In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions. --Margaret Wheatley (in The Leader's Work: Reweaving Relationships)

When I really hear someone it puts me in touch with him. It enriches my life. It is through hearing people that I have learned all that I know about individuals, about personality, about psychotherapy, and about interpersonal relationships. --Carl Rogers (in Untitled)

We eventually learn that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind, but about continually confronting them with honesty and courage. It is about ending our feeling of separation from others by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers,and friends. It is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion to our family life, careers, and community service. --J. Krishnamurti (in Untitled)

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. --Dalai Lama (in What Makes People Happy)

Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object. But when you look at it more closely, you will see that it has no independent existence. When you contemplate it you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretch across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it all the seasons all form part of the tree. As you think about the tree more and more you will discover that everything in the universe helps make the tree what it is; that it cannot be isolated from anything else and at every moment its nature is subtly changing. --Soygal Rinpoche (in Universe Makes The Tree)

Meaning has to do with human relationships and our contribution to progressive purpose and growth in understanding and responsibility. Helping make the world a better place for us all through our work brings meaning to it. --Dave Smith (in To Be of Use)

All human beings are part of the tapestry of the universe, part of a pattern which connects. Nothing exists in isolation, in separateness. When I realize this network of grand relationships, I lose the illusion of my separate self. --Satish Kumar (in The Trust Network)

To contribute to our densely interconnected and complex web of relationships is to truly transform our inner journeys. --Mark Jacobs (in 6-Year-Old Pumps it Up)

What we know about individuals, no matter how rich the details, will never give us the ability to predict how they will behave as a system. Once individuals link together they become something different ... Relationships change us, reveal us, evoke more from us. Only when we join with others do our gifts become visible, even to ourselves. --Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers (in Companies Learn From Social Networks)

To live more simply is to unburden our lives -- to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direct, unpretentious and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. --Duane Elgin (in A Dollar A Year CEO)

We are coming to understand health not as the absence of disease, but rather as the process by which individuals maintain their sense of coherence (i.e. sense that life is comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) and ability to function in the face of changes in themselves and their relationships with their environment. --Aaron Antonovsky (in World's First PhD Program In Happiness)

Being healthy means a wholeness in the living of one's life -- a dynamic and constantly changing balance that acknowledges the soundness of our physical state, the wholesomeness of lifestyle, the values that define our behavior, our intimate and collective relationships, the meaning and purpose of our work in the world, and the spiritual dimension of our existence. --William B. Stewart (in Seven Simple Health Habits)

Technology is neither good nor bad, nor even neutral. Technology is one part of the complex of relationships that people form with each other and the world around them; it simply cannot be understood outside of that context. --Samuel Collins (in A Concert Interrupted With Heart)

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may, at any moment, become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself: What else is the world interested in? What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? --Dorothy Day (in A Common Word Between Us & You)

Technology is neither good nor bad, nor even neutral. Technology is one part of the complex of relationships that people form with each other and the world around them; it simply cannot be understood outside of that concept. --Samuel Collins (in College Students Build Car for the Blind)

The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. --Anthony Robbins (in Longevity in Relationships: 10 Tips)

Simplicity of living means meeting life face to face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions. It means being direct and honest in relationships of all kinds. It means taking life as it is. --Duane Elgin (in The Spiritual Wisdom of Simplicity)

In our relationships we need to uphold that aspect of the person which is the real person and the soul beyond their own self-doubt. --Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (in Teenage Football Players Conspiracy of Kindness)

Trust is the glue of life...It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships. --Stephen Covey (in A World Where We Trust Strangers)

Children who develop strong, caring relationships with all the people and living things around them will be more grounded and ultimately more prepared to function in, and meaningfully contribute to, an increasingly complex society. --Mark Sorensen (in Peacemaking the Navajo Way)

People's great creativity and diversity, our desire for contribution and relationships, blossom when the heart of our community is clear and beckoning, and when we refrain from cluttering our paths with proscriptions and demands. The future of community is best taught to us by life. --Margaret Wheatley (in The Promise & Paradox of Community)

When gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.
--Lewis Hyde (in Gift Ecology: A Conversation with Nipun Mehta)

A person is a person through other persons; you can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships. --Desmond Tutu (in Social Distance: A Community-Style Poem)

We can think of place-making as something that happens through movement: significance, memories and relationships are created by patterns of walking, approaching, branching away, visiting, gathering. --Michael Givens (in Of People, Plants and Place)

When we listen, we open ourselves to new, joyous relationships with species other than our own. --Kathleen Dean Moore (in Listen: Four Love Songs)

If privilege is a disconnection drug, the antidote is connection. It's being in authentic relationships where you show up with your vulnerability. --Chuck Collins (in How Much Is Enough?)

To listen to trees, nature's great connectors, is to learn how to inhabit the relationships that give life its source, substance, and beauty --David George Haskell (in The Log- Year 2)

Real self-care involves making difficult decisions that will pay off in the long run as we build a life around the relationships and activities that matter most to us. When done well, real-self care is empowering. --Pooja Lakshmin (in Pooja Lakshmin: Self Care the Right Way)