Iris Murdoch Quotes

To see yourself, and for others to see you, is a form of validation. I'm interested in that very mysterious and mystical way we relate to each other in the world.

The value of emotions comes from sharing them, not just having them.

That's why I've never thought of retiring because I do it all the time whether on the stage or off. I found that in a precarious situation, a smile is the shortest distance between people. When one needs to reach out for sympathy or a link with people, what better way is there?

I'm a little bit antisocial and I recently discovered that I'm introverted. But the love between people makes me alive.

I would say I'm humanly engaged.

I like people.

I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people.

We are all a unique person with everyone we meet.

All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.

I don't know what other people are like, I haven't been able to crawl inside anybody else.

I'm a lot more interested in people than I used to be. I used to be most interested in abstract ideas, and people were an afterthought, but that's changed a bit.

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

I remember how to be a person by being around them.

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.

I actually really love people.

My passion in life isn't politics. It truly is connecting to people and women.

I love to learn about people.

I am definitely a person who firmly believes in the human touch and in the importance of people.

Twitter helped others to see me as a human being. And showed me their humanity, too.

When I was young as a teenager, that was the biggest mystery in the world to me: Why don't people connect?

I think that human beings are often looking for a reason to relate.

I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.

As for 'drawing you out,' please believe I don't do such things deliberately, with an object -- It's only that I am, as a rule, far more interested in people than they are in me -- But it makes me a nuisance, I know: only an innocent nuisance.

More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses--it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.

As long as I can remember, I've always loved people.