Loneliness Quotes

“Real relief from loneliness requires the cooperation of at least one other person, and yet the more chronic our loneliness becomes, the less equipped we may be to entice such cooperation.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“When we are lonely we not only react more intensely to the negatives; we also experience less of a soothing uplift from the positives.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“There are extremes within any population, but on average, at least among young adults, those who feel lonely actually spend no more time alone than do those who feel more connected. They are no more or less physically attractive than average, and they do not differ, on average, from the non-lonely in terms of height, weight, age, education, or intelligence. Most important, when we look at the broad continuum (rather than just the extremes) of people who feel lonely, we find that they have the capacity to be just as socially adept as anyone else. Feeling lonely does not mean that we have deficient social skills.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Among Norway rats, males ejaculate more sperm when copulating in the presence of male rivals, seemingly because the competition to reproduce persists all the way up the fallopian tube to the surface of the egg. For the same reason, an ape’s testicles are proportionate to the size of the male breeding pool. The male chimpanzee, surrounded by ruthless competition, has reproductive equipment that is truly prodigious, while the gorilla, living with a harem as the only male, has nothing to brag about. The evolutionary reason: A male without rivals needs no special adaptations to increase his odds of becoming a father.
Once again, the social and the physiological cannot be separated any more than we can separate the length from the width of a rectangle.”
― William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“In English, we have a word for pain and a word for thirst, but no single, specific terms that mean the opposite. We merely reference the absence of these aversive conditions, which makes sense, because their absence is considered part of the normal state. Our research suggests that “not lonely”—there is no better, more specific term for it—is also, like “not thirsty” or “not in pain,” very much part of the normal state. Health and well-being for a member of our species requires, among other things, being satisfied and secure in our bonds with other people, a condition of “not being lonely” that, for want of a better word, we call social connection.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Keep in mind, however, that we can all slip in and out of loneliness. Feeling lonely at any particular moment simply means that you are human. In fact, a sizable portion of this book is devoted to demonstrating that the need for meaningful social connection, and the pain we feel without it, are defining characteristics of our species. Loneliness becomes an issue of serious concern only when it settles in long enough to create a persistent, self-reinforcing loop of negative thoughts, sensations, and behaviors. Keep”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“But as I mentioned earlier, people smile more when watching a film in a friend’s presence, even when they report that their actual enjoyment of the film is no greater.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“People with insecure, anxious attachment styles are more likely than those with secure attachment styles to form perceived social bonds with television characters. They are also more likely than those with secure attachment styles to report an intensification of religious belief over a given time period, including sudden religious conversions later in life.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“They are, in fact, more likely to elevate the general mood, but not necessarily by talking the most or by running the show. More often, they contribute through quiet encouragement of whoever is motivated to speak or lead. Like many of those who get stuck in loneliness, some of the socially gifted are actually quite shy. Some have a threshold for connectedness that predisposes them to feel the pain of disconnection very acutely, and for them, shipping out to manage offshore operations in Singapore might not be the best career move. Susan did a very simple thing: She showed genuine interest in another human being, expecting nothing in return. That’s all it took to make a meaningful connection, which, at least briefly, improved life for each of them. Understand that much of your friend or loved one’s disagreeable behavior may be the result of fight-or-flight responses to a sense of being unsafe in the world, and that you can’t win by arguing. The most effective approach often is to directly address the person’s most basic emotions, which include dejection and fear. Remember that we humans often use words and logic merely to rationalize our primitive emotions and prior expectations.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“When we feel safe, we can think more creatively.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Instead, it is the other way around: Greater happiness, through its positive effect on social connections, contributes to increased income. Happy people become less lonely people, and people who are less lonely tend to make more money.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Studies show that lonely undergraduates hold more negative perceptions of their roommates than do their nonlonely peers. This divide between the lonely and the nonlonely in their perceptions was even larger when the others being perceived were their suite mates, was larger still for floor mates, and was even more pronounced for students on other floors of their dormitories.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Participants whose postures had been mimicked—even when they had not consciously noticed the mimicry—later reported having a more favorable impression of the person doing the imitation. Therapists know well that clients often rate their counselor more highly when the counselor has mimicked the client’s postures. And identification or a desire to affiliate with an individual increases the degree of behavioral mimicry.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“At Ohio State, when we asked participants to wear a device called the “nightcap” to record changes in the depth and quality of their sleep, we found that total sleep time did not differ across the groups. However, lonely young adults reported taking longer to fall sleep and also feeling greater daytime fatigue. Our studies of older adults yielded similar findings, and longitudinal analyses confirmed that it was loneliness specifically that was associated with changes in daytime fatigue.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“But across the life span, for someone who remains lonely, there is a progression from innocuously higher TPR to high blood pressure that doctors would be concerned about. At the same time, loneliness makes the lonely person less able to absorb the stress reducing (and TPR-lowering) benefits that others derive from the comfort and intimacy of their human contacts.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Loneliness reflects how you feel about your relationships. Depression reflects how you feel, period. Loneliness, like hunger, is a warning to do something to alter an uncomfortable and possibly dangerous condition. Depression makes us apathetic.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Loneliness, by contrast, can make us less able to get beyond even the normal disruptions, setbacks, and mistakes of day-to-day life. The inability to let go of such events has, in turn, consequences that are not just social but physiological: Loneliness creates a subtle but persistent difference in cardiovascular function that sets the stage for trouble later in life. Their diet is higher in fat. They sleep just as much as the nonlonely, but their sleep is less efficient, meaning less restorative, and they report feeling more daytime fatigue. Middle-aged adults who are lonely have more divorces, more run-ins with neighbors, more estrangement from family. Once this negative feedback loop starts rumbling through our lives, others may start to view us less favorably because of our self-protective, sometimes distant, sometimes caustic behavior. Now others really are beginning to treat us badly, which seems like adding insult to injury, which spins the cycle of defensive behavior and negative social results even further downhill. This is how chronic loneliness not only contributes to further social isolation but predisposes us to premature aging. Chronic loneliness not only makes us miserable, then, it can also make us sick.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“The primary shortcoming in Bowlby’s theory is that humans are not geese.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Sometimes male competition includes offering gifts to the female. Given that reproduction in females consumes calories as well as time and attention, male courtship in many species involves a “nuptial offering” rich in nutrients. In dung-rolling beetles, the gift is a massive ball of elephant dung.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“Keep in mind, too, that feeling the pain of isolation is not an unalloyed negative. The sensations associated with loneliness evolved because they contributed to our survival as a species. “To be isolated from your band,” wrote John Bowlby, the developmental psychologist who pioneered attachment theory, “and, especially when young, to be isolated from your particular caretaker is fraught with the greatest danger. Can we wonder then that each animal is equipped with an instinctive disposition to avoid isolation and to maintain proximity?”5 Physical”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection