Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage. — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
Because your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot would see… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share 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… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
No one likes to be criticized, of course, but if the things we successfully strive for do not make our future selves happy, or… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
“As students of the silver screen recall, Bogart's admonition about future regret led Bergman to board the plane and fly away with her husband.… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
Reality' is a movie generated by our brains. Because we don't realize this, we are far too confident that the stuff appearing in the… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
“Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy.… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
The truth is, bad things don't affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That's true of good things, too. We adapt very… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants. — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share 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… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
“The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what they eye sees, but in… — Daniel Gilbert Copy Share Image
