“ Currently spirituality is at an ebb in the more advanced technological societies. This in part because memes that validate spiritual order tend to lose their credibility with time, and need to be reca… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they inevitably face an increasingly nagging question: Is this all there is? Childhood can be painful,… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings."--(psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls "flow") Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ At Linus Pauling’s sixtieth birthday celebration, a student asked him, Dr. Pauling, how does one go about having good ideas? He replied, You have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ The requirements of life still dictate that we spend our time in a way that is not that different from the African baboons. Give and take a few hours, most people sleep one-third of the day, and use t… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ And, in fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources do not increase happiness. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives . . . most of the things that are interesting important and human are the results of creativity . . . when we are involved in it we feel that… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ By nature, however, we are born ignorant. Therefore should we not try to learn? Some people produce more than the usual amount of androgens and therefore become excessively aggressive. Does that mean… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ Few would argue that a simpler consciousness, no matter how harmonious, is preferable to a more complex one. While we might admire the serenity of the lion in repose, the tribesman’s untroubled accept… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ To keep up interest in a subject, a teenager has to enjoy working in it. If the teacher makes the task of learning excessively difficult, the student will feel too frustrated and anxious to really get… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ In other words, if Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy showed more than their fair share of pathology it was due less to the requirements of their creative work than to the personal sufferings caused by the unhea… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ All our contemporaries...had some big ideology to live for. Everybody thought he had to either fight in Spain or die for something else, and most of us had to be in prison for one reason or another. A… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ A large majority of our respondents were inspired by a tension in their domain that became obvious when looked at from the perspective of another domain. Even though they do not think of themselves as… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ Creative people are constantly surprised. They don’t assume that they understand what is happening around them, and they don’t assume that anybody else does either. They question the obvious—not out o… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ After curiosity, this quality of concentrated attention is what creative individuals mention most often as having set them apart in college from their peers. Without this quality, they could not have… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ Neither parents nor schools are very effective at teaching the young to find pleasure in the right things. Adults, themselves often deluded by infatuation with fatuous models, conspire in the deceptio… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ Try to be surprised by something every day. It could be something you see, hear, or read about. Stop to look at the unusual car parked at the curb, taste the new item on the cafeteria menu, actually l… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“ But shortcuts are dangerous we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
