• To say, 'This is one of us', or 'this is a stranger', is the mode of estimating practised by trifling minds. To those of more generous principles, the whole world is but as one family.
  Collection of Sanskrit fables in prose and verse Hitopadesha, translated and edited by Lakshami Nārāyan Nyālankār, 1830
  • [Colloquial rephrased version:] To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family.
    Misattributed to Buddha (563-483 BC) Indian Avatar, teacher of enlightenment, central figure of Buddhism

• Interdependence is and ought to be as much as the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. With-
  out interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His
  social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.
  Mohandas Karamchand Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian Hindu sage, spiritual activist leader, humanitarian, lawyer, nonviolent freedom fighter, presented by the Indian weekly newspaper Young India, S. 93, 21. March 1929

• Humankind has not woven the web of life.
  We are but one thread within it.
  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
  All things are bound together.
  All things connect.
  Famous speech by Chief Seattle (1780-1866) Native American chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes, Chief Seattle's LETTER TO ALL, addressed to the American Government, ~December 1854, presented by the website of the Californian State University Northridge

• The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.
  Famous speech by Chief Seattle (1780-1866) Native American chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes, Chief Seattle's LETTER TO ALL, addressed to the American Government,
  ~December 1854, presented by the website of the Californian State University Northridge

• The lives of 6.8 billion human beings from different continents are very much interdependent, interconnected. All parts of the world are part of me. My own happy future, my success, my peaceful life depend on the rest of the world. That kind of conclusion can develop out of investigation, not just out of mere compassion.
  Video presentation by H.H. 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso (*1935) Tibetan monk, leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1989, Vancouver Peace Summit 2009, presented by the Canadian broadcast television network CTV Television Network, part 2 of 4, 2/3rd section, minute 50:13-55:00, Vancouver, Canada, Sunday
  27. September 2009

• One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by your-
  self, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.
  Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African anti-apartheid activist, first black archbishop of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa,
  Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1984, No Future Without Forgiveness, Image, 17. October 2000

• The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States – a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer.
  ⚡ First Inaugural Address by Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) 32nd US president during World War II (1933-1945), 32nd degree Freemason, war criminal, 4. March 1933

• The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community. William James, M.D. (1842-1910) US American physician, professor of psychology and philosophy, Harvard University, pragmatic author, Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment, presented by the US American magazine The Atlantic Monthly, October 1880

• Security and contentment can come only through interdependence of every man upon every other man.
  Walter Russell (1871-1963) US American polymath, natural philosopher, mystic, architect, painter, sculptor, builder, author (unified theory in physics and cosmogony), cited in: AZ Quotes

• Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains
  the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in
  that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.
  Lecture by Alan Watts (1915-1973) British religious philosopher, minister, Episcopal priest, Zen expert, speaker, writer, Following
  the Middle Way #3, Alan Watts Podcast, 31. August 2008

• Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. […] We are all one. Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) Serbian US American physicist, mechanical and electrical engineer, inventor, The Problem of Increasing Human Energy with Special References to the Harnessing
  of the Sun's Energy, presented by the publication The Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900

• True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings. Pema Chödrön [Deirdre Blomfield-Brown] (*1936) US American Tibetan Buddhist nun (*1981), teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage of ⚡ Chögyam Trungpa, author, Start Where You Are. A Guide to Compassionate Living, Shambhala Publications, Boulder, Colorado, 1st edition 9. March 2004

Christakis and Fowler published the results of their long-term "Happiness study" of 20 years done with 4739 individuals in the British journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), December 2008. Humans are affected by their
friends' friends' friends at three degrees of separation.

• [T]he new physics presents prima facie evidence that our human thoughts are linked to nature by nonlocal connections: what a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe. This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of ‘bits of information’. […] And, I believe that most quantum physicists will also agree that our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DO something: they will be efficacious. [Emphasis in the original.]
  Article by Henry P. Stapp, Ph.D. (*1928) US American quantum physicist, UC Berkeley, California, Harnessing Science and Religion. Implications of the new scientific conception of human beings, presented by Research News, 1(6), 8. February 2001

• NC: What I think is somewhat novel about the work that we've done is not that we've shown that people are affected
  by those around them as this is common sense. But what we've been able to show, I think, is that we're affected
  ➤ not just by people who are one degree removed from us,
  ➤ but also by people who are two and even three degrees removed from us.
  JF: Not only is it the case that our friends seem to affect us, but our friends friends also seem to affect us. In fact this spreads to our friends friends friends at three degrees of separation.
  NC: The point is that it's not just one degree. It's more than one degree. The point is that we don't just affect those around us, but we affect other people who are strangers to us. And that we are not just affected by those around us,
  but affected by other people who are strangers to us.
  JF: And we find that this is true for obesity, for smoking, for happiness, for loneliness, for drinking behavior, for de-
  pression. Everywhere we look we find that there is three degrees of separation. You tend to affect your friends friends
  friends and no further, and your friends friends friends tend to affect you and no further.
  NC: The human beings are assembled into these elaborate complex branching lightning-like structures where I'm connected to you and you to others and those others each others and you get this incredibly baroque intricate beau-
  tiful pattern of human social networks. And most people when they hear social networks nowadays they think about
  the online variety which is a very recent phenomenon, you know, in the last five or 10 years we've been assembling
  ourselves into these online networks but in reality human beings have been assembling themselves into social net-
  works for hundreds of thousands of years.

• Everything is alive; everything is interconnected.
  [Latin: Omnia vivunt, omnia inter se conexa.]
  Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman statesman, political theorist, consul, lawyer, constitutionalist, philosopher, orator, author, cited in: AZ Quotes

• Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean, we can't separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind. Marianne Williamson (*1952) US American spiritual teacher, political activist, visionary, lecturer, author, cited in: Goodreads Quotable Quote

• Interdependence connects two entities, ❍ and ❍, in a nondualistic way, ∞. Dualism, in contrast, means merging
  them into one entity, ❂, or separating them into two isolated entities, ❍|❍. Dualism means either separation or mer-
  ging; either agreement or disagreement; either one or two. Nondualism means separation and connection; agreement
  and disagreement; one and two. For successful pendulation, the right kind of distance is critical, for individuals as
  much as for society at large. For example, having a wide network of relatively weak social connections provides more
  individual autonomy than being embedded into one single tightly knit social context that allows only for minimal dissent.
  Evelin Gerda Lindner, M.D., Ph.D. (*1954) German physician, psychologist, transdisciplinary scholar in social sciences and huma-
  nities, human dignity researcher, founding president of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), author, Gender,
  Humiliation, and Global Security. Dignifying Relationships from Love, Sex, and Parenthood to World Affairs, chapter 6 "The Humiliation Antidote: How About the Audacity of Love", S. 76, Praeger, 26. February 2010

• Organizations are not separate from society, they are part of society. And in fact, I would say that it's only important for organizations to pay attention to the environmental conditions that we live in. Because if the environment crashes our society will crash. And if the society crashes our business will crash. So therefore, it is in the best interest of every organization to think about their global impact, to think about sustainability, to think about the local community and to
  do good in the world. Richard Barrett, FRSA (*1945) British social commentator, speaker, author on the evolution of leadership
  and human values in business and society, Conscious Capitalism, sponsored by the Italian company Asterys, Rome, YouTube
  film, minute 2:35, 3:15 minutes duration, posted 27. November 2012

• Still, while there is no such requirement, this much should be said: long-term relationships do hold remarkable opportunities for mutual growth, mutual expression, and mutual fulfillment – and that has its own reward.
  Neale Donald Walsch (*1943) US American spiritual teacher, bestselling author, trilogy Conversations with God. An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1, S. 138, 1995, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st edition 29. October 1996, 1998

• Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. [...] Humanity
  is in 'final exam' as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe. [...]
  It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate.
  Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) US American engineer, systems theorist, architect, constructor, designer, inventor, futurist, philosopher, author, Critical Path, St. Martin's Press, 1981

• Each moment or part lives only by participating in and eventually giving itself up to the whole. [...] [T]he 'self' or
  identity which is given up, however, is only the claim on the part of a fragment to be the whole, a truth claiming to be
  truer than it is. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) German philosopher of the German idealism, author, cited in: Hegel and the History of Philosophy. Proceedings of the 1972 Hegel Society of America. Conference, edited by J.J. O'Malley, K.W. Algozin, F.G. Weiss, S. 107, Marinus Nijhoff, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1974

• There are no internal affairs left on our crowded Earth! And mankind's sole salvation lies in everyone making everything his business; in the people of the East being vitally concerned with what is thought in the West, the
  people of the West vitally concerned with what goes on in the East.
  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) Soviet and Russian historian, imprisoned in the Soviet gulag, dramatist, novelist, Nobel
  laureate in literature, 1970, Banquet speech for the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Oslo, Norway, 10. December 1970

• Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighbourhood gives identity.
  Frontiers snatch it away.
  Herbert 'Marshall' McLuhan (1911-1980) Canadian professor of English literature, literary critic, philosopher, communication theo-
  rist, rhetorician, educator, author, Eric McLuhan, editor, The Book of Probes, S. 493, Gingko Press, 2003, 30. September 2011

• [E]ach system – genetic code or I Ching – gives a microcosmic rendition of a larger principle of cochaos theory. Fortunately, these two models, ancient and modern, provide a means to observe a mathematical paradigm that is perhaps inherent in the fabric of the universe itself. Numbers create the patterns of the universe. Analogs form
  the networks of qualitative resonance in the timing and spacing of matter and energy, while linears develop
  the discrete sums that quantify units of whatever is being spaced or timed. Together – as analinear number –
  they give a flowing, connective quality to the universe's discrete quantities. To merge the analog with the linear
  in cochaos patterning provides a truly universal computation method.
  Katya Walter, Ph.D., US American multi-disciplinary scientist, physicist, I Ching scholar, Jungian scholar, A New (and very Old)
  Model for Nonlinear Computation, presented at the Sixth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Tokyo, Japan,
  July 1995

• To balance and harmonize the analog and linear functions of number is the special gift of analinear computation.
  It is evident in the ancient I Ching and in modern DNA. By combining unitized counting with flowing proportions,
  this paradigm creates nonlinear equations, or more appropriately, analinear equations.
  Katya Walter, Ph.D., US American multi-disciplinary scientist, physicist, I Ching scholar, Jungian scholar, A New (and very Old)
  Model for Nonlinear Computation, presented at the Sixth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Tokyo, Japan,
  July 1995

• [There is] strong evidence that we are different than we've been told. We really are not separate. This is why people respond to tragedies like Haiti. When we see the Haitian children, whom we've never met, we intuit and know in our hearts that they are family, that they are our brothers and sisters. It's natural that we want to reach out. We participate
  in a society that disconnects us from that. It says, 'okay, that was fine. Now, you have to get back to the 'real world.'
  This idea of a 'real world' isn't the real world.
  Audio interview with Tom Shadyac (*1958) Aramean US American comedian, Hollywood film director, producer, truth seeker, neardeather (2007), multimillionaire converted to the path of simplicity, screenwriter, producer of the documentary I Am (2010 American documentary film), Changing Our Story To Save The World with Tom Shadyac, presented by the US American web
  radio station New Dimensions, host Justine Willis-Toms, 60:00 minutes duration, aired 5. March 2011

• The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in the pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a sub-system. This larger Mind
  is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by "God," but it is still immanent in the total intercon-
  nected social system and planetary ecology. ⚡ Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) British American (visual) anthropologist, bio-
  logist, social scientist, linguist, semiotician, cyberneticist on the concept of the CIA, information flow in nature, philosopher, OSS agent, co-initiator of author, Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemo-
  logy, S. 467, Chandler Press, San Francisco, 1972, University of Chicago Press, 23. May 2000

• Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality.
  Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players. They're not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality. Stephen R. Covey (1932-2012)
  US American leading management consultant, bestselling author, Principle Centered Leadership, Free Press, 1. October 1992

• We are all linked in a vast network of life, from the smallest cell to the highest and most powerful person.
  We are all not only linked but interdependent. That the well being of the one affects the wellbeing of the many,
  and that as we seek to that which is life affirming, we evoke the best that is within us.
  Interview with Stephan A. Schwartz, Ph.D., US American futurologist, senior fellow for Brain, Mind and Healing, Samueli Institute, cognitive sciences research associate, Laboratories for Fundamental Research, author, Nonlocal Awareness and Visions of the Future, presented by Health World Online, Daniel Redwood D.C., page 16 (last page), 2005

• The many and the one – […] The distinctness of the many, both manifest and spiritual, is interdependent with the unity of the one. Distinctness is not separateness: distinctness celebrates diversity in free unity; separatedness is a mental state of closure against unity. John Heron (1928-2022) British social scientist, pioneer in the creation of a participatory research method, committed to the process of co-operative inquiry, Participatory Spirituality. A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion, Lulu Press, Morrisville, North Carolina, 26. July 2006

• Hence, international co-operation and solidarity and the relentless search for consensus become an absolute imperative. They are the only possible alternative for all nations, whose interdependence is being made increasingly manifest by the rapid development of production technology, of transport and communications, as well as by the over-
  hanging threat of deterioration of the environment and exhaustion of natural resources. And what is one to say of the
  frightful accumulation of means of destruction in a world facing the no less frightful problems of hunger, disease and
  ignorance? Federico Mayor Zaragoza (*1934) Spanish scholar, politician, address to the Symposium 80 on International Cultural Relations. Bridges Across Frontiers, Bonn, 27. May 1980

• We are not similar [...] or alike [...] we are each other. Eva Athena, source unknown

• Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevi-
  tably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared. [Applause.]
  Historic address to the Muslim world by Barack Obama, 44th US president, historical address to the Muslim world, Remarks by
  the President on a New Beginning, Cairo University, Egypt, presented by the website Whitehouse.gov, Thursday, 4. June 2009

• There is sometimes a sense that old ways of thinking must prevail; a conception of power that is rooted in the past rather than in the future. [...] In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. [...] As I said in Cairo, given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or one group of people over an other will inevitably fail. The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game – pro-
  gress must be shared. Historic address to the Muslim world by Barack Obama, 44th US president, trip to Russia, July 2009