Geoff Mulgan Quotes

Absolutely lonely people have few personal interactions of any kind.

It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.

We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.

Any business or enterprise that shaves away loneliness is going to last forever. And like it or not but we've got a lonely society.

Befriending provides a valuable lifeline to many people who feel isolated in their communities often as a result of ill health or poverty. I would like to thank all those who volunteer as befrienders and I hope that your numbers will increase in coming years. Your kindness and hard work is, I know, very much appreciated by those you help.

Our loneliness makes us avid column readers these days.

Isolation among older people is a massive problem, and my grandad used to come round for Sunday lunch every week for as long as I can remember.

I went through a lot of maturing in a year or two. I left all my best friends, and I didn't really want to make new friends, so I spent a lot of time inside just being depressed.

There's a tremendous sense of shame that people who are lonely feel. I say that as someone who felt ashamed of being lonely as a child and even at points during adulthood.

Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair.

Isolation is devastating to the human psyche.

So it is that Lonely Places attract as many lonely people as they produce, and the loneliness we see in them is partly in ourselves.

I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like.

You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?

A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.

Ever man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking.

I think the busiest people are often the loneliest.

No man is an island, as they say. No. I've tried it. I've gone on retreats at various times in my life for three or four or five days. I was desperate to get out of there and talk to somebody. But I fly fish a lot, and I can only do that really by myself. I find I'm never lonesome when I'm on a river, far from it, but it's a lonely practice.

L'homme est ne pour la socie te ; se parez-le, isolez-le, ses ide es se de suniront, son caracte' re se tournera, mille affections ridicules s'e le' veront dans son coeur; des 274 pense es extravagantes germeront dans son esprit, comme les ronces dans une terre sauvage. Man is born to live in society: separate him, isolate him, and his ideas disintegrate, his character changes, a thousand ridiculous affectations rise up in his heart; extreme thoughts take hold in his mind, like the brambles in a wild field.

...loneliness is not a function of solitude.

Once government's objectives were economic growth and social cohesion. Now they are prosperity, fairness and environmental care

Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you’re afraid you don’t commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back. You shouldn’t be alone. It’s killing you; it’s undermining you. All the time, every day, you should be somewhere with people.

No one can be happy in eternal solitude.