"Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can
dream it, you can make it so."
- Belva Davis
A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
Good laws have their origins in bad morals.
- Ambrosius Macrobius
It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
- More quotations on: [Religion]
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
