Daniel Gilbert Quotes

#1. The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of our awareness.

Daniel Gilbert

#2. Reality' is a movie generated by our brains. Because we don't realize this, we are far too confident that the stuff appearing in the movie is actually 'out there' in the world when, in fact, it's not.

Daniel Gilbert

#3. Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know - that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.

Daniel Gilbert

#4. I have everything that I could possibly want in life, from a gorgeous granddaughter and a wonderful wife, brilliant students, the best job anyone could hope for, and about half of my hair. Not the half I would have kept, but no one consulted me.

Daniel Gilbert

#5. People are happiest when they're trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach.

Daniel Gilbert

#6. Everyone who has observed human behavior for more than thirty continuous seconds seems to have noticed that people are strongly, perhaps even primarily, perhaps even single-mindedly, motivated to feel happy.

Daniel Gilbert

#7. Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It's a system that's supposed to move back and forth, between happy and unhappy. That's how the system guides you through the world.

Daniel Gilbert

#8. Variety improves the things that we do too often, but it rules the things that we don't do often enough.

Daniel Gilbert

#9. Humans react to danger when it is immediate, immoral, visible ... Global warming does not press any of those buttons.

Daniel Gilbert

#10. The truth is, bad things don't affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That's true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.

Daniel Gilbert

#11. Alas, we think of ourselves as unique entities-minds unlike any others-and thus we often reject the lessons that the emotional experience of others has to teach us.

Daniel Gilbert

#12. Daniel Levitin has more insights per page than any other neuroscientist I know. The organized Mind is smart, important, and, as always, exquisitely written.

Daniel Gilbert

#13. Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist's hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed

Daniel Gilbert

#14. The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight.

Daniel Gilbert

#15. We humans can look deep into future and predict what will happen, but then turn around and do nothing about it.

Daniel Gilbert

#16. Lower your cortisol level. The happiest people have the lowest level of cortisol, a stress hormone that raises blood pressure and weakens the immune system. Cut the stress-more yoga, less road rage-and you'll cut your cortisol production.

Daniel Gilbert

#17. Happiness refers to feelings, virtue refers to actions, and those actions can cause those feelings. But not necessarily and not exclusively.

Daniel Gilbert

#18. Which is more important - experience or memory of experience? If you could have an hour of ecstasy that you'd forever remember as torture, or an hour of torture that you'd forever remember as ecstasy, which would you prefer?

Daniel Gilbert

#19. Part of us believes the new car is better because it lasts longer. But, in fact, that's the worst thing about the new car. It will stay around to disappoint you, whereas a trip to Europe is over. It evaporates. It has the good sense to go away, and you are left with nothing but a wonderful memory.

Daniel Gilbert

#20. To learn from experience, we must remember it, and, for a variety of reasons, memory is a faithless friend.

Daniel Gilbert

#21. To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion.

Daniel Gilbert

#22. The good news is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will. The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you expect.

Daniel Gilbert

#23. There are many good things about getting older, but no one knows what they are.

Daniel Gilbert

#24. The secret of happiness is variety, but the secret of variety, like the secret of all spices, is knowing when to use it.

Daniel Gilbert

#25. I think good things are happening to me and will continue. I am not optimistic about the rest of the species, but I'm so blessed, it's almost scary. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have a wildly sunny disposition. I love to laugh.

Daniel Gilbert

#26. Few of us can accurately gauge how we will feel tomorrow or next week. That's why when you go to the supermarket on an empty stomach, you'll buy too much, and if you shop after a big meal, you'll buy too little.

Daniel Gilbert

#27. We don't believe other people's experiences can tell us all that much about our own. I think this is an illusion of uniqueness.

Daniel Gilbert

#28. The data says that with the poor, a little money can buy a lot of happiness. If you're rich, a lot of money can buy you a little more happiness. But in both cases, money does it.

Daniel Gilbert

#29. Is happiness really the only thing we should be aiming for?

Daniel Gilbert

#30. The price we pay for our irresponsible explanatory urge is that we often spoil our most pleasant experiences by making good sense of them.

Daniel Gilbert

#31. People are drastically overconfident about their judgments of others.

Daniel Gilbert

#32. Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed ...

Daniel Gilbert

#33. The word happiness is used to indicate at least three related things, which we might roughly call emotional happiness, moral happiness, and judgmental happiness.

Daniel Gilbert

#34. I actually think the same things do make most people happy. The differences are extremely small, and around the margins. You like peach ice cream; I like strawberry ice cream. Both of us like ice cream much better than a smack on the head with two-by-four.

Daniel Gilbert