Martin Seligman Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Martin Seligman

  Happiness, Good Life, Signatures

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.20, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  129 Copy quote

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

  Martin Seligman

  Dream, Goal, Optimism

  32 Copy quote

• The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.

  Martin Seligman

  Things In Life, Psychology, Quality

  124 Copy quote

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

  Martin Seligman

  Kindness, Exercise, Increase

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Flourish”, p.33, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  118 Copy quote

• Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.

  Martin Seligman

  Weather, Tragedy, Pessimist

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.312, Vintage

  148 Copy quote

• Well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment.

  Martin Seligman

  Accomplishment, Good Relationship, Feel Good

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Flourish”, p.37, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  89 Copy quote

• Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism.

  Martin Seligman

  Skills, Optimism, Deals

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.39, Vintage

  112 Copy quote

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

  Martin Seligman

  Mean, Rewards, Littles

  "11 Little Victories To Celebrate, Just Because" By Kate Bratskeir, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 16, 2013.

  102 Copy quote

• Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals choose the way they think.

  Martin Seligman

  Spiritual, Thinking, Years

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.30, Vintage

  115 Copy quote

• Psychology should be just as concerned with building strength as with repairing damage

  Martin Seligman

  Motivation, Inspiration, Psychology

  113 Copy quote

• The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning, and if God comes at the end, such a life is sacred.

  Martin Seligman

  Meaningful, Good Life, Signatures

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.224, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  98 Copy quote

• Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.

  Martin Seligman

  Fighting, Optimism, Achievement

  77 Copy quote

• Curing the negatives does not produce the positives.

  Martin Seligman

  Doe, Produce

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.10, Vintage

  48 Copy quote

• When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity.

  Martin Seligman

  Psychology, Authenticity, Virtue

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.17, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  91 Copy quote

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

  Martin Seligman

  Challenges, Way, Flow

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Flourish”, p.37, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  64 Copy quote

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

  Martin Seligman

  Meaningful, Good Life, Life Is

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.20, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  84 Copy quote

• We're not prisoners of the past.

  Martin Seligman

  Past, Prisoner

  18 Copy quote

• Reaching beyond where you are is really important.

  Martin Seligman

  Important, Positive Psychology, Reaching

  36 Copy quote

• So Positive Psychology takes seriously the bright hope that if you find yourself stuck in the parking lot of life, with few and only ephemeral pleasures, with minimal gratifications, and without meaning, there is a road out. This road takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose

  Martin Seligman

  Country, Psychology, Finding Yourself

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.10, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  98 Copy quote

• The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case.

  Martin Seligman

  Believe, Thinking, Opposites

  97 Copy quote

• Optimism is invaluable for the meaningful life. With a firm belief in a positive future, you can throw yourself into the service of that which is larger than you are.

  Martin Seligman

  Meaningful, Optimism, Belief

  Martin E.P. Seligman (2011). “Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life”, p.11, Vintage

  22 Copy quote

• To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

  Martin Seligman

  Justice, Humanity, Six

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.121, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• There is one aspect of happiness that's been well studied, and it's the notion of flow. Ask yourselves, when for you does time stop? When are you truly at home, wanting to be no place else?

  Martin Seligman

  Home, Doe, Flow

  18 Copy quote

• We deprive our children, our charges, of persistence. What I am trying to say is that we need to fail, children need to fail, we need to feel sad, anxious and anguished. If we impulsively protect ourselves and our children, as the feel-good movement suggests, we deprive them of learning-persistence skills.

  Martin Seligman

  Children, Persistence, Skills

  84 Copy quote

• 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 become so habitual we don't even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don't just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES.

  Martin Seligman

  Adversity, Thinking, Focus

  66 Copy quote

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