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Isolation Quotes

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Isolation Quotes

“This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.”

WayHumansLittlesRunningHuman BeingsAbilityComfortHorseIsolationWarmthWorth LivingImprobableLife Worth LivingFinding StrengthStrength And Comfort
Book:Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
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“Billy was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.”

IfsWorldWellsLongPurposeLevelsBrainTelevisionMassGainsMachinesDelightInsightMediumsIronyDemonIsolationFascinatedTubesInsidiousBanalityAssorted
Book:The Petting Zoo: A Novel
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“Mathematicians are beginning to view order and chaos as two distinct manifestations of an underlying determinism. And neither state exists in isolation. The typical system can exist in a variety of states, some ordered, some chaotic. Instead of two opposed polarities, there is a continuous spectrum. As harmony and discord combine in musical beauty, so order and chaos combine in mathematical [and physical] beauty.”

ArtTwoStatesOrderViewsBeautyHarmonyChaosMusicalVarietyMathematicalManifestationIsolationAestheticMathematicianTypicalSpectrumChaoticDeterminismDiscordPhysical BeautyPolarityOrder And Chaos
Author:Ian Stewart
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“That's what Jamie didn't understand: it was never just sex. Even the fastest, dirtiest, most impersonal screw was about more than sex. It was about connection. It was about looking at another human being and seeing your own loneliness and neediness reflected back. It was recognising that together you had the power to temporarily banish that sense of isolation. It was about experiencing what it was to be human at the basest, most instinctive level. How could that be described as just anything?”

HumansTogetherSexHuman BeingsLevelsSeeingLonelinessConnectionsIsolationScrewsJamieNeediness
Book:Taming the Beast
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“I initially wanted to tell 'Oscillate Wildly' story because it wasn't one I had heard or seen before. The invisibility piece resonated most. Somewhere over the past couple of years I realized that I've essentially been making movies for my teenage self who struggled with isolation and my own brand of invisibility living in rural Ohio.”

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Author:Travis Mathews
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“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each shall stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.”

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Book:Selected Letters
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“For all the advances in technology, science and communications, there are signs that we are failing in areas where it matters most: our personal relationships and society in general. The atomisation of society evidenced by the startling increase in recent decades of single person households and the identification of loneliness and isolation as one of our most pressing new social problems, should give us cause for concern.”

GivingShouldPersonsMatterProblemSocialCausesTechnologyFailingLonelinessCommunicationAreasConcernIncreaseDecadesIsolationHouseholdIdentificationSingle PersonPersonal RelationshipsSocial Problems
Author:Cory Bernardi
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“I have no memory for things I have learned, nor things I have read, nor things experienced or heard, neither for people nor events; I feel that I have experienced nothing, learned nothing, that I actually know less than the average schoolboy, and that what I do know is superficial, and that every second question is beyond me. I am incapable of thinking deliberately; my thoughts run into a wall. I can grasp the essence of things in isolation, but I am quite incapable of coherent, unbroken thinking. I can't even tell a story properly; in fact, I can scarcely talk.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsFeelsI CanFactsStoriesRunningMemoriesHeardEventsWallEssenceAverageIsolationI Have LearnedIncapableSuperficialMy ThoughtsEvery SecondUnbrokenNo Memory
Author:Franz Kafka
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“Man is a gregarious animal. He's not supposed to live in isolation. He should actually live in a community, but a community does not necessarily have to be a city. There's all the evidence in the world that the building of cities is one of the worst mistakes that mankind has ever made: For both physical and mental health we've got to be close to Mother Earth.”

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Author:Ralph Borsodi
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“With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.”

Has BeensCountryMightAmericaPovertyEffectsParticularColorSkinsSpreadIsolationConcentrationBiasSegregationInjuredDisadvantagesSkin ColorMelanin
Book:We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
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“Everything Hitler did to the Jews, all the horribly unspeakable misdeeds, had already been done to the smitten people before by the Christian churches. . . . The isolation of Jews into ghetto camps, the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people - Hitler learned it all from the church. However, the church burned Jewish women and children alive, while Hitler granted them a quicker death, choking them first with gas.”

PeopleFirstsChildrenBookDoneChristianChurchAliveJewSpotsGrantedBurningIsolationGasCampsYellowBurnedChokeGhettoUnspeakableChristian ChurchMisdeedsSmitten
Author:Dagobert D. Runes
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“I think markets are mechanisms that determine prices that are necessary for mass heterogenous populations, and markets do generate levels of technological innovation and productivity that is crucial. But when unregulated, they often generate levels of vast inequality and ugly isolation that makes it difficult for people to relate and connect with one another.”

PeopleThinkingDifficultLevelsMassInnovationPopulationDetermineUglyProductivityInequalityRelateIsolationCrucialMechanismTechnological
Author:Cornel West
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“So far as photography satisfied a wish, it satisfied a wish not confined to painters, but a human wish, intensifying since the Reformation, to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation - a wish for power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another... Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism, by removing the human agent from the act of reproduction.”

WorldWayHumansLongDoeLastsWishThis WorldPaintingPhotographyDefeatSatisfiedPainterAgentsIsolationManifestMetaphysicalConfinedFidelityReformationReproductionSubjectivity
Author:Stanley Cavell
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“Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."”

ThinkingArtSelfDesireArtistGrowsGroupsInfluenceDemandArt IsEvidenceEmpowermentStrongerHistoricalIsolationContractsOverwhelmingTemperProficiencyBunk
Author:Paul Gauguin
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“I am quite surprised and rather disappointed by the loneliness, isolation and indeed demonisation the sadly misunder­stood CO2 is experiencing. Thus, upon leaving the parliament, I am contemplating the foundation of an organisation called 'The Friends of Carbon Dioxide'. Membership will of course be open to all, including the plants whose very existence depends on CO2. I think this organisation's slogan, 'CO2 is not pollution', self-selects. It has both accuracy and melody to commend it.”

ThinkingSelfCoursesExistenceLonelinessDependsFoundationPlantLeavingIncludingIsolationMelodyDisappointedContemplatingPollutionCarbonParliamentSlogansAccuracyOrganisationMembershipCarbon DioxideCo2
Author:Nick Minchin
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“The Bush administration has now provided three case studies in arrogance, isolation and destructiveness: Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina, Ambassador Jerry Bremer in Baghdad and Secretary Paulson at Treasury. It is a tragic and very expensive legacy. No conservative and no Republican should doubt how much it has hurt our cause and our party.”

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Author:Newt Gingrich
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