Best quotes by Martin Seligman on Positive

Checkout quotes by Martin Seligman on Positive

• ‟ Positive thinking is the notion that if you think good thoughts, things will work out well. Optimism is the feeling of thinking things will be well and be hopeful.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ P is positive emotion, E is engagement, R is relationships, M is meaning and A is accomplishment. Those are the five elements of what free people chose to do. Pretty much everything else is in service of one of or more of these goals. That's the human dashboard.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ I think you can be depressed and flourish, I think you can have cancer and flourish, I think you can be divorced and flourish. When we believed that happiness was only smiling and good mood, that wasn't very good for people like me, people in the lower half of positive affectivity.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical 'experience machine' that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire. Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want: we want to be entitled to our positive feelings.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ You can have meaning, accomplishment, engagement and good relationships, even if you are dull on the positive affect side.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ Positive psychology is not remotely intended to replace therapy or pharmacology. So when depressed, anxious or in panic or post-traumatic stress disorder, I am all for therapies that will work. Positive psychology is another arrow in the quiver of public policy and psychology through which we can raise wellbeing above zero.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ I think we pursue positive relationships whether or not they bring us engagement or happiness.

  - Martin Seligman
  

• ‟ I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at any given moment is billiard balls whose past determines our future course. That doesn't take into account that we are forever generating internal representations of positive futures and choosing among them.

  - Martin Seligman