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Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.

Daniel Gilbert

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Daniel Gilbert
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: November 5
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
the United States of America
Dan Gilbert
Daniel Todd Gilbert
Human
Humans
Think
Thinking
Mistakenly
Finished
Beings
Works
Progress

More quotes by Daniel Gilbert

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If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.
Daniel Gilbert
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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
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The good news is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will. The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you expect.
Daniel Gilbert
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I actually think the same things do make most people happy. The differences are extremely small, and around the margins. You like peach ice cream I like strawberry ice cream. Both of us like ice cream much better than a smack on the head with two-by-four.
Daniel Gilbert
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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
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Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.
Daniel Gilbert
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People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.
Daniel Gilbert
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Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It's a system that's supposed to move back and forth, between happy and unhappy. That's how the system guides you through the world.
Daniel Gilbert
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Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know—that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.
Daniel Gilbert
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If you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people.
Daniel Gilbert
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To learn from experience, we must remember it, and, for a variety of reasons, memory is a faithless friend.
Daniel Gilbert
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Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants.
Daniel Gilbert
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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
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Part of us believes the new car is better because it lasts longer. But, in fact, that's the worst thing about the new car. It will stay around to disappoint you, whereas a trip to Europe is over. It evaporates. It has the good sense to go away, and you are left with nothing but a wonderful memory.
Daniel Gilbert
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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
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The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.
Daniel Gilbert
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We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.
Daniel Gilbert
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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
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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
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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