George Oppen Quotes

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.

Everything's interconnected. That's the way life is.

To view any individual as being independent of relationality is like viewing a point outside of a line, a line outside of a figure, a figure outside of a body.

No one is alone, and each change here brings about another change there.

Nothing to do with anything, something to do with everything.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It's very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy - where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system.

We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity.

Seeing everything means recognizing the ultimate fact that all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us.

General Systems Theory, a related modern concept [to holism], says that each variable in any system interacts with the other variables so thoroughly that cause and effect cannot be separated. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand a cell, a rat, a brain structure, a family, a culture if you isolate it from its context. Relationship is everything.

The success of each is dependent upon the success of the other.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

The opponents and I are really one. My strength and skills only half of the equation. The other half is theirs. An opponent is someone whose strength joined to yours creates a certain result.

There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.

There is not a single one of us with a job that is not completely reliant in some way shape or form on others.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

I have an interesting perspective on depending on others. I think it gives people a chance to serve. And I'm not so much big on independence, as I am on interdependence. I'm not talking about co-dependency, I'm talking about giving people the opportunity to practicing love with its sleeves rolled up.

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.

I am a part of all that I have met.

Everybody is someone else's instrument.

We have to move from our devotion to independence, through an understanding of interdependence

I need them as much as they need me.

The world is interconnected and causations run in many directions at once.