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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Daniel Gilbert
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: November 5
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
the United States of America
Dan Gilbert
Daniel Todd Gilbert
Remember
Prefer
Important
Hour
Would
Memory
Importance
Memories
Forever
Hours
Ecstasy
Experience
Torture

More quotes by Daniel Gilbert

Image
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
Image
Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
Variety improves the things that we do too often, but it rules the things that we don't do often enough.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
If I wanted to know what a certain future would feel like to me, I would find someone who is already living that future. If I wonder what it's like to become a lawyer or marry a busy executive or eat at a particular restaurant, my best bet is to find people who have actually done these things and see how happy they are.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
Alas, we think of ourselves as unique entities-minds unlike any others-and thus we often reject the lessons that the emotional experience of others has to teach us.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Humans react to danger when it is immediate, immoral, visible... Global warming does not press any of those buttons.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy
Daniel Gilbert
Image
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
Image
We humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.
Daniel Gilbert
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.
Daniel Gilbert