Quotes on Common Ground

COMMUNICATION: If I had to pick a first rule of communication-the one practice above all others that opens the door to connecting with others-it would be to look for common ground. Too often people see communication as the process of transmitting massive amounts of information to other people. But that's the wrong picture. Communication is a journey. The more that people have in common, the better the chance that they can take that journey together.

Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.

As believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance.

Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort -- a sustained effort -- to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground.

If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment.

While their methods differ radically, artists and physicists share the desire to investigate the ways the interlocking pieces of reality fit together. This is the common ground upon which they meet.

Why cannot we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together?

We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.

Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn't require either race to lose anything; everyone gained.

I like to see myself as a bridge builder, that is me building bridges between people, between races, between cultures, between politics, trying to find common ground.

Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

For a moment the two of them looked at each other, wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common ground, a place where sound was alien.