The Fundamentalist Religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones. — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
What determines how much time and deliberate practice a child is willing to devote to achievement? Nothing less than her character. — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future. — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith,… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
There is one aspect of happiness that's been well studied, and it's the notion of flow. Ask yourselves, when for you does… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
When we take time to notice the things that go right - it means we're getting a lot of little rewards throughout… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
Optimistic people generally feel that good things will last a long time and will have a beneficial effect on everything they do.… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors. — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
Optimism is invaluable for the meaningful life. With a firm belief in a positive future, you can throw yourself into the service… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
It used to be that whenever I introduced myself to people and told them I was a psychologist, they would shrink away from me.… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
I have never worked on interrogation; I have never seen an interrogation, and I have only a passing knowledge of the literature on interrogation.… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
It's a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
One of the things psychologists used to say was that if you are depressed, anxious or angry, you couldn't be happy. Those were at… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
It is the combination of reasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat that leads to success. — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
Psychology is much bigger than just medicine, or fixing unhealthy things. It's about education, work, marriage - it's even about sports. What I want… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
What humans want is not just happiness. They want justice; they want meaning. — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
I have spent most of my life working with mental illness. I have been president of the world's largest association of mental-illness workers, and… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair... — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
We deprive our children, our charges, of persistence. What I am trying to say is that we need to fail, children need to fail,… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image
One of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that the 'I'… — Martin Seligman Copy Share Image