Quotes & Sayings About Social Interaction

Under the spell of alcohol your differences recede. — Jay McInerney

Children need time to become themselves--through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff--with choices and pseudochoices--before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More! — Kim John Payne

Reality" is defined not as something that exists "out there" for the scientist or anyone else to discover but as a social construction that emerges from and is sustained by social interaction. — Peter Conrad

You know you've got a problem when baristas greet you by name. You know you've got another problem when it's the warmest social interaction of your day. — Lee Nichols

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people. — Atul Gawande

A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. — John Dewey

Although I'm perceived as very optimistic and upbeat, it comes out of being the opposite of that - feeling isolated or lonely, looking for meaning and the kinds of things that ease that suffering in life, and finding them in large-scale social interaction, like theater and games. — Jane McGonigal

Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment. — Joseph C. Rost

Most relationships are a blend of online and off-line interaction. Courtships take place via text. Political debates are sparked and social movements mobilize on websites. Why not focus on the positive - a celebration of these new exchanges? Because these are the stories we tell each other to explain why our technologies are proof of progress. We like to hear these positive stories because they do not discourage us in our pursuit of the new - our new comforts, our new distractions, our new forms of commerce. And we like to hear them because if these are the only stories that matter, then we don't have to attend to other feelings that persist - that we are somehow more lonely than before, that our children are less empathic than they should be for their age, and that it seems nearly impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation at a family dinner. We — Sherry Turkle

Experience has tutored me well that most will lie or cheat to get the better hand. It's why I prefer solitude to social interaction.
- Bethany — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The act of writing involves documenting and studiously examining interactions of all aspects of the self, the environment, and culture. Writing is an illustrious act of self-expression. Writing resembles a 'coming of the age' story because the ongoing process of defining a person's personality and character is representative of the synergistic product of the continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world, the constant process of developing psychological, social, cognitive and ethical self. — Kilroy J. Oldster

People drive everywhere in L.A., so you get very little human interaction ... but N.Y. and Chicago are like London ... L.A. lacks the social interaction. — Seal

We're losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part of community life and living together. — Vincent Nichols

Chronically awkward people can feel like everyone else received a secret instruction manual at birth titled "How to be Socially Competent." For the awkward person, this dreamy manual would provide easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to gracefully navigate social life, avoid embarrassing faux pas, and rid oneself of the persistent anxiety that comes with being awkward. — Ty Tashiro

Social media is an amazing tool, but it's really the face-to-face interaction that makes a long-term impact. — Felicia Day

A placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised trial of boys with autism found that two to three servings of cruciferous vegetables a day improves social interaction, abnormal behaviour and verbal communication - within a matter of weeks. — Michael Greger

During these years in the small-talk wilderness, I also wondered why Americans valued friendliness with commerce so much. Was handing over cash the sacred rite of American capitalism - and of American life? On a day that I don't spend money in America, I feel oddly depressed. It's my main form of social interaction - as it is for millions of Americans who live alone or away from their families. — Karan Mahajan

Audience engagement is critical to the survival of your brand; if you don't engage them you endanger your brand. It's social interaction. — Bernard Kelvin Clive

I was totally clueless about social interaction, and completely scared of girls. All I knew was that music was going to make girls fall in love with me. — Rob Sheffield

I think we've built a bit of a culture and a market around people who are open and seek out that social interaction. — Logan Green

The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction. — Steven Bochco

When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction. — Jesse Eisenberg

[If a man] postpone[s] any open acknowledgement... that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends [are] based... he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But... they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. — C.S. Lewis

We don't see a lot of models for male social interaction. There's sports and barn raisings. — Chuck Palahniuk

Social media allows me to pick my times for social interaction. — Guy Kawasaki

Dating, like almost every other male-female interaction in present-day society, is based on outmoded and unequal social roles and expectations. — Lynn Coady

But I absolutely believe that architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour. — Thom Mayne

Although an impressive amount of business and social interaction takes place over the telephone and fax, by e-mail, or in person today, the well-written letter remains a staple of business success and one of the strongest connecting links between human beings. — Rosalie Maggio

Girls enjoy complex social interaction. Their verbal skills - and their delight in using them - develop earlier than boys'. — Brenda Laurel

Young adults love to play games and they're thirsty for social interaction, but a lot of bar and restaurant experiences are quite unsatisfactory on the social level. What young people need is a place that has the feel of an unhosted party where they find themselves interacting with like-minded strangers. — Nolan Bushnell

I was never a games night guy, but at some point, social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there's a point, it's easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun. — Joss Whedon

Mom & pop stores are not about something small; they are about something big. Ninety percent of all U.S. businesses are family owned or controlled. They are important not only for the food, drink, clothing, and tools they sell us, but also for providing us with intellectual stimulation, social interaction, and connection to our communities. We must have mom & pop stores because we are social animals. We crave to be part of the marketplace. — Robert Spector

Being gay is like taking a crash course in human nature," he says. "Your first real glimpse at the dirty underbelly of routine social interaction. A lesser person, " he offers with a wry grin, "Might well become one bitter fuck. — Jonathan Tropper

Emotional self-control is NOT the same as overcontrol, the stifling of all feeling and spontaneity ... when such emotional suppression is chronic, it can impair thinking, hamper intellectual performance and interfere with smooth social interaction. By contrast, emotional competence implies we have a choice as to how we express our feelings. — Daniel Goleman

Technologies that change society are technologies that change interactions between people — Cesar Hidalgo

When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning or changes for the worse. — Julian Baggini

I went into the world confident my tea training would open many doors. And I did particularly well with the Irish and fellow Nova Scotians over 60. But this only got me so far. It took a long time to cultivate the tricks of easy social interaction. — Lynn Coady

One of the most interesting results was part of a study my students and I conducted dealing with status in email correspondence. Basically, we discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status. — James W. Pennebaker

Regardless of what the naysayers believe about human interaction and social media, the data show us that the abundance of technology is actually increasing the abundance of happiness all over the world. — Peter Diamandis

Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors. — Keith Henson

The primary purposes of the political pamphlets of the early 1700s were neither to enlighten nor educate the masses, but to incite partisan conversation and spread commensurate ideas ... Facts were not permitted to fetter the views they espoused, and the restraints of objective journalistic credibility were discarded by pamphleteers bent on promoting subjective slant to an insatiable general public for whom political dissonance was an integral part of social interaction. — Gavin John Adams

Introverts don't like small talk conversation, but they typically don't mind writing. The more people can "see" you on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or a blog, the more they will feel like they know you, even though you don't have one-on-one interaction with them. — Thom S. Rainer

Fortunately, the Internet is a really angry place filled with really angry people, many of whom come positively unglued when not subject to the social consequences of face-to-face interaction. — Dave Tomar

Communication media enabled collective action on new scales, at new rates, among new groups of people, multiplied the power available to civilizations and enabled new forms of social interaction. The alphabet enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and revolution, the telephone enabled bureaucracy and globalization, the internet enabled virtual communities and electronic markets, the mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of info-nomads. — Howard Rheingold

Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [ ... ] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction. — Stephen Jay Gould

Since consciousness is the basis of all reality, any shift in consciousness changes every aspect of our reality. Reality is created by consciousness differentiating into cognition, moods, emotions, perceptions, behavior, speech, social interactions, environment, interaction with the forces of nature, and biology. As consciousness evolves, these different aspects of consciousness also change. — Deepak Chopra

[There are] code words used today to measure the 'authenticity' of relationships or other persons. We speak of whether we can personally 'relate' to events or other persons, and whether in the relationship itself people are 'open' to one another. The first is a cover word for measuring the other in terms of a mirror of self-concern, and the second is a cover for measuring social interaction in terms of the market exchange of confession. — Richard Sennett

I'm not so sure that live is always better. It is part of the extrovert assumption to value interaction over inner action. Most introverts savor live time with a close friend, because they know there will be plenty of inner action for both of them. But much of what we call "social" in America allows for very little inner action. Emailing a friend or posting a blog entry will probably feel much richer, and help us feel much closer, than being up close and impersonal. — Laurie A. Helgoe

At the age of seventeen, Napoleon's religious views started to coalesce, and they did not change much thereafter. Despite being taught by monks, he was never a true Christian, being unconvinced by the divinity of Jesus. He did believe in some kind of divine power, albeit one that seems to have had very limited interaction with the world beyond its original creation. Later he was sometimes seen to cross himself before battle,77 and, as we shall see, he certainly also knew the social utility of religion. But in his personal beliefs he was essentially an Enlightenment sceptic. — Andrew Roberts

Human beings are not intrinsically selfish, which isolates us from others. We are essentially social animals who depend on others to meet our needs. We achieve happiness, prosperity and progress through social interaction. Therefore, having a kind and helpful attitude contributes to our own and others' happiness. — Dalai Lama

Right and wrong applies to internet interaction. — David Chiles

Nevertheless, for the most part the intangible dangers of being observed by unintended audiences are considered secondary to the convenience of instantaneous access to this "virtual campfire" from the comfort of the home. While online social networking sites are often disparaged as poor replacements for human interaction that encourage superficial relationships, my ethnographic analysis reveals how some people, American youth in particular, are incorporating this medium into their everyday practices in more or less meaningful ways. Through elucidating both the dangers and possibilities of this medium, I seek to encourage people to create their own "virtual campfires" as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, their offline lives. Through participation and sharing in meaningful ways- from conversation to creating art- we might begin to see these sites as vehicles for healing the widely-felt loss of community and the pervasive sense of alienation experienced by so many. — Jennifer Anne Ryan

but not subjecting him to the tiresome demands of polite social interaction. — Neal Stephenson

...first we should not seek to derive the content of gender identity by mirroring God, because any femininity or masculinity we may find in God was projected onto God; second the content of gender identity is rooted in the sexed body ('nature') and forged by the history of social interaction between persons with such sexed bodies ('culture'). — Miroslav Volf

I'm not sure if it's possible, but if it is I have a life contract with a rubber glove clause. This means almost any social interaction will involve the placing on, or removal of rubber gloves. That 'snap' means the fun, whatever type it may be, has begun.
Doctors? OK, dentists? OK, clerk at Walmart? WHAT!!
The Clerk begins to pull on the gloves as other shoppers suddenly find other open lanes.
**SNAP**! — Neil Leckman

What they do not realize - and what you must realize - is that manipulating others is something that all people do. In fact, manipulation is at the core of our social interaction. — Brandon Sanderson

Unfortunately, love and compassion have been omitted from too many spheres of social interaction for too long. Usually confined to family and home, their practice in public life is considered impractical, even naive. This is tragic. — Dalai Lama

The phone is about the same size as a cigarette pack. It's no surprise to me that the traditional cigarette lighter in many cars has turned into the space we use to recharge our phones. They are kin. The phone, like the cigarette, let's the texter/former smoker drop out of any social interaction for a second to get a break and make a little love to the beautiful object. We need something, people. We can't live propless. — Aimee Bender

People are social beings and want interaction and social learning is the primary form of learning, just as word of mouth advertising is the highest form of advertising. — Stephen Covey

If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at look the interaction between the storyteller and story. Hurston understood that. But then she and I write out of despised cultures that on some level we feel we're defending. — Dorothy Allison

The origin of the human condition is best explained by the natural selection for social interaction - the inherited propensities to communicate, recognize, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, and from all these the deep warm pleasure of belonging to your own special group. — Edward O. Wilson

The techniques of artificial intelligence are to the mind what bureaucracy is to human social interaction. — Terry Winograd

From what I've found a lot of people on Facebook are desperate for recognition and social interaction. They want me to find them, to gaze into their lives and notice them. PAY ATTENTION. — Peter Jelen

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive. — Gavin De Becker

Appearing to pay attention when someone is speaking is one of the cornerstones of real social interaction. — Judith Martin

It seems perverse that we can be more social than anyone would have thought possible when we are at our most anti-social, locked away from the world and silently staring at a computer screen, but that, as psychologists will tell you is the way we operate. When we are at the maximum of our disconnect we also are ready to connect and feel the need for interaction. — David Amerland

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being. — Daniel Dennett

It is unsettling to find how little it takes to defeat success in medicine. You come as a professional equipped with expertise and technology. You do not imagine that a mere matter of etiquette could foil you. But the social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific
matters of how casual you should be, how formal, how reticent, how forthright. Also: how apologetic, how self-confident, how money-minded. In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine so complex and fascinating. How each interaction is negotiated can determine whether a doctor is trusted, whether a patient is heard, whether the right diagnosis is made, the right treatment given. But in this realm there are no perfect formulas. — Atul Gawande

Meaning is made in conversation, reality is created in communication, and knowledge is generated through social interaction ... Language is the vehicle through which we create our understanding of the world. — Diana Whitney

1. Institutions shape politics. The rules and standard operating procedures that make up institutions leave their imprint on political outcomes by structuring political behavior. Outcomes are not simply reducible to the billiard-ball interaction of individuals nor to the intersection of broad social forces. Institutions influence outcomes because they shape actors' identities, power, and strategies. 2. Institutions are shaped by history. Whatever other factors may affect their form, institutions have inertia and "robustness." They therefore embody historical trajectories and turning points. History matters because it is "path dependent": what comes first (even if it was in some sense "accidental") conditions what comes later. Individuals may "choose" their institutions, but they do not choose them under circumstances of their own making, and their choices in turn influence the rules within which their successors choose. — Robert D. Putnam

Social media and the Internet haven't changed our capacity for social interaction any more than the Internet has changed our ability to be in love or our basic propensity to violence, because those are such fundamental human attributes. — Nicholas A. Christakis

Love-based parenting elevates the importance of the relationship to the highest position. No homework assignment, no chore, and no social etiquette is ever more important than the parent-child relationship. Maintaining connectedness and attunement, thereby sustaining the balance of love of self and love of child, is the primal outcome of every interaction the parent has with the child. When this is achieved, the other less significant items will take care of themselves. The ultimate challenge in reaching this goal is that children both want and need autonomy (independence), yet they are biologically engineered to be in relationships and to belong (dependence). This clash between the two is compounded by American culture where there is a powerful emphasis on the individual rather than — Heather T. Forbes

You are part of a complex social network that changes your biology with every interaction, and which your actions can change — David Eagleman

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the parties involved have entered into the following arrangement: What is the least we can all agree on and still get along? Of course, you can see this means no one is pleased. — Geoffrey Wood

Through our evolution, we're so specialized for social interaction. So, if you can really design robots that can interact with people, in this very natural, interpersonal way, I think that would be great. You wouldn't have to have people read manuals, in order to operate them. — Cynthia Breazeal

You can't have success without trust. The word trust embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same thing is true about business, especially businesses that deal with people. — Jim Burke

The Bible is a study guide for social interaction. — Prince

We are relational creatures. All humans live in community and most people seek social interaction. In western culture, isolation is seen as one of the most stringent of punishments. Even criminals do not aspire to solitary confinement. — Gary Chapman

The truth was, somewhere down the line, between the hospitalisations and the drugs, I'd somehow lost the cornerstone of humanity: the ability to pretend, to counterfeit the basics of social interaction, to smile when you didn't feel like smiling, to seem like you cared about other people when you lacked the capacity to care about yourself. So that left me, graceless and wearied, pretending to pretend. — Alexis Hall

On a certain level, homeschooling is all about socialization. Whatever the teaching methods used in school or homeschool, it is ultimately the social environment itself that distinguishes homeschooling from conventional school. This social environment includes the nature and quantity of peer interaction; parental proximity; solitude; relationships with adults, siblings, older children, younger children, and the larger community; the ways in which the children are disciplined and by whom; and even the student-teacher ratio and the overall environment where the children spend their time. — Rachel Gathercole

disembedding" as "the 'lifting out' of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space — Anonymous

I always preferred to hang out with the outcasts, 'cause they were cooler; they had better taste in music, for one thing, I guess because they had more time to develop one with the lack of social interaction they had! — John Hughes

Please be careful of becoming so immersed and engrossed in pixels, texting, ear buds, Twittering, online social networking, and potentially addictive uses of media and the Internet that you fail to recognize the importance of your physical body and miss the richness of person-to-person communication. Beware of the digital displays and data in many forms of computer-mediated interaction that can displace the full range of physical capacity and experience. — David A. Bednar

If no one knew them well enough to trust them, then no one was going to speak with them, then they would never get the information that would have warned them to be cautious. — T.K. Naliaka

Love is an attachment which develops through human interaction. — Auliq Ice

There were many generations of Latino people coming to this country, coming from difficult political or social situations in their own countries, and they worked very hard to have their kids go to universities. Well, those kids came out and they are now doctors and architects, or they are on the Supreme Court. That has a reflection in Hollywood. So, we are actually very proud that our characters are Latinos, and I think it's good for diversity and cultural interaction. — Antonio Banderas

People are more likely to remember the great social interaction they had with a colleague than the great meeting they both attended. — Ron Garan

I remember seeing this video for the first time in college - miserable, half-drunk on Keystone Light, a Camel Light smoldering in my mouth, about to desperately tap-dance my way through another social interaction - and saying out loud: "I fucking *get* you, Bee Girl. — Dave Holmes

Bedford definitely stands out as a community that's designed to appease to a broader range of budgets and lifestyles. The opportunity for a diverse neighborhood that encourages community activity and social interaction is what we feel makes Bedford a model community in this industry. — John Myers

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable. — Allie Brosh

Since knowledge and ideas are an important part of cultural heritage, social interaction and business transactions, they retain a special value for many societies. Logically, if the associated electronically formatted information is valued, preventive and detective measures are necessary to ensure minimum organizational impact from an IPR security breach. — Robert E. Davis

We may be able to prove conclusively that all men are born with potentially brilliant intellects ... and that the source of cultural creativity is the consciousness that springs from social cooperation and loving interaction ... the majority of us live far below our potential, because of the oppressive nature of most societies. — John Blacking

In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants. — John Harsanyi

I have this extraordinary curiosity about all subjects of the natural and human world and the interaction between the physical sciences and the social sciences. — Ian Hacking

The future success of online social networking sites as an advertising medium depends on its acceptance as an advertising vehicle that can deliver a message to a micro-target in a manner that will be well received and that increases the likelihood of interaction. — Mary Louise Kelly

[T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state - what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations - what we can call civil society ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force. — Ed Crane

I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction. — Donald Johanson

Being on Facebook too much in a row is like playing chess in a black hole. You never know if the next move will lead you to a checkmate or a mate checked. — Ana Claudia Antunes

For me making music is part social, part interaction, part collaboration. — Norah Jones

The aloof nature of autism leads to many misconceptions about the mind of individuals on the spectrum. Labeled as "being in a world of their own" is one of the absolute worst. Difficulty with communication and social interaction does not mean one is alien. Lack of eye contact does not mean they can't see. Wandering does not mean they are lost. — Liz Becker