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Thinking of giving back? Service towards others is something drummed into us at a young age. You might be thinking about volunteering or wondering what contribution you can make, or you might be curious about the benefits that serving others provides.
In this post, we’re going to share some community service quotes to help inspire your charitable nature and help you understand the profound impact that giving back can have on your life.
Why Community Service Helps Cultivate Happiness
Now, there are all kinds of reasons to give back to your community. For younger people, it can help build lessons about responsibility, develop the beginning of leadership skills, and help young children understand the value and impact of even “small” actions.
Community service is how humans build a connection and belonging to a place, if you’re new to an area it can be a great way to meet potential new friends.
It can be a great way for retired people who still have the itch to give something to give more and do so in a way that provides lasting contentment.
Community service also happens to be good for our health in ways we don’t fully understand.
When you render a service to other people, your brain releases a hormone called serotonin.
Serotonin is responsible for feelings of satisfaction and contentment, monkeys get it when they groom each other, and humans get it when they do something that helps someone else in their tribe (or village, town, city, nation, and planet).
Community service doesn’t have to be something grandiose, it can be as simple as cooking a good meal for a group of friends and family, or it can be helping in projects that clean up a neighborhood.
57 Community Service Quotes About Volunteering and Giving Back
- “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
- “To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.” – Muhammad Ali
- “The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.” – Albert Schweitzer
- “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don't wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” – Barack Obama
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don't wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” – Barack Obama
- “The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.” – Oscar Wilde
- “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” – Winston Churchill
- “Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.” – Albert Schweitzer
- “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'” – Martin Luther King Jr.
- “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso
- “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa
- “The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.” – Thomas Carlyle
- “You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.” – Elizabeth Andrew
- “Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.” – Terry Pratchett
- “What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.” – Aristotle
- “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James
- “Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.” – Marion Wright Edelman
Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.” – Marion Wright Edelman
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “The heart that gives, gathers.” – Tao Te Ching
- “Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day.” – Sally Koch
- “The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.” – Albert Einstein
- “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” – Mother Teresa
- “The smallest good deed is better than the grandest intention.” – John Burroughs
- “We rise by lifting others.” – Robert Ingersoll
- “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Desmond Tutu
- “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” – Booker T. Washington
- “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” – Woodrow Wilson
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” – Woodrow Wilson
- “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service to others.” – Anonymous
- “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Zig Ziglar
- “To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.” – Max Beerbohm
- “The best way to serve yourself is to serve others.” – Anonymous
- “It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.” – Dalai Lama
- “Helping others is like helping yourself.” – Henry Flagler
- “The happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others.” – Gordon B. Hinckley
- “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” – Charles Dickens
- “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso
- “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” – John Bunyan
- “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don't wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” – Barack Obama
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don't wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” – Barack Obama
- “The more I help others to succeed, the more I succeed.” – Ray Kroc
- “We rise by lifting others.” – Robert Ingersoll
- “Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.” – Anonymous
- “The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.” – Albert Schweitzer
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “You have two hands. One to help yourself, the second to help others.” – Audrey Hepburn
- “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain
- “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall
- “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James
- “The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.” – Helen Keller
- “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” – Alphonse Karr
- “Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso
- “I am surprised to learn that the word Samurai means, ‘to serve', and that Katsumoto believes his rebellion to be in the service of the Emperor.” – Nathan Algren
Final Thoughts on Community Service
Volunteering and giving your time to any cause that helps someone or something in a less fortunate position than yourself is a fantastic thing to do. What’s more so, is that it can provide volunteers with a wholesome contentment and satisfaction that is simply unbeatable.
If you want to deepen your understanding of the power of community service, take a look at these 23 Bible Verses About Volunteering and Serving Others.
For more content like this, check out these articles:
- 100 Philosophical Quotes from History’s Greatest Thinkers
- 79 Powerful Compassion Quotes About Showing Empathy
- 85 Good Vibes Quotes to Uplift Others in
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
