COLLABORATION / SYNERGY

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Wake up with one mind, my friends, and kindle the fire, you many who share the same nest. Make your thoughts harmonious; stretch them across the loom; make a ship whose oars will carry us across.
Rig Veda
c. 3700 BCE, Sacred Hindu Text

By mutual confidence and mutual aid, great deeds are done, and great discoveries made.
Homer
8th Century BCE, Greek Epic Poet

As shrubs growing together
in close-knit clumps stay unscathed
though buffeted by contrary winds,
so too by banding together
the weak are unassailable
by however powerful a foe.
Vishnu Sharma
c. 200 BCE, Indian Sage, Royal Educator
Panchatantra , III.44, Chandra Rajan, tr., 1993

He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.
Seneca
c. 4 BCE-65 CE, Spanish-Roman Stoic Philosopher, Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Rhetorician, Statesman

Behind every able man, there are always other able men.
Chinese Saying

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.
Ethiopian Saying

When many work together for a goal,
Great things may be accomplished.
It is said a lion cub was killed
By a single colony of ants.
Saskya Pandita
1182-1251, Tibetan Grand Lama

One hand can't tie a bundle.
Basa (Liberia/Nigeria) Saying

Wan an ciaahn clap.
One hand cannot clap.
Jamaican Saying

When a blind man carries a lame man, both go forward.
Swedish Saying

A person is like a letter of an alphabet: to produce a word it must combine with another.
Benjamin Mandelstamm
1806-1886, Hebrew Writer
Mishle Binyamin

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.
Robert Schumann
1810-1856, German Composer

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
George Eliot
1819-1880, English Writer, Poet

It is in all things that are pure and social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
Booker T. Washington
1856-1915, African-American Educator, Reformer
Cotton States Exposition Address, 1895 September 19

It has not been given to one man to have everything in perfection. You have a part to play; I, in my humble way, another; here is one who plays a little part; there, another. The perfection is the combination of all these parts.
Vivekananda
1863-1902, Indian Guru, Writer
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1984-1987 , 8:56

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford
1863-1947, American Industrialist, Inventor, Philanthropist

As we come to see how many sources there are for events we have less confidence in any one scheme of betterment, any one person, class, race or nation; but more in what all can do by team-work in a common spirit.
Charles Cooley
1864-1929, American Sociologist
Life and the Student

If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it's pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.
Laura Wilder
1867-1957, American Writer

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
Mahatma Gandhi
1869-1948, Indian Spiritual Leader
The Essential Gandhi

Let us first realize the fact that we thrive only when we are cooperative by being alive to the truth of the interrelationship of all things in existence. Let us then die to the notion of power and conquest and be resurrected to the eternal creativity of love, which is all-embracing and all-forgiving.
D. T. Suzuki
1870-1966, Japanese Scholar, Writer
The Awakening of Zen , 1987

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller
1880-1968, American Writer, Educator

Living together is an art.
William Pickens
1881-1954, African-American Educator, Orator
Address, 1932 November 2

Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.
Bondei (Kenya) Saying

A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle.
Japanese Saying

If we must have justice, we must be strong; if we must be strong, we must come together; if we must come together, we can only do so through the system of organization.
Marcus Garvey
1887-1940, Jamaican Pan-African Leader, Writer

No organization can do everything. Every organization can do something.
Asa Randolph
1889-1979, African-American Labor Leader

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.
Babe Ruth
1895-1948, American Baseball Player

Synergy means behaviour of whole systems unpredicted by the behaviour of their parts.
Buckminster Fuller
1895-1983, American Architect, Engineer

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
1901-1978, American Anthropologist, Psychologist, Writer

By working together, pooling our resources and building on our strengths, we can accomplish great things.
Ronald Reagan
1911-, 40th US President, Actor

Some will say that … hope lies in a nation, others in a man. I believe, rather, that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history … Each and every man, on the foundation of his own suffering and joys, builds for all.
Albert Camus
1913-1960, Algerian-French Writer, Essayist, Dramatist, 1957 Nobel Laureate

We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.
Luciano Crescenzo
1928-, Italian Writer, Scriptwriter, Director, Photographer, Cartoonist

We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are going to perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929-1968, African-American Civil Rights Leader, Cleric, 1964 Nobel Laureate
The Trumpet of Conscience , 1967

Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part.
Stephen Covey
1932-, American Management Educator, Writer
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , 1989

Difference is the beginning of synergy.
Covey
First Things First

Change did not begin with you, and it will not end with you, but what you do with your life is an absolutuely vital piece of that chain. The testimony of each of our daily lives is a vital missing remnant in the fabric of the future.
Audre Lorde
1934-1992, African-American Poet, Writer, Lesbian-Feminist Activist
Commencement Address, Oberlin College, 1989 May 29

The world needs all of our power and love and energy, and each of us has something to give. The trick is to find it and use it, to find it and give it away, so there will always be more. We can be lights for each other, and through each other's illumination we will see the way. Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always spring.
Merle Shain
1935-, Canadian Writer

We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.
Sonia Johnson
1936-, American Feminist, Writer

The character of a whole society is the cumulative result of countless small actions, day in and day out, of millions of persons. Who we are as a society, is the synergistic accumulation of who we are as individuals … Small changes that seem insignificant in isolation can be great contributions when they are simultaneously undertaken by many others.
Duane Elgin
1943-, American Writer, Activist
Voluntary Simplicity

The impossible is possible when people align with you. When you do things with people, not against them, the amazing resources of the Higher Self within are mobilised.
Gita Bellin
Australian Teacher
A Sharing of Completion And Celebration , 1983

We are members of a vast cosmic orchestra in which each living instrument is essential to the complementary and harmonious playing of the whole.
J. Allen Boone
Kinship With All Life , 1954

We all start out the same way – rich in dreams and nothing more. If we are lucky, we find friends to believe in our dreams with us. When we do, that creative cluster becomes a magnet to attract our good.
Julia Cameron
American Artist, Poet, Dramatist, Journalist, Writer
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity , 1992

It is a fact that in the right formation, the lifting power of many wings can achieve twice the distance of any bird flying alone.
Anonymous

The man who gets the most satisfactory results is not always the man with the most brilliant single mind, but rather the man who can best coordinate the brains and talents of his associates.
- W. Alton Jones

You alone can do it, but you cannot do it alone.
- O. Hobart Mowrer
"Small Groups in Historical Perspective," in Explorations in Self-Help and Mutual Aid , Leonard D. Borman, ed., 1974

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004