“The more television people watch, the more they overestimate the affluence of other people. And the lower they rate their own relative income. The result is that they are less happy.”

“It is actually a rather sorry tale. In the late nineteenth century most English economists thought that economics was about happiness. They thought of a persons happiness as in principle measurable, like temperature, and they thought we could compare one persons happiness with anothers. They also assumed that extra income brought less and less extra happiness as a person got richer.”

“External effects are everywhere. Almost every major transaction we make affects other people who are not a party to the transaction. When someone buys a Lexus, he sets a new standard for the street. When a firm advertises a Barbie doll, it creates a want that was not there before.”

“We need a revolution in academia, with every social science attempting tounderstand the causes of happiness.”

“No society can work unless its members feel responsibilities as well as rights.”

“Procrastination is a way for us to be satisfied with second-rate results; we can always tell ourselves we'd have done a better job if only we had more time...If you're good at rationalizing, you can keep yourself feeling rather satisfied this way, but it's a cheap happy. You're whittling your expectations of yourself down lower and lower.”

“When people can afford necessities in life, an increase in income dones not result in a significantly happier life.”