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.
The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.
Faith is in the soul. Belief is thought. Faith is so rich. Faith gives me my spiritual self.
Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions.
When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.
And she thought then how strange it was that disaster--the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face--could be at times, such a thing of beauty.
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