“Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness. ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier.”

“The names we use to describe personality traits - such as extrovert, high achiever, or paranoid - refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attantion. At the same party, the extrovert will seek out and enjoy interactions with others, the high achiever will look for useful business conacts, and the paranoid will be on guard for signs of danger he must avoid. Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life eihther rich or miserable.”

“We are always getting to live, as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, but never living. Or as poor Frances learned in the children's story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never brad and jam today.”

“Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there”

“But religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent answers.”

“...they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes. ...If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders.”

“The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments.”