None of the people watching 'Big Brother' will bring you chicken soup if you get sick.

What really matters from the point of view of social capital and civic engagement is not merely nominal membership, but active and involved membership.

Young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate.

Our national myths often exaggerate the role of the individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort.

People may go to the library looking mainly for information, but they find each other there.

How well you do in life shouldn't depend on how well your parents did.

Social capital may turn out to be a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, effective computer-mediated communication.

Positive people have more friends which is a key factor of happiness and longevity.

Busy people tend to forgo the one activity - TV watching _ that is most lethal to community involvement

Look, we ought to do this for our kids... We ought to have a high school so that every kid who grows up here - they're all our kids - gets a good high school education.

Slavery was, in fact, a social system designed to destroy social capital among slaves and between slaves and freemen.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

Traumas produce their disintegrating effects in proportion to their intensity, duration and repetition. (1909)

There was an edge of, 'Go away kid, you're bothering me'. I've kicked myself a million times since. I could've discovered Whitney Houston.

I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.

The best thing we can do for a young person is to expect a great deal from them.

If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.

You are perfect exactly as you are. With all your flaws and problems, there's no need to change anything. All you need to change is the thought that you aren't good enough.

When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.

As a race car driver, driving is the easy part. The hard part is containing the emotions on the race track.

If you looked at my feet, you would know for sure that I used to do ballet. They're completely destroyed and ripped up.