Clay Shirky Social Quotations

Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.

Facebook is not very good at dealing with named groups; they're not very good at saying, 'We've got this book club and I'm a member and you're not.' But membership is one of the precursors to a lot of social action.

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.

The difference between what all the people can do individually and the global consumption of nonrenewable resources is huge. The tension is... what will it take to get people to act in concert? There isn't any additive solution to the problem. It will be both governmental and social because that's the scale of the problem.