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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.

From Martin Seligman

We have children to pursue other elements of well-being. We want meaning in life. We want relationships.

From 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.

From Martin Seligman

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

From Martin Seligman

I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral.

From Martin Seligman

The fundamentalist religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.

From Martin Seligman

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.

From Martin Seligman

There are physical characteristics which are inherited. These include things like good looks, high intelligence, physical coordination. These attributes contribute to success in life, and success in life is a determinant of optimism.

From Martin Seligman

I have never worked on interrogation; I have never seen an interrogation, and I have only a passing knowledge of the literature on interrogation. With that qualification, my opinion is that the point of interrogation is to get at the truth, not to get at what the interrogator wants to hear.

From Martin Seligman

It used to be that whenever I introduced myself to people and told them I was a psychologist, they would shrink away from me. Because, quite rightly, the impression the American public has of psychologists is, 'You want to know what's wrong with me.'

From Martin Seligman

Martin Seligman

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