Vivek Murthy

“Touch is incredibly important as part of the human experience. Our ancestors relied on human touch to form and strengthen bonds with each other. Touch can accelerate a feeling of connection and releases hormones in our body that engender trust and build connection.”

“When it comes to our relationship with loneliness, specifically, it's important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction.”

“I think sometimes in the focus on deep friendships and on romantic relationships, we can lose sight of how important the small connections we make are with strangers and with people that we may encounter for just a few seconds or a few minutes, whether it's the barista at our coffee shop or the stranger next to us on the subway.”

“I can learn a lot from reading briefing books and talking to experts, but that pales in comparison to what I can learn from going out and talking to people about what they're actually experiencing and hearing about their ideas.”

“So my weakness is sweets. I like bread pudding and cheesecake in particular.”

“When you're in a pocket with low vaccination rates, that's when you find yourself at greater risk of getting measles.”

“If we approach other people understanding our own value, being confident in who we are, being centered and grounded, it's actually easier for us to connect with them because we can listen more deeply and we can express ourselves more authentically without fear of being judged or not being enough.”

“We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.”

“The amount of time it takes to recover from the coronavirus differs widely. Some people will get the virus and have no symptoms at all, other people will have mild symptoms like a low-grade fever or a mild cough and others will get really ill and will need to be hospitalized.”

“It's easy to say that health is all about personal responsibility and we should all make good decisions for ourselves, but the reality is far more complicated. We know that in the case of motor vehicle accidents, how other people drive makes a difference in how safe you are.”

“What defines loneliness is our internal comfort level.”

“Not all social interaction is uplifting.”

“Be very disciplined about dedicating some time - even if it is five minutes a day - to calling or talking to someone you love. That kind of consistency, even if it is just five minutes a day, helps to remind us that we have a well of connection in our lives.”

“We live in a society where individual effort and progress is valued, and that's absolutely correct and is as it should be. But we also are interdependent creatures. We can't succeed solely on our own.”

“I have experienced loneliness at many, many points in my life and felt this profound sense of shame about it - all the years when I was a child that I struggled with feeling lonely when I was scared to go to school and petrified of walking into the elementary school cafeteria because I was worried I wouldn't have anyone to sit with.”

“My father grew up quite poor actually in a small farming village in South India. His grandfather was a farmer, his father was a farmer, and he was expected to be a farmer as well - his life took a different path.”

“I do not intend to use the Surgeon General's Office as a bully pulpit for gun control.”

“We forget some of the oldest medicines we have are love and compassion, and they can be deployed by everyone.”

“Unlike many other illnesses, what I find profoundly empowering about addressing loneliness is that the ultimate solution to loneliness lies in each of us. We can be the medicine that each other needs. We can be the solution other people crave. We are all doctors and we are all healers.”

“We can't underestimate the power that we have as individuals to provide the support that people need to provide that transition from a place of pain to a place of possibility.”