Fraternity Quotes

“It's a commonly expressed and rather nice, romantic notion that we are all "sisters" and "brothers."

Let's be real. Fact is, we might be better served to accept that we are all siblings.

Siblings fight, pull each other's hair, steal stuff, and accuse each other indiscriminately.

But siblings also know the undeniable fact that they are the same blood, share the same origins, and are family.

Even when they hate each other.

And that tends to put all things in perspective.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation.
Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value.
If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty...

In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“Clubs, fraternities, nations—these are the beloved barriers in the way of a workable world, these will have to surrender some of their rights and some of their ribs. A ‘fraternity’ is the antithesis of fraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality. Anyone who remembers back to his fraternity days at college recalls the enthusiasts in his group, the rabid members, both young and old, who were obsessed with the mystical charm of membership in their particular order. They were usually men who were incapable of genuine brotherhood, or at least unaware of its implications. Fraternity begins when the exclusion formula is found to be distasteful. The effect of any organization of a social and brotherly nature is to strengthen rather than diminish the lines which divide people into classes; the effects of states and nations is the same, and eventually these lines will have to be softened, these powers will have to be generalized.”
― E.B. White, One Man's Meat

“In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Some of us can live without a society but not without a family.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Of a sudden he felt that fraternity life was the only way to exist at college. How could he have doubted? (126)”
― Ferrol Sams, The Whisper of the River

“More insomniacs!' cried the doctor. 'Come in, come in".”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“A school of esotericism usually arises in connection with some special realization of the Truth, which it sometimes stresses beyond its due proportion to life as a whole, but there will never be found any teaching which has the power to hold together a body of earnest seekers which has not a spark of the divine fire at its heart; therefore respect should be given to all how seek in sincerity, however far from the goal they may appear to be, and all who are engaged in the great Quest should rather try to see the vision which a brother has glimpsed than the special errors to which he has fallen victim.”
― Dion Fortune, Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate

“I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed...”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

“Passando fra gli insorti che si scostavano con religioso rispetto, [papà Mabeuf] continuò dritto verso Enjolras che indietreggiava impietrito, gli strappò la bandiera, e senza che nessuno osasse trattenerlo né aiutarlo, quel vecchio ottuagenario col capo vacillante, ma col piede fermo, salì lentamente la scala di pietre costruita nella barricata. Lo spettacolo era così serio che tutto all'intorno dissero: «Giù il cappello!». A ogni gradino che saliva diventava sempre più terribile: i suoi capelli canuti, il volto decrepito, l'ampia fronte calma e rugosa, gli occhi incavati, la bocca attonita e semiaperta, il vecchio braccio che sosteneva la bandiera rossa, uscivano dall'ombra e ingigantivano nel sanguinoso chiarore della torcia, e sembrava di vedere lo spettro del 1793 sorgere dalla terra inalberando la bandiera del terrore.
Quando fu all'ultimo gradino, quando quel fantasma tremante e terribile, ritto su quel mucchio di rovine dinanzi a milleduecento fucili invisibili, si drizzò in faccia alla morte come se fosse più forte di essa, tutta la barricata assunse nelle tenebre un aspetto colossale e soprannaturale. Vi fu uno di quegli istanti di silenzio che accompagnano i prodigi. In mezzo a quel silenzio il vegliardo sventolò la bandiera rossa e gridò:
«Viva la Rivoluzione! Viva la Repubblica! Fratellanza! Uguaglianza! E morte!».”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Even older and just as rich, the ritual of Kappa Alpha Order thrilled his soul and permeated his mind. By the end of the ceremony he was so awed, so filled with idealism, so saturated with nebulous aspirations, that he gazed with love on all his brothers…He floated down the stairs of the old Administration Building that night new born and shining, warm and secure in the midst of a group that no outside force could penetrate nor unsuspected evil ever tarnish. Porter was a Knight of Kappa Alpha Order (193)”
― Ferrol Sams, The Whisper of the River

“Common right is nought but the protection of all radiating over the right of each. This protection of all is termed Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these aggregated sovereignties is called Society. This intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence comes what is called the social tie.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“[A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by the vicissitudes of life and to find a deep fraternity based on empathy.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“Fraternity means that the father no longer sacrifices the sons; instead the brothers kill one another. Wars between nations have been replaced by civil war. The great settling of accounts, first under national ‘pretexts,’ led to a rapidly escalating world civil war.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“To the meaningless French idealisms: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, we propose the three German realities: Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery.”
― Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin von Bülow

“You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“You’re right. One has to be mad. [...] Do you remember about the prehistoric reptile, the an- cestor of man, the first to emerge from the mud in early Paleozoic times, a milliard years ago, who set out to live in the air and to breathe, even though he had no lungs? [...] Well, he was mad too. Absolutely bats. That’s why he tried. He’s the ancestor of us all, and we shouldn’t forget it. But for him we wouldn’t be here. He was as crazy as they come. We too have got to try. That's what progress is. By trying like him, perhaps we’ll wind up with the necessary organs, the organ of dignity, of decency, or of fraternity.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“Despite all the pain he caused, I didn't know how to breathe without my brother in this world.”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Virtue and Vengeance

“Hombro con hombro, una cadena de hermanos, una sangre no ya encerrada en la mezquina circulación del cuerpo, sino circulando con una dulzura y sin embargo regresando sin fin a través de China.”
― Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories

“It was once necessary to go from somebody to nothing to become everything.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“The social codes are different, distinctly preppy, fraternity-sorority, hip, flip, fast-and-cute, nauseating, and artificial. I have no doubt that the majority of these people are interesting, likeable, intelligent people. Unfortunately, they've been taught not to show it. The problem lies in socializing. When these people socialize, they don a common "mask." They talk a certain way (hip, flip) act a certain way, do certain things, all of which have been defined as socially acceptable. By acting in such a way, one makes "friends." With time, friends use their masks less and less, and a true, deep friendship results.”
― Juan F. Thompson

“Comedy writers don't join fraternities.'
'Don't pigeon hole me, Georgie, I'm infinite.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Landline

“Learning how to be a human to be human by attending a frat is alike learning how to ride a horse by going to a Tijuana donkey show.”
― Ben Kissel, The Last Book On The Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History's Most Notorious Serial Killers

“Learning how to be human by attending a frat is like learning how to ride a horse by going to a Tijuana donkey show.”
― Ben Kissel, The Last Book On The Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History's Most Notorious Serial Killers

“TO THE EAST AND TO THE WEST.

To the East and to the West,
To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,
To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,
These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in
all men,
I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb
friendship, exaltè, previously unknown,
Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in
all men.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and Other Writings

“Je ne peux pas être vraiment en paix avec moi-même si je ne suis pas en paix avec mes frères.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“His heart was too heavy to bear. He felt the weight of conscience, the weight of responsibility, the weight of fraternity.”
― R.J. Ellory, Bad Signs

“Every official Organization for the Defense of Fauna and Flora had blacklisted him: his 'methods' were deplored and he was reproached also with having often been mixed up in political struggles. And that was true. The roots were innumerable, infinite in their variety and beauty, and some of them were deeply implanted in the human soul — a ceaseless tormented aspiration, a need for infinity, a thirst, a presentiment, a limitless expectation: liberty, equality, fraternity, dignity...”
― Romain Gary

“Being a freshman, I was impressed with team members Buster McClure and Max Dodge. They taught me a lot about football and campus life. Max Dodge was busy recruiting underclassmen to pledge Alpha Tau Omega fraternity...”
― Carl M. Robinson, Finding the Clouds and a Life

“Many people do interpret "black men loving black men" solely in terms of a sexual, romantic affinity, and love. But what I meant was love in the sense of friendship, community, family, and fraternity, which was far more important, in nurturing me as a black gay man, than the love of a particular lover who is white. It's more important because for black people in this country it's difficult to exist, to flourish, to find sustenance and spiritual strength when you're totally surrounded by whites, or when the source of your support is solely from whites. There are things that white people can't understand, don't feel, and don't know no matter how much they love you.
(Marlon Riggs, in an interview with Ron Simmons)”
― Essex Hemphill, Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men