Nicholas A. Christakis Fundamentals Quotations

It is the spread of the good things that vindicates the whole reason we live our lives in networks. If I was always violent to you or gave you germs, you would cut the ties to me and the network would disintegrate. In a deep and fundamental way, networks are connected to goodness, and goodness is required for networks to emerge and spread.

Social media and the Internet haven't changed our capacity for social interaction any more than the Internet has changed our ability to be in love or our basic propensity to violence, because those are such fundamental human attributes.

There are very fundamental reasons we live our lives in social networks, and if we really understood the role they're playing in our society, we would take better care of social networks and find ways to take advantage of their power to improve our society.