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

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
Aiming
Happiness
Thing
Really

More quotes by Daniel Gilbert

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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants.
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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.
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To learn from experience, we must remember it, and, for a variety of reasons, memory is a faithless friend.
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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.
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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.
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Humans react to danger when it is immediate, immoral, visible... Global warming does not press any of those buttons.
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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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People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.
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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
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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.
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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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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.
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