Daniel Gilbert Quotes - Page 2

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• Lower your cortisol level. The happiest people have the lowest level of cortisol, a stress hormone that raises blood pressure and weakens the immune system. Cut the stress-more yoga, less road rage-and you'll cut your cortisol production.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Happiness, Stress, Yoga

  8 Copy quote

• Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Running, Rude, Ignorant

  "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?". Book by John Brockman (p. 43), 2007.

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• We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show hosts who tell us about things that will or won't make us happy, and yet, despite all this practice and all this coaching, our search for happiness often culminates in a stinky mess. We expect the next car, the next house, or the next promotion to make us happy even though the last ones didn't and even though others keep telling us that the next ones won't.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Happiness, Practice, Car

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.196, Vintage

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• The human brain is the only object in the known universe that can predict its own future and tell its on fortune. The fact that we can make disastrous decisions even as we foresee their consequences is the great, unsolved mystery of human behavior. When you hold your fate in your hands, why would you ever make a fist?

  Daniel Gilbert

  Fate, Hands, Decision

  14 Copy quote

• Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Impact

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.23, Vintage

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• The word happiness is used to indicate at least three related things, which we might roughly call emotional happiness, moral happiness, and judgmental happiness.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Happiness, Emotional, Three

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.31, Vintage

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• The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Judging, Choices, Causes

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.203, Vintage

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• My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Offering, Problem, Should

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.223, Vintage

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• Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Leaving, Brain, Bed

  "If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming" by Daniel Gilbert, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 7, 2007.

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• I think good things are happening to me and will continue. I am not optimistic about the rest of the species, but I'm so blessed, it's almost scary. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have a wildly sunny disposition. I love to laugh.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Sorry, Blessed, Optimistic

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• Few of us can accurately gauge how we will feel tomorrow or next week. That's why when you go to the supermarket on an empty stomach, you'll buy too much, and if you shop after a big meal, you'll buy too little.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Next Week, Meals, Gauges

  13 Copy quote

• Which is more important - experience or memory of experience? If you could have an hour of ecstasy that you'd forever remember as torture, or an hour of torture that you'd forever remember as ecstasy, which would you prefer?

  Daniel Gilbert

  Memories, Forever, Important

  12 Copy quote

• Daniel Levitin has more insights per page than any other neuroscientist I know. The organized Mind is smart, important, and, as always, exquisitely written.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Smart, Organized Mind, Important

  8 Copy quote

• I have everything that I could possibly want in life, from a gorgeous granddaughter and a wonderful wife, brilliant students, the best job anyone could hope for, and about half of my hair. Not the half I would have kept, but no one consulted me.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Jobs, Hair, Best Job

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• In short, we derive support for our preferred conclusions by listening to the words that we put in the mouths of people who have already been preselected for their willingness to say what we want to hear.

  Daniel Gilbert

  People, Support, Listening

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, Vintage

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• Variety improves the things that we do too often, but it rules the things that we don't do often enough.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Enough, Variety

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• Is happiness really the only thing we should be aiming for?

  Daniel Gilbert

  Should

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• We humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Environmental, Looks, Turns

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• The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of our awareness.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Eye, Doors, Brain

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, Vintage

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• When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage

  Daniel Gilbert

  Yield, Making Love, Hearing

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, Vintage

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• We don't believe other people's experiences can tell us all that much about our own. I think this is an illusion of uniqueness.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Believe, Thinking, People

  "The truth about happiness may surprise you" by David Martin, edition.cnn.com. November 20, 2006.

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• Everyone who has observed human behavior for more than thirty continuous seconds seems to have noticed that people are strongly, perhaps even primarily, perhaps even single-mindedly, motivated to feel happy.

  Daniel Gilbert

  People, Behavior, Motivated

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.33, Vintage

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• No one likes to be criticized, of course, but if the things we successfully strive for do not make our future selves happy, or if the things we unsuccessfully avoid do, then it seems reasonable (if somewhat ungracious) for them to cast a disparaging glance backward and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Thinking, Self, Likes

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.14, Vintage

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• Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts!

  Daniel Gilbert

  Football, Cheer, Fun

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.22, Vintage

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• The data says that with the poor, a little money can buy a lot of happiness. If you're rich, a lot of money can buy you a little more happiness. But in both cases, money does it.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Data, Doe, Littles

  7 Copy quote

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