139+ Best Isolation Quotes That Make You Think

Isolation is the state of being in a place or situation that is separate from others. Profoundly inspirational isolation quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.

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Famous Isolation Quotes

The arts don’t exist in isolation. — David Byrne

Isolation is a way to know ourselves. ― Franz Kafka

Isolation offered its own form of companionship. ― Jhumpa Lahiri

The worst cruelty that can be inflicted on a human being is isolation. ― Sukarno

There’s a great deal of scientific evidence that social connectedness is a very strong protector of emotional well-being, and I think there’s no question that social isolation has greatly increased in our culture in, say, the past 50 years, past 100 years. — Andrew Weil

Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It’s distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you. ― Vivek Murthy

Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation. ― Albert Einstein

Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can’t live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you’re a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you’re not free. And you can’t hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you’re forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others. ― Fernando Pessoa

I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much. — Charlotte Bronte

A person is a person through other persons; you can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships. — Desmond Tutu

There is a difference between solitude and isolation. One is connected and one isn’t. Solitude replenishes, isolation diminishes. — Henry Cloud

I hide all my scars with an ‘I’m fine’.

I grew up on a farm in Oregon, an adopted child, with one sibling, and parents the age of all my peers’ grandparents. We lived in isolation from the people around us, and it was always a struggle to cope with as a child. The heart can really expire under those conditions. I always felt like I was looking at the world from the outside. — Larry Harvey

The mere suggestion that not speaking for a day can give you an appreciation of the social isolation that comes with the experience of disability, particularly those whose impairments prohibit them from communicating verbally, is insensitive at best. — Stella Young

Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes isolation can be shared. — Ken Grimwood

They’ve kept these guys in isolation or solitary confinement, so to speak, for three years. I think they overstated this to begin with. … They, by their own words, made this a hollow victory, if anything. — Stephen Bernstein

We don’t function well as human beings when we’re in isolation. — Robert Zemeckis

When the crying child is immediately isolated, and it is explained to him at the same time that whoever annoys others must not be with them, if this isolation is the absolute result and cannot be avoided, in the child’s mind a basis is laid for the experience that one must be alone when one makes oneself unpleasant or disagreeable. — Ellen Key

Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people. — Harold S. Kushner

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. — Gautama Buddha

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone. — Boris Pasternak

Quotes About Isolation

The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia. — Toni Morrison

Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

Most ideas are born and lost in isolation. — Scott Belsky

The walls of isolation are not as solid as your suffering makes them seem. — Deepak Chopra

Feeling isolated can come from being afraid: I’m scared my mental illness makes me unlovable. — Alexandria Brown

I need to be very isolated to write, and unfortunately isolation is often quite difficult to find. My ideal writing environment would be a country house hotel in the middle of nowhere, with full room service. — Kate Atkinson

The geographical isolation and lack of television made world happenings and problems seem remote. — Paul D. Boyer

Isolation breeds conceit. — Charles Dudley Warner

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. — Henry David Thoreau.

I am in no way different from anyone else, that my predicament, my sense of aloneness or isolation may be precisely what unites me with everyone. — Franz Wright

We did double-team the pick and roll and that’s why they went to the isolation plays. When you have somebody isolating in the middle of the court, where he has so many options around him, it’s kind of hard to throw somebody else at him. — Joe Smith

Composing demands a degree of isolation. — Cliff Martinez

I had made a god of my own reason… Even if theoretically I now acknowledged the authority of God and the Church, in practice I was still the ruler and the judge. I was the centre of my own existence, and my isolation from the rest of the world was due to the fact that I had deliberately shut myself up within the barriers of my own will and reason. — Bede Griffiths

One who is established in the self feels no loneliness. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Brantley did a great job keeping his composure. He read the defenses well and made some nice passes. As the game progressed, I thought we did a better job up the middle with our fullback trap and isolation plays. — Daniel Barrow

What was more, Japan was driven into isolation from other Asian countries, not only politically but also socially and culturally. — Kenzaburo Oe

Isolation is a self-defeating dream. — Carlos Salinas de Gortari

It is very much a character piece and very much about relationships. A lot of the themes in the film are about isolation and love, with all the characters isolated in some way. — Andy Serkis

Plum Island was built with isolation in mind for a specific reason. We understand the highest levels of security would take place, but we also know mistakes happen. — Lisa Patterson

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man. — Thomas Carlyle

The Internet has made some phenomenal breakthroughs that are still only poorly understood in terms of changing people’s ideas of us and them. If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite. — Alex Steffen

My upbringing has given me sympathy for the idea of isolation and what it is to be a new person in the room, where everyone else has some amount of familiarity and comfort. — Julianne Moore

Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is. — Atticus.

Deep Isolation Quotes

Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it. — Haruki Murakami

I would get a lot of writing done if I lived in isolation in a cave under a swamp. — Claire Cameron

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills. — Joseph Roux

We didn’t really post him up. We just tried to put him in an isolation situation and let him make the play, and I thought he was awesome with it. — Mike Dunleavy

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person. — Robert Morgan

To abandon their isolation and agree, as the Albanians have done, to join the consulting governing bodies of the province which work with the international administration. — Javier Solana

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. — Johann Wolfgange Von Goethe

That was the first time I ever called an open isolation against a 2-3 zone. He’s a remarkable player and I’m glad to have him on my team. — Pat Riley

Tasmanian history is a study of human isolation unprecedented except in science fiction – namely, complete isolation from other humans for 10,000 years. — Jared Diamond

Teamwork is better than isolation, especially for a columnist. — Allan Sloan

I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation. — Alfred Korzybski

The real significance is that it marks the end of the isolation that India had to live with. The outcome in terms of energy needs is miles away. — Uday Bhaskar

I hope the Iraqis understand that their isolation could be much worse than it is today. — Jan Eliasson

There are moments in ‘Body Snatchers’ that touch the sort of thing that I find scary… like isolation and the inability to trust even familiar things. But – is that a horror movie – or a thriller? I don’t really know the difference. — Christine Elise

Isolation doesn’t bother me at all. It gives me a sense of security. — Jimmy Page

Social isolation is one of the most devastating things you can do to a human being; I don’t care how old you are. — Rosalind Wiseman

Taken in isolation you would say, ‘Well, why would he say that?’ … He’s saying that the private sector is the largest component of our economy and, therefore, most jobs are going to be there. — Max Stier

Being alone and actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives. — Kourtney Kardashian

put Israel back into international isolation … and cause friction with the United States — our great friend — and hostility with Europe. — Ehud Olmert

Helping reproductive services doesn’t just help women in isolation. It helps men just as much. — Tucker Max

I don’t think it was really isolation because we were talking to the ground almost each orbit. We were pretty busy, so I actually didn’t feel myself isolated. And of course we had a pretty nice view of Earth. — Sergei Krikalev

Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance. — Jules Verne

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.

I’m the only one in my family who is deaf, and there are still conversations that go around me that I miss out on. And I ask what’s going on, and I have to ask to be included. But I’m not going to be sad about it. I don’t live in sad isolation. It’s just a situation I’m used to. — Marlee Matlin

I think it’s good for a person to spend time alone. — Amy Sedaris

We’re in the third architectural revision of the physical infrastructure below and the container management and billing and security and job isolation on top. It’s really hard. It’s a lot harder than we thought. — Greg Papadopoulos

Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation. — Wislawa Szymborska

to the Bride and Groom Congratulations on the termination of your isolation and may I express an appreciation of your determination to end the desperation and frustration which has caused you so much consternation in giving you the inspiration to make a combination to bring an accumulation to the population. — Unknown

Inspirational Isolation Quotes

A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. — Mandy Hale

I think it’s only a maneuver as a result of the Israeli isolation in the world arena, — Abdel Rahman

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone. — Margaret J. Wheatley

The worst thing someone gets is isolated. Isolation is the darkest part of any condition. — Annie Lennox

You’re going through the horror of it, you’re going through the isolation of it but you’re being empowered by reminding yourself that you’re connected to everybody else. — Adam Arkin

This dramatic revolution marks the end of the probably most painful and dramatic decade in the history of Yugoslavia, … Now our task is to look forward and make up for years of isolation and economic destruction. — National Press

Two more people have been kept under observation in the isolation ward as they have complained of cough and cold. — TP Doke

Humor is an antidote to isolation. — Elizabeth Janeway

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation. — Alfred Korzybski

I said it’s a cold universe and I don’t mean that metaphorically. If you go out into space, it’s cold. It’s really cold and we don’t know what’s up there. We happen to be in this little pocket where there’s a sun. What have we got except love and each other to guard against all that isolation and loneliness? — David Chase

Coach told me to dribble some time off, then we went into our isolation play. I knew they would not double down because of our outside shooters. I was taller so I just shot the ball over her. — Candace Parker

We didn’t turn the ball over and we got good shots. We didn’t just rely on isolation plays and that was something that was different tonight. We just finished it off really well. — Kyle Korver

My habit of glorifying things far away in space and time, also contributed to my social isolation. — Luke Ford

My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation – often elevated loneliness – to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone; they are with people. — Chuck Palahniuk

The isolation from any whose interests are the same as mine, the constant, inevitable mixing with persons whose influence will tend in the opposite direction-this is a serious drawback. — Wilfred Owen

We have placed the three into an isolation ward as a precautionary measure. — Thomas Tsang

With technology, there is so much isolation with people now, that there are very few places where you can connect. — Mireille Guiliano

I think it is important we end the isolation of northern Cyprus, — Tony Blair

Unprecedented financial pressures, and an ever-increasingly aggressive public culture, along with social, moral and spiritual fragmentation, are leading to lives being overwhelmed by stress, intolerable interior isolation and even quiet despair. — Sean Brady

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. — Edward M. Forster

So from the beginning they put me in total isolation for seven weeks after my kidnapping they even didn’t admit I am in an Israeli prison. — Mordechai Vanunu

You have to repopulate slowly. To capture a couple of sharks and move them across the country, you have to have holding spaces, isolation and quarantine areas. Catching them is the easier part. Getting them from here to there without mortal damage is what gets complicated. — John Hewitt

Any country that grants asylum to Snowden risks retaliation from the United States, including diplomatic isolation and costly trade sanctions. Several don’t seem to care. — Stephen Kinzer

At the risk of sounding like a spoilsport, I’d say that pagans have about the same experience of otherness and isolation as anyone else. We’re not special in that regard. But this is because the problem of loneliness is almost universal – and that, to my mind, makes it much more serious. — Brendan Myers

My own life was filled with so much love and joy that when depression struck, it was like a prison door slamming shut and I was being placed in an isolation cell. No one else could possibly be feeling what I was. I hated my depression and all of its symptoms. — Susan Polis Schutz

Providing a writer isn’t put off by conventions – and some are – attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing. — Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

oo much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering. — Dalai Lama

That sort of emergency doesn’t present a power issue. That is an isolation issue. — Joanne Callahan

I think in the case of horror, it’s a chance to confront a lot of your worse fears and those fears usually have to do, ironically, with powerlessness and isolation. — Adam Arkin

The waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get the opportunity. — William Empson

Listening to the audio is made immensely easier if you use a good pair of isolation headsets. And you need to use them all the time. — Martha Smith

They are going to grab Syria by the throat and squeeze and shake, and see what kind of change falls out of the Syrian pockets…. It’s going to be the harshest isolation they can manufacture. — Joshua Landis

To dream in isolation can be properly splendid to be sure; but to dream in company seems to me infinitely preferable. — Clive Barker

Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. — Thomas Sowell

You look across (their front) and they are 250, 270, 270, 290, and they love to run it with counter lead, isolation stuff, so it’s going to be a test for us. — Mike Owens

We, in our own quite independent way, have pushed for more democracy in Cuba. We have done so on the basis of contact with Cuba, rather than isolation of Cuba, — Leon Brittan

Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists. — Carlos Fuentes

There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past. — William Bernbach

A lot of our facilities are old, with no isolation facilities. — Dr. Baxter

We have a high number of elder people. If you look at factors that contribute to suicide, you have isolation and depression. With older people, there tends to be more isolation and depression. They have often lost a spouse or family members. — Jan Eustis

What this isolation of the organism will show us is where were they at a given time and what time was it that it occurred. — Jeffrey Koplan

I think, if you have enough inner resources, then you can live in isolation for long periods of time and not feel diminished by it. — Aung San Suu Kyi

The export ban has forced our beef industry to suffocate in isolation but now there is a chance it can be revived by the financial oxygen generated through access to a wider range of freer-spending customers. — Robert Forster

That’s where seniors are valuable. We panicked a little bit. We wanted to spread them out and get isolation to beat their guards one-on-one. We’d dribble to the side and stumble or get caught in the corner and get trapped. That’s what happens with two seniors and three underclassmen on the floor, or with one out, four underclassmen. — Josh Smithers

The home stands in contrast to all other capitalist institutions as the last stronghold of pre-capitalist isolation. — C. L. R. James

As a writer, you live in such isolation. It’s hard to imagine your book has a life beyond you. — Ann Brashares

We have to avoid becoming stagnant. We knew at some point Orlando would hit a stretch where they hit shots. We also knew that when that happened we had to keep the ball moving on offense and not slow it down and get into isolation plays. That bogged us down in recent games. I thought we did a good job of staying away from that. — Rick Carlisle

The resolution should be amended, not defeated, because the president needs to be reminded that separation of powers does not mean an isolation of powers. He needs to be told he cannot simply ignore a law with no consequences. — John Deane

Feminism exists so that no woman ever has to face her abuser in isolation, alone. — Andrea Dworkin

It’s not just simply looking at roads in isolation from airlines and rail. There has to be a comprehensive transportation approach and that’s the opposite of what we’ve seen from the Liberals. — John Wallace

Threats of sanctions and isolation alone will not do it, — Yuval Steinitz

I am greatly pleased with the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find ourselves. It is wholly in accord with our attitude and our principles. — Karl Marx

I need some isolation, it’s necessary to me, that’s just who I am. I need to be left alone. — Laura Marling

The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

That isolation and defiance of the international community does not work, however fanciful individual nations may think that it can work. — Jack Straw

We experienced a deconstruction of our personal lives. Coming home to a familiar setting and being alien to it created a sense of isolation from the people we’re close to. There were all these invisible barriers that were tough to reach through. So we ended up with songs like ‘Alone, Jealous, and Stoned,’ about how our emotions propel us toward these conflicts and away from the people we love. — Brandon Curtis

During the 11 and half years I was in total isolation alone in a cell, only for two hours everyday to go to walk in a courtyard also alone. — Mordechai Vanunu

I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. — Anaïs Nin

Photography has taken me from isolation. — Anton Corbijn

Isolation is the dream killer. — Barbara Sher

No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation. — Daisaku Ikeda

We didn’t want to look at a parcel in isolation because it has a domino effect. — Clyde Evans

When you’re socially awkward, you’re isolated more than usual, and when you’re isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages. — Criss Jami

Over time as most people fail the survivor’s exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free. — Judith Lewis Herman

But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness. ― Megan Whalen Turner