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

More quotes by 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.
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Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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We humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.
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Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants.
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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.
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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.
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People are drastically overconfident about their judgments of others.
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Humans react to danger when it is immediate, immoral, visible... Global warming does not press any of those buttons.
Daniel Gilbert
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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.
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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.
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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
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In short, if we adhere to the standard of perfection in all our endeavors, we are left with nothing but mathematics and the White Album.
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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.
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The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight.
Daniel Gilbert
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Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.
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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