Quotes about cooperation

Crows know the value of organization, and are as well drilled as soldiers — very much better than some soldiers, in fact, for crows are always on duty, always at war, and always dependent on each other for life and safety.

“It would have worked,” she said. “If we’d cooperated, it would have worked.”

“It would have been better.”

“I think about all the things we could have done, all the miracles we could have achieved, if we were all just a little bit better than it turns out we are.”

Conflict does breed innovation, but so does diversity and cultural development. Bringing people together to share ideas is just as powerful a catalyst.

Skills used unselfishly make for cooperation.

When times are easy and there’s plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival.

...when we have more minds concerned, any challenge shrinks proportionally. The solution to our greatest problems may simply be involvement.

“The strongest don’t always get what they want,” she said to Ending. “Not when the weak can work together.”

Before one begins to talk coalition, one should establish clearly the premises on which that coalition will be based. All parties to the coalition must perceive a mutually beneficial goal based on the conception of each party of his own self-interest. One party must not blindly assume that what is good for one is automatically—without question—good for the other.

At its best, mutual aid actually produces new ways of living where people get to create systems of care and generosity that address harm and foster well-being.

'Co-operation makes many things possible. Co-operation introduces a factor which is greater than the sum of its parts. [...] Such a tremendous thing - the ability to co-operate... It makes you wonder what we could do if we were really to co-operate.'

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. Everybody's crew.

Not realizing that our species evolved in cooperation, we have opted for competition in work, school, relationships. Not understanding the body's ability to reorganize its internal processes, we have drugged and doctored ourselves into bizarre side effects.