A Thought About Community Life

"Community life is by definition a life of cooperation and responsibility. Private life and public life, without the disciplines of community interest, necessarily gravitate toward competition and exploitation. As private life casts off all community restraints in the interest of economic exploitation or ambition or self-realization or whatever, the communal supports of public life also and by the same strike are undercut, and public life becomes simply the arena of unrestrained private ambition and greed."

- Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community