Daniel Gilbert

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

“The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what they eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.”

“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 fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts!”

“Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy.”

“The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor's witless jokes, read books like this one when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become.”

“What’s so curious about human beings is that we can look deeply into the future, foresee disaster, and still do nothing in the present to stop it. The majority of people on this planet, they’re overwhelmed with concerns about their immediate well being.”

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

“If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.”

“The average newspaper boy in Pittsburgh knows more about the universe than did Galileo, Aristotle, Leonardo, or any of those other guys who were so smart they only needed one name.”

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

“Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.”

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

“Each of us is trapped in a place, a time and a circumstance and our attempt to use our mind to transcend those boundaries are more often than not ineffective.”

“Most of us appear to believe that we are more athletic, intelligent, organized, ethical, logical, interesting, open-minded, and healthy-not to mention more attractive-than the average person.”

“The belief-transmission network of which we are a part cannot operate without a continuously replenished supply of people to do the transmitting, thus the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes a part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it.”

“We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.”

“Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.”

“Arthritic toothless people who love orgasms are more likely to reproduce than are limber, toothy people who do not.”

“Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.”

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

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.”