Top 100 Sherry Turkle Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.”

— Sherry Turkle

2. “Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.”

— Sherry Turkle

3. “Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.”

— Sherry Turkle

4. “We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”

— Sherry Turkle

5. “Loneliness is failed solitude.”

— Sherry Turkle

6. “We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”

— Sherry Turkle

7. “We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

— Sherry Turkle

8. “What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.”

— Sherry Turkle

9. “If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely. And if we don’t teach our children to be alone, they’re only going to know how to be lonely.”

— Sherry Turkle

10. “Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed – and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.”

— Sherry Turkle

11. “The web promises to make our world bigger. But as it works now, it also narrows our exposure to ideas. We can end up in a bubble in which we hear only the ideas we already know. Or already like.”

— Sherry Turkle

12. “We have to love technology enough to describe it accurately. And we have to love ourselves enough to confront technology’s true effect on us.”

— Sherry Turkle

13. “Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.”

— Sherry Turkle

14. “Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?”

— Sherry Turkle

15. “Addiction is to the habits of mind that technology allows us to practice.”

— Sherry Turkle

16. “In order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to connect, we flee solitude. In time, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves is diminished. If we don’t know who we are when we are alone, we turn to other people to support our sense of self. This makes it impossible to fully experience others as who they are. We take what we need from them in bits and pieces; it is as though we use them as spare parts to support our fragile selves.”

— Sherry Turkle

17. “We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.”

— Sherry Turkle

18. “We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy.”

— Sherry Turkle

19. “We fill our days with ongoing connection, denying ourselves time to think and dream.”

— Sherry Turkle

20. “Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.”

— Sherry Turkle

21. “The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesnt teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.”

— Sherry Turkle

22. “A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, “There you go again; let’s call this to a halt. You can do something different.” Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect.”

— Sherry Turkle

23. “A sacred space is not a place to hide out. It is a place where we recognize ourselves and our commitments.”

— Sherry Turkle

24. “Intelligence once meant more than what any artificial intelligence does. It used to include sensibility, sensitivity, awareness, discernment, reason, acumen, and wit.”

— Sherry Turkle

25. “The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought.”

— Sherry Turkle

26. “The way we live now is an experiment in which we are the human subjects – treated as objects by the technology we have created. Our apps use us as much as we use our apps.”

— Sherry Turkle

27. “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”

— Sherry Turkle

28. “We’re smitten with technology. And we’re afraid, like young lovers, that too much talking might spoil the romance. But it’s time to talk.”

— Sherry Turkle

Featured in: Romance Quotes

29. “These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.”

— Sherry Turkle

30. “We used to think, ‘I have a feeling; I want to make a call.’ Now our impulse is, ‘I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.’”

— Sherry Turkle

31. “What do we forget when we talk to machines? We forget what is special about being human. We forget what it means to have authentic conversation. Machines are programmed to have conversations “as if” they understood what the conversation is about. So when we talk to them, we, too, are reduced and confined to the “as if.”

— Sherry Turkle

32. “It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the ‘good old days’ when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.”

— Sherry Turkle

33. “As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves.”

— Sherry Turkle

34. “But if we don’t have experience with solitude – and this is often the case today – we start to equate loneliness and solitude. This reflects the impoverishment of our experience. If we don’t know the satisfactions of solitude, we only know the panic of loneliness.”

— Sherry Turkle

35. “We are at a moment of temptation, ready to turn to machines for companionship even as we seem pained or inconvenienced to engage with each other in settings as simple as a grocery store. We want technology to step up as we ask people to step back.”

— Sherry Turkle

36. “People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude.”

— Sherry Turkle

37. “When we let our minds wander, we set our brains free. Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive.”

— Sherry Turkle

38. “I miss those days even though I wasn’t alive.”

— Sherry Turkle

39. “But who said that a life without conflict, without being reminded of past mistakes, past pain, or one where you can avoid rubbing shoulders with troublesome people, is good? Was it the same person who said that life shouldn’t have boring bits? In this case, if technology gives us the feeling that we can communicate with total control, life’s contingencies become a problem. Just because technology can help us solve a “problem” doesn’t mean it was a problem in the first place.”

— Sherry Turkle

40. “If you’re having a conversation with someone in speech, and it’s not being tape-recorded, you can change your opinion, but on the Internet, it’s not like that. On the Internet it’s almost as if everything you say were being tape-recorded. You can’t say, “I changed my mind.”

— Sherry Turkle

41. “We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we’re with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves.”

— Sherry Turkle

42. “Teenagers would rather text than talk. They feel calls would reveal too much.”

— Sherry Turkle

43. “Mobile technology is here to stay, along with all the wonders it brings. Yet it is time for us to consider how it may get in the way of other things we hold dear – and how once we recognize this, we can take action: We can both redesign technology and change how we bring it into our lives. A.”

— Sherry Turkle

44. “What I’m seeing is a generation that says consistently, ‘I would rather text than make a telephone call.’ Why? It’s less risky. I can just get the information out there. I don’t have to get all involved; it’s more efficient. I would rather text than see somebody face to face.”

— Sherry Turkle

45. “There are moments of opportunity for families; moments they need to put technology away. These include: no phones or texting during meals. No phones or texting when parents pick up children at school – a child is looking to make eye contact with a parent!”

— Sherry Turkle

46. “Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.”

— Sherry Turkle

47. “In all of these cases, we use technology to “dial down” human contact, to titrate its nature and extent. People avoid face-to-face conversation but are comforted by being in touch with people – and sometimes with a lot of people – who are emotionally kept at bay. It’s another instance of the Goldilocks effect. It’s part of the move from conversation to mere connection.”

— Sherry Turkle

48. “To reclaim solitude we have to learn to experience a moment of boredom as a reason to turn inward, to defer going “elsewhere” at least some of the time.”

— Sherry Turkle

49. “We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us less lonely. But we are at risk because it is actually the reverse: If we are unable to be alone, we will be more lonely. And if we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. Yet.”

— Sherry Turkle

50. “Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.”

— Sherry Turkle