Social Interaction Quotes

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

Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want. ~ Ivy Lee

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

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

What Americans don't want to admit ... is that not only is there not a contradiction between state regulation and freedom, but in order for us to actually be free in our social interactions, there must be an extremely elaborated network of health, law, institutions, moral rules and so on. ~ Slavoj Zizek

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

If you can dress as a stormtrooper and go to a laundromat, or wear a sexy cheese gown in public, you might start to find "normal" social interactions a little less daunting. ~ Misha Collins

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

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

The idea of someone who can play with their emotions, who can 'mystically' get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. 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." He settled back, raising his dueling cane and gesturing with it slightly as he spoke. "Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing-in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others." -Breeze ~ Brandon Sanderson

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

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

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

Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. ~ Gavin De Becker

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

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

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

Don't expect people to abide by your rules if you don't clearly communicate what they are. And don't expect them to live by your rules if you're not willing to compromise and live by at least some of theirs. ~ Tony Robbins

Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive - the travel, the clothes, the drinks, the lunches, the gifts. Sometimes it evened out in the end - like with the drinks - but, I was finding out, more often than not, one incurred a net financial loss. ~ Gail Honeyman

People don't like us, my dear. The idea that someone who can play with their emotions, who can "mystically" get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. What they do not realize - and what you must realize - is that manipulating is at the core of our social interaction. (...) Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing, in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others. ~ Brandon Sanderson

I grew up in a relatively small town...Cruising up and down the main street in a car, going to the mall and attending drunken date-rape festivals called "parties" were the culmination of social interaction.
I was never entirely comfortable in this setting.
Until I was eighteen and left 'home," I was constantly at odds with this culture I grew up in. The older I got, the more clearly I saw what was supposed to be looming ahead for me as a woman.
This conflict became increasingly unsettling with each passing year. I did not want to keep my mouth shut and act ladylike...or respect the idea that all of my teachers were smarter than me. Dealing with such opposition on a day-to-day basis disrupted the momentum of womanpower I was born with. I struggled to keep my power somewhat apace with my life. This proved difficult, as I expended a large amount of energy defending my own concept of the woman I wanted to be. Furthermore, deprived of the experience I needed in order to know exactly what "the woman I wanted to be" meant, things were not only difficult, but mind-bogglingly complex as well. ~ Inga Muscio

Central to Jungian psychology is the concept of "individuation," the process whereby a person discovers and evolves his Self, as opposed to his ego. The ego is a persona, a mask created and demanded by everyday social interaction, and, as such, it constitutes the center of our conscious life, our understanding of ourselves through the eyes of others. The Self, on the other hand, is our true center, our awareness of ourselves without outside interference, and it is developed by bringing the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds into harmony. ~ Morris Berman

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

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

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

They say sociopaths are dangerous because they know the subtleties of social interaction better than most people and they use this knowledge to use and exploit people. Well, it seems to me people with Asperger's are the opposite of sociopaths. ~ Alexei Maxim Russell

...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

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

If you treat people with dignity, respect and friendliness, you can turn enemies into friends. An enemy is nothing but a friend in disguise. ~ Ted Turner

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public. ~ Bryan White

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

My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face. ~ Allyson Kennedy

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

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

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

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

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

I feel greatful, though, that Sabin was my home base tonight. He let me come back to him as often as I needed to ground myself. When the noise was too much or the social interaction felt overwhelming, he remained my rock. ~ Jessica Park

You should not be too much of a purist in your way of life, for you need to be able to accept all that is foul. You should not be too clear in making distinctions in social interactions, for you need to accept everyone whether they are good or bad, wise or foolish. ~ Zicheng Hong

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

These kids aren't like us; they'll never be us. They're more like...young Lex Luthors. They've never known a world without the internet. Email. Text messaging. Social media. Likes and views are king, bullying dickheads are inescapable, and genuine social interaction can be almost completely avoided. It makes them really fucking smart technologically and really fucking stupid emotionally. ~ Emma Chase

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

What happens when insatiability dominates a person's emotional functioning? The process of maturation is preempted by an obsession or an addiction, in this case for peer connection. Peer contact whets the appetite without nourishing. It titillates without satisfying. The end result of peer contact is usually an urgent desire for more. The more the child gets, the more he craves.

The mother of an eight-year-old girl mused, "I don't get it - the more time my daughter spends with her friends, the more demanding she becomes to get together with them. How much time does she really need for social interaction, anyway?" Likewise, the parents of a young adolescent complained that "as soon as our son comes home from camp, he gets on the phone right away to call the kids he's just been with. Yet it's the family he hasn't seen for two weeks."

The obsession with peer contact is always worse after exposure to peers, whether it is at school or in playtimes, sleepovers, class retreats, outings, or camps. If peer contact satiated, times of peer interaction would lead automatically to increased self-generated play, creative solitude, or individual reflection. Many parents confuse this insatiable behavior with a valid need for peer interaction.

Over and over I hear some variation of "but my child is absolutely obsessed with getting together with friends. It would be cruel to deprive him." Actually, it would be more cruel and irresponsible to indulge what s ~ Gabor Mate

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

Enjoyable social interaction, community and laughter has a healing effect on the mind and body. ~ Bryant McGill

In America, music was the first sphere of social interaction in which racial barriers were challenged and overturned. And the challenge went both ways: by the mid-1920s, white bands were playing for all-black audiences at Lincoln Theater and elsewhere. These intermediate steps between segregation and integration represented, for all their problems, progress of sorts. ~ Ted Gioia

As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert. ~ Charles Montgomery

The need for social interaction ... is very much a part of why women shop. All our interviewees commented at some point that social interaction was part of the shopping experience. Many people now live alone in 'dormitory' suburbs, are often working from home or in isolated jobs, may be home with young children or part of the aging population of retiring baby boomers. All these groups need social connection, and shopping strips and malls provide many opportunities for reliable, safe and interesting social connections. ~ Stella Minahan, Michael Beverland

Think of a dinner party as a club of revolutionaries, a technocratic elite whose social interactions that night are a dry run for some future takeover of the state. ~ Phillip Lopate

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

Changing Your Opinion
Think back to the low self-esteem statements you identified with, bearing in mind that, no matter how you came by your low opinion of yourself, you can change it. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." You own your self-image, and you can feel about yourself whatever you choose to feel. Throughout this book, there are exercises to help you change how you feel about yourself. And in the next chapter, we'll look at some ways to set social goals. For now, try repeating what Mrs. Roosevelt said: "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." Give yourself credit for seeking help with your social problems. You care about yourself, and that counts for a lot.
Social anxiety and low self-esteem go hand in hand. In fact, many people simplify so-called "shyness" as a self-esteem problem. The reality is, however, that poor self-esteem is a by-product of social anxiety. It is the social anxiety that comes first, not the other way around! Social failures cause anxiety, which causes avoidance, which causes low self-esteem. As a person's confidence dwindles, the fears become greater, until eventually the individual simply stops trying. With fewer and fewer opportunities for social interaction, there are also fewer opportunities to receive positive feedback. This combination of factors perpetuates low self-esteem, which cannot be replaced with a healthy self-image until the avoidant behavior c ~ Jonathan Berent

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

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

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

They also observed that the amygdala in the vaccinated monkeys didn't mature with time as it was supposed to. The amygdala, incidentally, plays an important role in social interactions. Maybe it's not so surprising they also observed that in the vaccinated monkeys the opioid antagonist diprenorphine (DPN) levels never lowered throughout the study. In the placebo group, the DPN levels decreased noticeably. One function of DPN is to block social interaction. What this means is the research showed that the social behavior of those monkeys that received the actual vaccines, where the DPN levels did not decrease, turned anti-social. We found there was at least one more study undertaken to verify the association between DPN and social behavior. Performed in 1981[141]. The authors of that study believe the release of opioids in the brain encourages social interactions. So, when the body fails to decrease the amount of the antagonist DPN, it not only blocks the opioids that encourage social interactions, but it blocks the desire to socially interact. ~ James Morcan

The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear. ~ Deepak Chopra

As to the future, the only certainty is that the Internet will encounter new technical and social challenges. If the Internet is to continue as an innovative means of collaboration, discovery, and social interaction, it will need to draw on its legacy of adaptability and participatory design. ~ Janet Abbate

Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time - our 'social graphs' - into money for others. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

The world has a fast-growing problematic disability, which forges bonds in families, causes people to communicate in direct and clear ways, cuts down meaningless social interaction, pushes people to the limit with learning about themselves, whilst making them work together to make a better world. It's called Autism – and I can't see anything wrong with it, can you? Boy I'm glad I also have this disability! ~ Patrick Jasper Lee

Does a society exist where it's become acceptable to wear 'helmets' enclosing one's entire head when in public to preempt social interaction ~ Tao Lin

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

I have discovered from personal experience that one can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them. ~ Dale Carnegie

Often, the things people enjoy most about games, such as social interaction or physical exercise, have nothing to do with problem solving. But while these other activities might improve a game, they are not essential to the game. When problem solving is removed from a game, it ceases to be a game and becomes just an activity. ~ Jesse Schell

If you cannot get along with yourself, you'll never be able to get along with other people. ~ Joel Osteen

Since the age of Socrates, social interaction has been continually scrutinized, leading to a constant change in guidelines and rules for social conduct. As a result, societal parameters do exist surrounding how society defines proper behaviors. ~ Cindy Ann Peterson

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

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

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

We've become much more casual and much more relaxed in social interactions, where there was a formality and maybe a kind of respect at that time that doesn't exist now. ~ Radha Mitchell

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

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

[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

Every night, millions of Americans spend their free hours watching television rather than engaging in any form of social interaction. What are they watching? In recent years we have seen reality television become the most popular form of television programming. To discover the nature of our current "reality," we might consider examples such as Survivor, the series that helped spawn the reality TV revolution. Every week tens of millions of viewers watched as a group of ordinary people stranded in some isolated place struggled to meet various challenges and endure harsh conditions. Ah, one might think, here we will see people working cooperatively, like our ancient ancestors, working cooperatively in order to "win"! But the "reality" was very different. The conditions of the game were arranged so that, yes, they had to work cooperatively, but the alliances by nature were only temporary and conditional, as the contestants plotted and schemed against one another to win the game and walk off with the Grand Prize: a million dollars! The objective was to banish contestants one by one from the deserted island through a group vote, eliminating every other contestant until only a lone individual remained - the "sole survivor." The end game was the ultimate American fantasy in our Age of Individualism: to be left completely alone, sitting on a mountain of cash!

　　While Survivor was an overt example of our individualistic orientation, it certainly was not unique in its glorifi ~ Dalai Lama XIV

I wasn't a nerd, mind you, but I'd spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I'd had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Ultimately, the purpose of a certification is to establish a particular level of proficiency in a discipline. Unfortunately, "social media" in and of itself, is not a discipline. Digital crisis management, on the other hand, is. So are digital customer service and online community management. This means that a certification program that focuses on social media without addressing each specific business function adapted to social media won't end up certifying anyone in much of anything. ~ Olivier J. Blanchard

On the contrary, it's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics . It's the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance gold transfers we can't talk about, because those are understood so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about! ~ Richard P. Feynman

... it can hardly be over-exaggerated that speculative thinking is always drawn from the necessities of the time, that it is always practical, that it always shifts with the interests of the times, with the changes of social, economic, and political conditions, and finally, that it is vain to hope to find an eternal, fixed, and immutable system of philosophy, and still hope for progress. A fixed system is applicable only to a dead society. ~ Holly Estil Cunningham

We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by our outward show of 'civilized' manners and 'cultured' social behavior into believing that self-concern, desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference are steadily losing their hold over us. ~ Stephen Batchelor

I promote revolution against the Capitalists and the Social Marxists. ~ Tom Metzger

Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools? ~ B.F. Skinner

I get most of my news updates from electronic and social media. ~ LeVar Burton

Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism. One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, or 'collective,' information of the whole society; through his actions each participant contributes his own particular, if incomplete, knowledge-information that could never be tapped by the individual at the head of a collectivist state. ~ Sheldon Richman

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we we ~ Charles Darwin

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition. ~ James Weldon Johnson

The established religions no longer ask fundamental questions about our identity and our reason for living. Instead, they concentrate purely on a series of dogmas and rules concerned only with fitting in with a particular social and political organization. People in search of real spirituality are, therefore, setting off in new directions, and that inevitably means a return to the past and to primitive religions, before those religions were contaminated by the structures of power. ~ Paulo Coelho

Maybe we need to look upon technologies and social networks as things that come out of us, not things that lead us. We can be on top of these things instead of them bein' on top of us as human beings. ~ Chuck D

Maybe the concept of friendship is already too colonized by liberalism and capitalism. Under neoliberalism, friendship is a banal affair of private preferences: we hang out, we share hobbies, we make small talk. We become friends with those who are already like us, and we keep each other comfortable rather than becoming different and more capable together. The algorithms of Facebook and other social networks guide us towards the refinement of our profiles, reducing friendship to the click of a button. This neoliberal friend is the alternative to hetero- and homonormative coupling: "just friends" implies a much weaker and insignificant bond than a lover could ever be. Under neoliberal friendship, we don't have each other's backs, and our lives
aren't tangled up together. But these insipid tendencies do not mean that friendships are pointless, only that friendship is a terrain of struggle. Empire works to usher its subjects into flimsy relationships where nothing is at stake and to infuse intimacy with violence and domination. ~ Carla Bergman

Putin was a former KGB intelligence officer who'd been stationed in East Germany at the Dresden headquarters of the Soviet secret service. Putin has said in interviews that he dreamed as a child of becoming a spy for the communist party in foreign lands, and his time in Dresden exceeded his imagination. Not only was he living out his boyhood fantasy, he and his then-wife also enjoyed the perks of a borderline-European existence. Even in communist East Germany, the standard of living was far more comfortable than life in Russia, and the young Putins were climbing KGB social circles, making influential connections, networking a power base.

The present was bright, and the future looked downright luminous.

Then, the Berlin wall fell, and down with it crashed Putin's world. A few days after the fall, a group of East German protestors gathered at the door of the secret service headquarters building. Putin, fearing the headquarters would be overrun, dialed up a Red Army tank unit stationed nearby to ask for protection. A voice on the other end of the line told him the unit could not do anything without orders from Moscow. And, "Moscow is silent," the man told Putin.

Putin's boyhood dream was dissolving before his eyes, and his country was impotent or unwilling to stop it. Putin despised his government's weakness in the face of threat. It taught him a lesson that would inform his own rule: Power is easily lost when those in power allow it to be tak ~ Matt Szajer

Without children, men have more liberty to earn less - that is, they are free to pursue more fulfilling and less lucrative careers, like writing or art or teaching social studies. ~ Warren Farrell

The mimetic nature of desire accounts for the fragility of human relations. Our social sciences should give due consideration to a phenomenon that must be considered normal, but they persist in seeing conflict as something accidental, and consequently so unforeseeable that researchers cannot and must not take it into account in their study of culture. ~ Rene Girard

Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience. ~ Charles Darwin

I don't miss being a reporter as a job, but I do miss the everyday interaction with the front line of law enforcement. I still have a cadre of cops who keep me up to date, but I don't have the access I used to. ~ Michael Connelly

To this day, I feel a fierce warmth for women that have the same disregard for the social conventions of sexual protocol as I do. I love it when I meet a woman and her sexuality is dancing across her face, so it's apparent that all we need to do is nod and find a cupboard. ~ Russell Brand

We are (most of us) embedded in an exceedingly complex network of social relationships, many of which are vital to our well-being. Every day we confront issues relating to the needs and wants of others and must continually make accommodations. And in addressing these conflicting interests, the operative norm is - or should be - fairness, a balancing of the interests and needs of other parties, other 'stakeholders.' ~ Peter Corning

emergent relatedness assumes that the infant from the moment of birth is deeply social in the sense of being designed to engage in and find uniquely salient interactions with other humans. ~ Daniel N. Stern

Because language and society are so closely linked, it is possible, in some cases, to encourage social change by directing attention towards linguistic reflections of aspects of society that one would like to see altered. ~ Peter Trudgill

My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists ; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism . ~ Aldous Huxley

Tell The Truth.
Most of your problems come from not telling the truth.
The lies you tell, even to spare other people's feelings, always come back to haunt you.
If you simply tell people what you mean you would be better off, a lot happier, not trapped in some awkward social situation. Others will know where they standand will be more honest with you.
They won't expect you to be what you're not. They won'tneed to test you to discover your intentions. You won't have to make excuses for not doing things you didn't want to do or explain why you prefer to do what like to do. They'll know.
Telling the truth and being your own person are closely linked. A strong person says what he or she means. A weak person lies to please others. A strong person lets the truth be other people's problem. A weak person holds the truth inside and complains about being treated unfairly.
What is telling the truth hurts other people's feelings? You're not supposed to tell people that they look fat, are stupid or ugly. That's just being rude.
Tell the truth avout what you feel, want, and like and mean what you say. If other's get hurt by your truth, they'll have to deal with it. Others may not like what you say, but they'll respect you for being honest and they'll survive better than if you lie to them.
If you lie to please people, they won't really believe you. They'll be suspicious and suffer with every inconsistency they find in your story. You'll b ~ David Viscott

Every interaction is a chance to strengthen the customer relationship. ~ Marilyn Suttle