Interdependence Quotes

“Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.”
― Neil Gaiman , The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone.”
― Mitch Albom

“We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 28: The Illustrated London News, 1908-1910

“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“Sometimes we may wonder what we have gotten ourselves into. Unfamiliar or unexpected incidents throw us off balance. Although we have always been stable like rocks in the surf, we feel trapped by our vulnerability. The router of our personality has broken down and no longer emits or receives any signals. We have no interaction with the world. We realize, at that moment, that we are interdependent beings, and our individuality only exists through a cluster of interactions. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Do you already know that your existence--who and how you are--is in and of itself a contribution to the people and place around you? Not after or because you do some particular thing, but simply the miracle of your life. And that the people around you, and the place(s), have contributions as well? Do you understand that your quality of life and your survival are tied to how authentic and generous the connections are between you and the people and place you live with and in?

Are you actively practicing generosity and vulnerability in order to make the connections between you and others clear, open, available, durable? Generosity here means giving of what you have without strings or expectations attached. Vulnerability means showing your needs.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

“None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another’s salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.”
― Dean Koontz

“The task that remains is to cope with our interdependence - to see ourselves reflected in every other human being and to respect and honor our differences.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“A beam or pillar can be used to batter down a city wall, but it is no good for stopping up a little hole - this refers to a difference in function. Thoroughbreds like Qiji and Hualiu could gallop a thousand li in one day, but when it came to catching rats they were no match for the wildcat or the weasel - this refers to a difference in skill. The horned owl catches fleas at night and can spot the tip of a hair, but when daylight comes, no matter how wide it opens its eyes, it cannot see a mound or a hill - this refers to a difference in nature. Now do you say, that you are going to make Right your master and do away with Wrong, or make Order your master and do away with Disorder? If you do, then you have not understood the principle of heaven and earth or the nature of the ten thousand things. This is like saying that you are going to make Heaven your master and do away with Earth, or make Yin your master and do away with Yang. Obviously it is impossible.”
― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“All of life is dependent upon other life, and the closer we consider what constitutes living, the harder life becomes to define.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed

“Yui developed her own theory: that for some people, life started loosening their joints when they were still in the cradle, and they had to work hard to hold the pieces together. She imagined those people juggling a bundle of limbs, ears, feet, and kidneys in their arms, like parts of the game Operation. But then, at some point, something would slot into place: they'd fall in love, start a family, get a well-paid job, a nice career, and they would begin to feel more stable. The truth was, though, they were just giving out parts of themselves to relatives and trusted friends; they were learning that it was normal not to be able to cope on your own, and that asking people for help was the only way forward if there were other things they wanted to do with their lives. They had to depend on others.

And then? Then what would happen? That's where Yui believed luck came into it. Because if those people lost someone who had been looking after a fundamental piece of them, they would never be able to regain their balance. The harmony would be gone, along with their loved one.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World

“Things are highly interdependent. The very concepts of “we” and “they” are becoming irrelevant. War is out of date because our neighbors are part of ourselves. We see this in economic, educational and environmental issues. Although we may have some ideological differences or other conflicts with our neighbor, economically and environmentally we share essentially the same country, and destroying our neighbor is destroying ourselves. It’s foolish.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment: A Commentary on Atisha Dipamkara Shrijnana's A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment and Lama Je Tsong Khapa's Lines of Experience

“You can say that before the Absolute all are equal, but there are not two, but one person, who is you.”
― Kobun Chino Otogawa, Embracing Mind: The Zen Talks of Kobun Chino Otogawa

“Zen is the very awareness of the dynamism of life living itself in us—and aware of itself, in us, as being the one life that lives in all.”
― Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters

“The wish to have everything by one’s own power is false pride. Even what one owes to others belongs nevertheless to oneself and is a piece of one’s own life, and the desire to calculate what one has 'earned' on one’s own and what one owes to others is surely not Christian and is a futile undertaking besides. With what one is in oneself and what one receives, a person is a whole.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“A new origin narrative and national identity could help pave the way to a more livable society for us all. A society based on cooperation rather than competition, on the idea that all living creatures are interdependent and that humanity's goal should be balance. Such were the values of many original Americans, deemed "savages." Similar gifts are waiting from other despised peoples and traditions. We might well start by recognizing that "America" is the name of an entire hemisphere, rich in a stunning variety of histories, cultures and peoples-not just one country.”
― Elizabeth Martínez, De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century

“I cannot withdraw into myself. I exist, outside myself and everywhere in the world. There is not an inch of my path which does not encroach on the path of another: there is no way of being that can prevent me from overflowing myself at every moment. This life that I weave with my own substance, it offers other men a thousand unknown faces, it crosses impetuously their fate.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others

“Let's be aware of the impact we have, in all ways, and not just those ways we wish.”
― Donald T Iannone, D.Div.

“At a deep level all things in our Universe are ineffably interdependent and interconnected, as we are part of the Matryoshka-like mathematical object of emergent levels of complexity where consciousness pervades all levels.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution

“We are 100 percent individual and 100 percent a member of the community.”
― Katherine Thanas, The Truth of This Life: Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is

“We give something, and that opens the possibility of receiving: we naturally receive something when we give. This is how we live, whether it is in the business world, in our social lives, or in any other context. Giving and taking is happening all the time. Living is dependent on giving: we give and therefore we receive. This interdependence is natural; however, it takes a special effort to train our mind to know this well enough so that our understanding is clear and strong. – 17th Karmapa”
― Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Traveling the Path of Compassion: A Commentary on The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva

“The deepest sense of life's meaning and purpose arises from our interdependence and, in turn, our willingness to relate to others and respond to their needs. [p49]”
― Hugh Mackay, The Kindness Revolution: How we can restore hope, rebuild trust and inspire optimism

“Pretending like you can take on the world on your own isn't brave, it's stupid.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“Interdependence and emptiness show us that there are no fixed starting points. Many people have the idea that they lack what they need in order to start working toward their dreams. They feel they do not have enough power, or they do not have enough money. But they should know that any point is the right starting point. This is the perspective that emptiness opens up. We can start from zero. (17th Karmapa)”
― Ogyen Trinley Dorje, The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out

“Interdependence and emptiness show us that there are no fixed starting points. We can start from nothing. Whatever we have, wherever we are — that is the place we can start from. Many people have the idea that they lack what they need in order to start working toward their dreams. They feel they do not have enough power, or they do not have enough money. But they should know that any point is the right starting point. This is the perspective that emptiness opens up. We can start from zero. – 17th Karmapa”
― Ogyen Trinley Dorje, The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out

“You and I are just swinging doors.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent upon most of the world?… Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured. It is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality. —Christmas Sermon on Peace, 1967”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Time was when a peasant family could consider the corn it sowed and reaped, or the woollen garments woven in the cottage, as the products of its own soil. But even then this way of looking at things was not quite correct. There were the roads and the bridges made in common, the swamps drained by common toil, the communal pastures enclosed by hedges which were kept in repair by each and all. If the looms for weaving or the dyes for colouring fabrics were improved by somebody, all profited; and even in those days a peasant family could not live alone, but was dependent in a thousand ways on the village or the commune.

But nowadays, in the present state of industry, when everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings