no man is an island
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Etymology
From the 1623 quotation below.
Proverb
- All people are connected to and dependent on other people.
- 1623, John Donne, “Meditation XVII”, in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions:
- No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. […] any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, […]
- 1981 April 4, Rick Cornely, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, page 15:
- The few friends and relatives I once had seem to have forgotten me and I have found out the hard way that no man is an island.
- 1992, Richard Nixon, “The Renewal of America”, in Seize the Moment, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 301:
- Just as no man is an island, no nation lives in isolation. When freedom is denied in one country, it is diminished in all.
- 2014, Jeremi Szaniawski, The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 231:
- And yet, no man is an island, and Sokurov's desire to promote himself as an insular, unique figure, both in his thinking and in his work, is contradicted by the many arrangements and obligatory associations that cinematic production entails.
Translations
Further reading
No Man Is an Island on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
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