To become solitary and simple in utter aloneness -- living wholly unconcerned about the multitude of worldly affairs, and abandoning and disentangling yourself from all things -- is to die. We are born alone; we die alone.

The man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient, is no part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god.

Our "society" is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she's exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation, further, enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual by being a "rugged individualist", a loner, equating non-co-operation and solitariness with individuality.

Humans are almost always lonely.

The concept of the “isolated individual” is a construction of the bourgeois philosophy of individualism, and serves to conceal the social character which production always manifests.

Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.

If a human being is isolated from other humans for a month or more, and is confined to a small area geographically and a small range of activities, his interest in his surroundings and its minutiae increase radically....Further, if a confined, isolated human is allowed brief contacts with other humans even without a shared language, he begins to find their presence comforting, and a pleasant relief from the "evenness" of his surroundings. If these humans controls his only sources of food as well as his sources of intraspecies stimulation, he may adapt to their demands in subtle and not so subtle ways. He may, given time, learn their language, take on their beliefs, etc.. When we catch a dolphin and put him alone in a small tank, we are imposing similar "solitary confinement" structures on him. Maybe we can thus capture his loyalty and his initiative.

The only good human being is a dead one.

A solitary man is a God, or a beast.

Solitude sometimes is best society.

For the individual there is no society unless he has social status and function. There must be a definite functional relationship between individual life and group life. For the individual without function and status, society is irrational, incalculable and shapeless. The “rootless” individual, the outcast - for absence of social function and status casts a man from the society of his fellows - sees no society. He sees only demoniac forces, half sensible, half meaningless, half in light and half in darkness, but never predictable. They decide about his life and livelihood without the possibility of interference on his part, indeed without the possibility of understanding them. He is like a blindfolded man in a strange room playing a game of which he does not know the rules.

Society is the cave. The way out is solitude.

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.

One person by himself is not a complete human being.