Each 30 July is commemorated as United Nations (UN) International Day of Friendship.
As the UN website observes,
Our world faces many challenges, crises and forces of division — such as poverty, violence, and human rights abuses — among many others — that undermine peace, security, development and social harmony among the world’s peoples.
To confront those crises and challenges, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms — the simplest of which is friendship.
The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books about different aspects of friendship.
Friendship is usually defined as cooperative and supportive behavior between two or more people. It is seen as a relationship involving mutual knowledge and esteem. The noun Friendship is composed by adding the letters ship to the word friend. As TU students know, the letters ship refer to the state or condition of being something. So friendship means the state of being a friend. Here are some further examples of English language words ending with the letters ship:
- acquaintanceship
- ambassadorship
- apprenticeship
- bipartisanship
- chairmanship
- chancellorship
- citizenship
- clerkship
- coauthorship
- connoisseurship
- coproprietorship
- counsellorship
- dealership
- dictatorship
- directorship
- discipleship
- draftsmanship
- entrepreneurship
- horsemanship
- judgeship
- librarianship
- marksmanship
- membership
- mentorship
- musicianship
- nonpartisanship
- oarsmanship
- outdoorsmanship
- ownership
- partnership
- professorship
- proprietorship
- readership
- salesmanship
- scholarship
- showmanship
- sportsmanship
- workmanship
The UN website includes information specifically about the role of friendship in education:
Through friendship — by accumulating bonds of camaraderie and developing strong ties of trust — we can contribute to the fundamental shifts that are urgently needed to achieve lasting stability, weave a safety net that will protect us all, and generate passion for a better world where all are united for the greater good.
Worldwide, some 150 million students, half of all students 13 to 15 years of age, report having experienced peer-to-peer violence in and around schools. For the observance of International Day of Friendship, UNICEF has released an exclusive BTS video that calls on young people to brighten someone’s day with kindness (either in real life or on the internet, and sharing it for others to see), as part of UNICEF’s campaign to #ENDviolence in and around schools.
In December last year, children and young people from around the world drafted an #ENDviolence Youth Manifesto calling on governments, teachers, parents and each other, to help end violence and ensure students feel safe in and around schools, including a commitment to being kind and respectful.
Some distinguished thinkers and writers represented by books in the TU Library collection, have expressed themselves in the following ways about friendship:
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.
- Samuel Johnson
Friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.
- Niccolò Machiavelli
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price,
no sum can balance his worth.
- Sirach
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
- Aristotle
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
- William Butler Yeats
Friends are born, not made.
- Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Ch. VII.
For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.
- Hilaire Belloc, “Dedicatory Ode,” Sonnets and Verse (1923), p. 70, stanza 3.
Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
- Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, (verse 202), translator: Narada Maha Thera
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (1841), Of Friendship.
The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.
- Elbert Hubbard, in ‘Exclusive Friendships’, Love, Life & Work (1906).
Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
- Elbert Hubbard, The Motto Book (1907).
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
- Helen Keller
I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people’s lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.
- William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1911).
Friendship … flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.
- Étienne de la Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Part 3
I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.
- Nelson Mandela on friendship, From his unpublished autobiographical manuscript written in 1975. Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations
Multiplex workplace friendships—those in which a personal, affective relationship coincides with a business relationship, namely, with coworkers within one’s organization—are a widespread organizational phenomenon (Ingram & Zou, 2008). Indeed, a recent Gallup study determined that 30% of employees report having a best friend at work (Rath, 2006), and studies show that a sizeable number of employees describe their coworkers as both colleagues and friends (e.g., Gersick, Bartunek, & Dutton, 2000; Lonkila, 1998). Importantly, multiplex workplace friendships have implications for key employee and organizational outcomes through the provision of moral and material support, work and nonwork advice, and quality information exchanges (Kram & Isabella, 1985; Rawlins, 1992; Sias, 2005; Sias & Cahill, 1998; Winstead, Derlega, Montgomery, & Pilkington, 1995). For instance, employees who report having friends at work have higher levels of productivity, retention, and job satisfaction, and are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work than their “friendless” counterparts (Rath, 2006).
- Jessica R. Methot, Jeffery A. Lepine, Nathan P. Podaskoff, Jessica Siegel, “Are Workplace Friendships a Mixed Blesing? Exploring Tradeoffs of Multiplex Relationships and Their Associations With Job Performance”, Personnel Psychology 2016, 69, p. 312.
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.
- John Selden, in “Friends” in Table Talk (1689).
True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
- George Washington, Letter to Bushrod Washington (15 January 1783).
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)