Richard Kyte > Quotes

“They take us out of ourselves. We find that we are not seeing other people as objects, as things that either further or stand in the way of our own interests; we see them instead as subjects. This distinction is crucial.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“It is understandable that in a world where we have a vast number of options for spending our free time, we would be hesitant to make a commitment to join an organization in which we are expected to show up every week. It is understandable but unfortunate, because showing up is what it takes. You can’t have an organization without members. You can’t have a third place without regulars. You can’t have friendship without spending time together. Just because we have options for spending our free time independently does not mean it is good for us or our communities. We must be careful not to sacrifice well-being for the sake of convenience.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“First, they tend to be meaningful; that is, they contribute to some worthwhile goal. Second, they are creative, either making or transforming something into a form that is new and interesting. Third, and most important, they are relational, broadening and deepening one’s connection to others.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Communities with high levels of trust are composed of people who enjoy working together and know how to do it. Communities with low levels of trust have people who undermine one another or who refuse to collaborate because they are pursuing their own interests.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Over the following months we began to make slow but steady progress, reducing the jail population by improving the intake process, reducing courthouse delays, and eliminating ineffective programs. Neither side won the debate; instead, we got rid of the sides and started to focus on fixing the problem. Whenever we get into oppositional attitudes we tend to exaggerate policy differences in order to define ourselves and our opponents.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“When it comes to the dangers that threaten our bodies, we eventually realize the threats and do our best to address them. Our need for things like water, food, security, and health are tied directly to universal perceptions of pleasure and pain. If our water is contaminated and we are unable to drink it, we suffer from thirst. If we do not have food, we become hungry. Our natural desire corresponds to that which our bodies need. But what happens when we lack beauty in our surroundings? What happens when our lives lack purpose? What happens when we do not have any friends?”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“building with the specific intention of bringing members of our communities together into shared public spaces.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Social capital comes in two forms: bonding capital and bridging capital. Bonding capital forms when friends and acquaintances get together to share mutual interests. An example would be a regular gathering of friends at a coffee shop or a book club. Such gatherings tend to strengthen existing social ties by deepening friendships. Bridging capital is when people from diverse backgrounds and identities come together for a common purpose. Organizations”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“It is often a conversation among friends (bonding) that generates new ideas and provides the initial impetus for a project, but it takes a larger number of people with a shared purpose but weaker social ties (bridging) to bring the project to fruition and maintain”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“What if the reason for rising rates of anxiety is not that things are getting worse but that we are getting worse at thinking about things in constructive ways?”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Thus, teachers and parents encourage children not to love their neighbors, but instead to “celebrate diversity” and “respect differences.” Such contemporary values are not unworthy, but they keep our relations superficial.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“is designed to satisfy the customer’s longings, but satisfying those longings may deprive the customer of what they need.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“It means disregarding the opinion of the majority and finding commonality with a few. Over time, one comes to the realization that one belongs, not because strangers approve, but because one is situated within a network of stable and caring relationships. This knowledge, which functions chiefly at the subconscious level, affords one freedom both to enter and depart from the company of others with ease.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Besides, it is simply not true that goodness is boring, it’s just that the most interesting aspects of goodness are participative. They do not lend themselves to spectacle. It is not very exciting to watch corn grow, but the life of the farmer who plants, tends, and harvests crops can be richly rewarding.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“The problem, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus pointed out nearly two thousand years ago, is that the more we focus on changing the world around us to make us feel better, the more we feel emotionally tethered to it. If our emotional life is bound too closely to the circumstances outside our heads, then no matter how much better we make things, we will always feel as if we don’t have control over our lives.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“there is goodness deep in the heart of many strangers, but you need patience to see it revealed.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“The more time we spend entertaining ourselves with fantastic diversions that turn us away from one another instead of nurturing our lives in creative and sociable occupation, the worse we become.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“what matters most to people is not just the type of work they are doing but the people with whom they are doing it.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“The overall effect of advances in technology is to lessen our dependence on one another, which inevitably results in a weakening of ties throughout society. Whether we are talking about a smartphone, a car, or a washing machine, most forms of technology increase our power and freedom. They provide us with the ability to do more and the ability to do it more conveniently.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Anyone who cannot form a community with others, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city-state—he is either a beast or a god.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“But we are increasingly choosing to withdraw from public participation, and we are building cities and towns that make it more difficult to get involved.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Don’t like standing in the checkout line next to that guy who hasn’t showered all week? Let me route you over to the self-checkout where you can breeze right through. Suspicious of that Uber driver with the unpronounceable name? Well, self-driving cars are coming to your city soon. Need a movie recommendation for this evening? Netflix has already analyzed your viewing habits and made suggestions for you. No need to call a friend.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“They are pushed from one place to another until they end up together, in shelters or tent cities or under bridges—entire populations of people who in a less technologically advanced society would be widely distributed throughout many different communities composed of people who routinely helped one another as a matter of course.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“I think we would all be better off if we regularly asked ourselves the question, “Am I acting in a way that is conducive to friendship?”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies.29”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“It is through our friends that we become who we are.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“there are limits to what even the best companies can do because they function within a larger cultural context that has fully adopted the language and the norms of “systems thinking.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“it is not just the fact of having a shared experience that creates friendship but also the process of sharing. We do this through shared narrative. We talk about our lives with one another, discussing what we are going through, telling stories about our respective pasts, and sharing dreams about our futures.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“We still have places where people can socialize, but, for the most part, we are no longer building with the specific intention of bringing members of our communities together into shared public spaces. If we don’t build for that purpose, we will lose the sense of common ties that bind us together as a people.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities

“Part of the task of reestablishing a robust, integrated life that allows for human flourishing is recovering the idea of leisure as a time for meaningful activity and the idea of work as allowing us opportunities for contributing to the common good.”
― Richard Kyte, Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities