Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social.
Interpretation
Infrastructure alone is insufficient without community support; social aspects are vital for its success.
This quote by Pete Buttigieg emphasizes the importance of community in the success of infrastructure. While having strong physical structures may seem vital, it is the social connections and the health of the community that truly determine the effectiveness and sustainability of those structures. In essence, good infrastructure must be complemented by a vibrant, engaged community that can utilize and maintain it.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about community development at a local government meeting.
'Freedom' means a lot to conservatives, but they have such a narrow sense of what it means. They think a lot about freedom from - freedom from government, freedom from regulation - and precious little about freedom to. Freedom to is absolutely something that has to be safeguarded by good government, just as it could be impaired by bad government.
We need to intentionally invest in health, in home ownership, in entrepreneurship, in access to democracy, in economic empowerment. If we don't do these things, we shouldn't be surprised that racial inequality persists because inequalities compound.
My understanding of my faith is that - through a Christian framework - part of what we are called to do is to lay down our own self-interests, after the model of divinity that comes into this world in the form of Christ and lays down his life. And in order to do that, you have to care about something or someone more than yourself.
So much of politics is about people's relationships with themselves. You do better if you make people feel secure in who they are.
Experiences with friends or family members coming out have helped millions of Americans to see past stereotypes and better understand what being gay is - and is not.
The most moving responses I got to my coming out in the first place was people, like teenagers, letting me know that it made their lives easier in some way.
Being young, working class, and black, everything you do is policed. If someone hits you and you hit back, you are aggressive. If you cry, you are weak. You are kind of always pretending to be something.
The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others.
It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.
And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we should take our goodbyes whenever we can.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.