The things we care about
The Valuegraphics Database (valuegraphics.com) surveyed people across the globe to determine the most important values we all share. This helps us find common ground across borders and cultures.
For businesses that exhibit these values, it strengthens engagement when company purpose aligns with the needs of people and their communities.
Looking across the entire list there are significant variations in how values are ranked across regions. For example, “morality“ is the second-most important value in the Middle East, but near the bottom in Central and South America; “material possessions” was ranked high in Europe and North America, but low in Africa and Oceania.
The values listed here, however, are the most consistently important worldwide.
- Family
“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.” – George Bernard Shaw
“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” – Desmond Tutu
- Relationships
“Choose people who lift you up.” – Michelle Obama
“My mother told me to always offer the next kid the bigger piece and your piece would taste better.” – Barbara Corcoran
- Financial security
“Money, like emotions, is something you must control to keep your life on the right track.” ― Natasha Munson
“It’s not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” ― Seneca
- Belonging
“No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
“It is important to find a place where you feel trust, you feel belonging and stability.” – Bojan Krkic
- Community
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” – Coretta Scott King
“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
- Personal growth
“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom.” – Lao Tzu
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Loyalty
“I’ll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.”
– Samuel Goldwyn
“Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.” – Dean Koontz
- Religion/spirituality
“I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear.” – Jane Goodall
“Art is the path to being spiritual.” – Piet Mondrian