Daniel Gilbert

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

— Daniel Gilbert

Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy.

— Daniel Gilbert

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.

— Daniel Gilbert

Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants.

— Daniel Gilbert

“Best offense is the one that fails to trigger the best defense.”

— Daniel Gilbert

If you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people.

— Daniel Gilbert

“The reality of the moment is so palpable and powerful that it holds imagination in a tight orbit from which it never…

— Daniel Gilbert

Variety improves the things that we do too often, but it rules the things that we don't do often enough.

— Daniel Gilbert

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

To learn from experience, we must remember it, and, for a variety of reasons, memory is a faithless friend.

— Daniel Gilbert

Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for…

— Daniel Gilbert

We humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.

— Daniel Gilbert

The secret of happiness is variety, but the secret of variety, like the secret of all spices, is knowing when to use…

— Daniel Gilbert

The price we pay for our irresponsible explanatory urge is that we often spoil our most pleasant experiences by making good sense…

— Daniel Gilbert

I think good things are happening to me and will continue. I am not optimistic about the rest of the species, but…

— Daniel Gilbert

Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It's a system that's supposed to move…

— Daniel Gilbert

If I wanted to know what a certain future would feel like to me, I would find someone who is already living…

— Daniel Gilbert

Few of us can accurately gauge how we will feel tomorrow or next week. That's why when you go to the supermarket…

— Daniel Gilbert

I actually think the same things do make most people happy. The differences are extremely small, and around the margins. You like…

— Daniel Gilbert

“Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to…

— Daniel Gilbert

Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know—that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was…

— Daniel Gilbert

In short, we derive support for our preferred conclusions by listening to the words that we put in the mouths of people…

— Daniel Gilbert

“We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing…

— Daniel Gilbert

Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the…

— Daniel Gilbert

We all have direct experience with things that do or don't make us happy, we all have friends, therapists, cabdrivers, and talk-show…

— Daniel Gilbert

Because your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot…

— Daniel Gilbert

“Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is…

— Daniel Gilbert

“We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their…

— Daniel Gilbert

“The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do…

— Daniel Gilbert

When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a…

— Daniel Gilbert

“Consider this scenario. You own shares in Company A. During the past year you considered switching to stock in Company B but…

— Daniel Gilbert

Daniel Levitin has more insights per page than any other neuroscientist I know. The organized Mind is smart, important, and, as always,…

— Daniel Gilbert

We don't believe other people's experiences can tell us all that much about our own. I think this is an illusion of…

— Daniel Gilbert

The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of…

— Daniel Gilbert

The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.

— Daniel Gilbert

People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.

— Daniel Gilbert

The truth is, bad things don't affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That's true of good things, too. We…

— Daniel Gilbert

The word happiness is used to indicate at least three related things, which we might roughly call emotional happiness, moral happiness, and…

— Daniel Gilbert

The data says that with the poor, a little money can buy a lot of happiness. If you're rich, a lot of…

— Daniel Gilbert

“Each of us is trapped in a place, a time and a circumstance and our attempt to use our mind to transcend…

— Daniel Gilbert