50 Reciprocity Quotes For An Even Energy Exchange

Check out these insightful reciprocity quotes to help balance those energy exchanges.

What is reciprocity?

Well, at its core, reciprocity means a balanced exchange.

There are different kinds of reciprocity.

Tell us which reciprocity quote most resonated with you in the comment section below.

What are the benefits of reading these reciprocity quotes?

In relationships, reciprocity is the balance of giving and receiving to create a healthy and mutually beneficial partnership.

Our first relationship is with ourselves, so it is important to make sure that we are practicing reciprocity in our work-life balance and personal well-being.

Regarding relationships with others, each relationship will vary in terms of its unique reciprocal balance.

How reciprocity manifests will look different for each relationship.

It is up to the people in the relationship to explore their comfort levels and what feels good to them.

Here are a few general guidelines to keep in mind:

• each partner needs to feel like they can share their needs
• communication needs to be open and honest
• support one another while maintaining a sense of themselves

Depending on the relationship, it is very easy for expectation or lack thereof of the reciprocity given and received to ebb and flow.

Top 10 reciprocity quotes

1. “Friendships are reciprocal.” — Kenya Moore

2. “Love is a reciprocal torture.” — Marcel Proust

3. “Social peace requires reciprocity.” — Ralph Peters

4. “Tell me who I’ve got to be to get some reciprocity.” — Lauryn Hill

5. “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” — Confucius

6. “Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability.” — Claude Shannon

7. “Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.” — Samuel Johnson

8. “Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal.” — Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

9. “There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life—reciprocity.” — Confucius

10. “Whatever mourns when many leave these shores: Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.” — Wilfred Owen

Reciprocity quotes about love and relationships

11. “Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.” — Bernard Meltzer

12. “Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.” — Fulton J. Sheen

13. “Love is a positive, symbiotic, reciprocal flow between two or more entities.” — Inga Muscio

14. “I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can’t really be felt, truly, by one.” — Sean Penn

15. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” — Robert A. Heinlein

16. “The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.” — Carroll Quigley

17. “Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.” — Bertrand Russell

18. “Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in a reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.” — Georg Simmel

19. “Very different from eros is philia, a serene love much more akin to friendship, with its reciprocal kindnesses. You love each other for the happy experiences and pleasures you share.” — Francois Lelord

20. “Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?” — Alan Lightman

Meaningful reciprocity quotes about life and nature

21. “There is a myth that those who do humanitarian work have a saviour mentality, but the relationship is reciprocal.” — Meghan Markle

22. “Forms in nature are a byproduct of a reciprocal action between a given material and the conditions of the environment.” — Neri Oxman

23. “Abundance is a dance with reciprocity—what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process.” — Terry Tempest Williams

24. “Brain connections are heavily reciprocal and recursive so that a direction of information flow can be inferred but sometimes not proven.” — Thomas R. Insel

25. “When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path.” — Confucius

26. “Apart from what I say, though, is the feeling. People can relate to that feeling. It’s a reciprocal relationship. They feed off me, and I feed off them.” — Burna Boy

27. “Transparency is key to reciprocal accountability, which we use to be both free and smart. It is the miracle tool that enables us to question the lies of monsters.” — David Brin

28. “If I slip up and receive a good gift, I will not have given a good gift. This is probably a natural law that affects us all and needs a name. The Gift Reciprocal Law.” — Padgett Powell

29. “Reciprocity helps us balance the need for self-determination and creative individuality with mutual hope, and therefore what might be described as solidarity.” — David Blunkett

30. “All creatures are united to God alone in an immediate union. They depend essentially and directly upon Him. Being all alike equally impotent, they cannot be in reciprocal dependence upon one another.” — Nicolas Malebranche

Reciprocity quotes about economics, country, and other processes

31. “Work is the way we contribute to society, part of a reciprocal social contract.” — Chuka Umunna

32. “Never did I dream that the Nobel Prize could be awarded for the reciprocal relations.” — Lars Onsager

33. “Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the way which has led nations to greatness.” — John C. Calhoun

34. “Listening is a reciprocal process – we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us.” — Margaret J. Wheatley

35. “The inventions and the great discoveries have opened up whole continents to reciprocal communication and interchange, provided we are willing.” — Alva Myrdal

36. “The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other. We are constantly emerging out of the relationship we have with others.” — Ruth Ozeki

37. “The concentration and reciprocal effect of industry and agriculture conjoin in a growth of productive powers, which increases more in geometrical than in arithmetical proportion.” — Friedrich List

38. “Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation.” — Ernst Haeckel

39. “Only now did I recognize the reciprocal relationship which exits between manufacturing power and the national system of transportation, and that the one can never develop to its fullest without the other.” — Friedrich List

40. “Multinational companies use their technological know-how in their foreign subsidiaries, so reciprocal multinational relationships are key – they lead to a vested interest in both countries to remaining open.” — Edward C. Prescott

Reciprocity quotes about ethics and morality

41. “Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.” — Herman Melville

42. “He has willed—He wills incessantly—that the modifications of the mind and those of the body shall be reciprocal.” — Nicolas Malebranche

43. “As a black person of non-gender-conforming experience, my first existentially reciprocal and affirming experiences were in the New York ballrooms.” — Indya Moore

44. “Mutual forbearance and reciprocal concessions: thro’ their agency the Union was established—the patriotic spirit from which they emanated will forever sustain it.” — Martin Van Buren

45. “I think that all moralities adequately serving the function of fostering social cooperation must contain a norm of reciprocity—a norm of returning good for good received.” — David Wong

46. “If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity… a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.” — Frans de Waal

47. “A reciprocal of a fraction is found by flipping it upside down. If you want the reciprocal of a mixed number or a whole number, just convert it to an improper fraction, and then flip it!” — Danica McKellar

48. “Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations.” — J. William Fulbright

49. “We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you’re talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product.” – Peter Singer

50. “Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance.” – Steven Pinker

More information about reciprocity

Did you know that there is something called reciprocity theory?

There sure is!

Reciprocity theory is based on the idea that when someone engages in a behavior, it is evaluated based on intention, and people will reward or punish it.

Reciprocity is important in any relationship we have.

It can be personal, friendly, familiar, or romantic, but all relationships benefit from reciprocity.

A healthy reciprocal relationship maintains the give-and-take balance that feels best for both partners, understanding that each partner’s needs are fluid.

A person’s needs can change daily.

Reciprocity within a relationship means that each partner understands their own needs and can communicate them while being willing to meet their partner’s needs.

Reciprocity requires critical analysis and action.

Some very important elements of authentic reciprocity include honesty, healthy communication, reflection, and emotional intelligence.

Tell us your favorite reciprocity quote in the comment section below.