Martin Seligman

I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete.

— Martin Seligman

We're not prisoners of the past.

— Martin Seligman

Reaching beyond where you are is really important.

— Martin Seligman

I don't mind being wrong, and I don't mind changing my mind.

— Martin Seligman

Pleasure is the least consequential... engagement and meaning are much more important.

— Martin Seligman

Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair...

— Martin Seligman

When we take time to notice the things that go right - it means we're getting a lot of little rewards throughout…

— Martin Seligman

Perhaps the single most robust fact across many surveys is that married people are happier than anyone else.

— Martin Seligman

Just as the good life is something beyond the pleasant life, the meaningful life is beyond the good life.

— Martin Seligman

Optimism generates hope...hope releases dreams...dreams set goals...enthusiasm follows

— Martin Seligman

Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.

— Martin Seligman

The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future.

— Martin Seligman

If the point of the inner-child movement is to cure adult problems, it doesn't work. Reliving childhood traumas gives you a nice…

— Martin Seligman

One of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that…

— Martin Seligman

Not only do happy people endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened, but positive emotions undo negative…

— Martin Seligman

If you were an optimistic teen, then you'll be an optimist at 80. People's reactions to bad events are highly stable over…

— Martin Seligman

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

One of my signature strengths is the love of learning, and by teaching, I have built it into the fabric of my…

— Martin Seligman

Positive thinking is the notion that if you think good thoughts, things will work out well. Optimism is the feeling of thinking…

— Martin Seligman

By activating an expansive, tolerant, and creative mindset, positive feelings maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits that will accrue.

— Martin Seligman

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

I have spent most of my life working with mental illness. I have been president of the world's largest association of mental-illness…

— Martin Seligman

To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. Critics in science are not…

— Martin Seligman

I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally…

— Martin Seligman

The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings…

— Martin Seligman

I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete. A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed,…

— Martin Seligman

One of the things psychologists used to say was that if you are depressed, anxious or angry, you couldn't be happy. Those…

— Martin Seligman

In human history, we are going from knowledge to omniscience, from potence to omnipotence, from ethics and religion to righteousness. So, in…

— Martin Seligman

The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a right of all Americans, as well as on the…

— Martin Seligman

Flow occurs in your life when your highest skills are matched to challenges that quite exactly meet them.

— Martin Seligman

We have children to pursue other elements of well-being. We want meaning in life. We want relationships.

— Martin Seligman

Creativity is bound up in our ability to find new ways around old problems.

— Martin Seligman

You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way.

— Martin Seligman

The Fundamentalist Religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.

— Martin Seligman

I think we pursue positive relationships whether or not they bring us engagement or happiness.

— Martin Seligman

You can have meaning, accomplishment, engagement and good relationships, even if you are dull on the positive affect side.

— Martin Seligman

The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.

— Martin Seligman

If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago.

— Martin Seligman

It is the combination of reasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat that leads to success.

— Martin Seligman

Positive, optimistic sales people sell more than pessimistic sales people.

— Martin Seligman