, the elites are growing even more comfortable with one another across national lines, yet at the same time, less comfortable with low-income people who share their nationality. How we create those bonds of community that are truly global as well as national is one of our generation's great challenges.”
― Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

“Connectedness. One thing leads to another. Often in unexpected ways.”
― Holly Goldberg Sloan, Counting by 7s

“When we help another, we are helped. If we harm another, we harm ourselves. Perhaps harder to grasp—if we harm ourselves, we harm the whole universe.”
― Rachel Wooten, Tara

“Quoting geneticists, Guy Murcia says we’re all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is further removed than your fiftieth cousin. Murcia also describes out kinship though an analysis of how deeply we share the air. With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and-owing to the wind’s ceaseless circulation- over a year’s time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as everyone who ever lived. (The Seven Mysteries of Life)”
― Rob Brezsny, Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings

“Most ecofeminists reject dichotomies and hierarchies as alien to the natural world – nature is interconnections.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“Everything has
its own pace
its own timing.

True of working, studying, learning.
True of illness, sorrow, grief.
True of change, of transformation.
True of conflict.
True of peace.

You can't change the pace
without changing its nature,
changing the experience.
And the experience is its own end.

The end never justifies the means
because every means is its own end.

It's not just about you,
your natural pace,
it's about what you're doing
what's being done
butterfly effects
over miles and years.

The river will not be pushed.
The rain will not cease until it has finished pouring down.
The sun will not rise before dawn.

This is where we are.”
― Shellen Lubin

“To breathe! Oh poem we cannot see!
Pure space exchanged continually
For one’s own being. Counterpoise,
In which I come to be, a rhythm.

Unique wave, whose
Gathering sea I am;
Space won by that least expended
Of all possible seas.

How many of these locations of voids
Were already inward, were within me.
So many of the flows of air are
Like a son to me.

Do you apprehend me, Air? - You,
Already full of my former places?
You, who have been smooth bark,
Curve and leaf of my words?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“The next revolution is knowing that you are dead already. I, Joshua Newton, am dust. I am blowing across continents and oceans. I’m an exploding ball of fire, hurtling through space in a million different directions. I am distant light and distant worlds and distant life.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The Amazon, in all its enigmatic grandeur, embodies the paradoxes of existence. It is a place of untamed beauty and unfathomable complexity, where the fragility and resilience of life intertwine.
It is a testament to the boundless wonders of the natural world, a reminder of our interconnectedness with all living beings. Here in the heart of the Amazon, secrets whisper through the rustling leaves, beckoning the curious and the intrepid.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“The Amazon, in all its enigmatic grandeur, embodies the paradoxes of existence. It is a place of untamed beauty and unfathomable complexity, where the fragility and resilience of life intertwine.
It is a testament to the boundless wonders of the natural world, a reminder of our interconnectedness with all living beings.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“Day by day we know it more, feel it more.
We are all in this together--
all of us--
the whole world,
and if we don't work together
we may not have our world much longer.”
― Shellen Lubin

“The rain went on, and I began to think that this was what we had been preparing for - and how I congratulated myself, each time I unblocked a gutter or a drain, on our resilience. I put on my wellingtons and Grandy's old sou'wester and went out to check the garden, to pick the last of the autumn raspberries, to pull the leaves of the perpetual spinach. I let the chickens out to scratch in the wet earth and then called them back into the scullery, and I thought how fine it was to be so well prepared. I didn't think about the supermarket vans, which still came monthly. I didn't think about the things we used but couldn't make: the sugar, the milk, the bottles of olive oil. I didn't think about the doctors and the hospitals that would be there if we wanted them. I didn't think about all the mechanical things, the fridge and the generator, the lights with their bulbs, the taps that turned. I didn't think about that vest net which, invisible, imperceptible, held us up.”
― Jessie Greengrass, The High House

“In the realm of software creation, philosophical logic becomes the guiding light, illuminating the path from obscurity to enlightenment. With serene clarity, we navigate the turbulent waters of customer requirements, transforming confusion into tranquility, and chaos into harmony. In each requirement, we discover the essence of interconnectedness, weaving a tapestry of understanding where every thread finds its rightful place.”
― Damian Mingle

“The world is composed of seemingly random events that constitute a harmonious whole.

Hans Christian Andersen said it best: ‘Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“We are the dream of Earth coming to life.”
― Priyanka Singh Parihar

“Just as there is an interdependence of flowers and bees, where there are no flowers, there are no bees, and where there are no bees, there are no flowers. They're really one organism. And so, in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else. So it's interconnected. And so the many many patterns of interconnections lock it all together into a unity, which is, however, much too complicated for us to think about, except in very very simple crude ways. But I am part of all this. I am, as it were, one of the cells in this tremendous brain, which I can't understand because the part can't comprehend the whole.”
― Alan Watts

“But just across the U.S. border, up in the tar sands of Alberta, there is another equally horrific image. A gaping pit, an abyss on its way to becoming the size of Florida, exists where Imperial Oil -- the largest company in the world -- is using the wild Athabasca River to pressure-wash underground sand formations that they gouge up like honeycombs, using huge amounts of energy and clean fresh water to steam the oil from those sands. Native people in the area are dying from drastically abnormal incidences of rare cancers, and Imperial Oil is seeking to transport more giant mining equipment -- on trucks over two hundred feet long and three stories high-- up the Snake River to Lewiston, Idaho, along the same route where the Nez Perce tribe rescued Lewis and Clark and directed them to the Pacific, shortly before the U.S. betrayed the Nez Perce and chased them toward Canada before killing them. (Rick Bass)”
― Melvin McLeod (editor)

“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

“Hope is bubbling
in the ocean of our collective lives...

I can feel the hope bubbling inside,
popping little pockets of air
rising to the surface.

I try to suppress them--
too soon, unsure, can't afford to risk--
but why?
And why would I want to?
Those bubbles pop joy into the air,
spring action to life,
and they feel so good,
massaging the soul.”
― Shellen Lubin