Polly Toynbee Quotes

Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.

Happiness quantification sounds a bit wishy-washy, sure, and through a series of carefully administered surveys across the globe, economists and psychologists have certainly confronted a fair number of sticky issues around how to measure, and even define, happiness.

Life satisfaction essentially measures cheerful moods, so it is not entitled to a central place in any theory that aims to be more than a happiology.

The word 'happiness' always bothered me, partly because it was scientifically unwieldy and meant a lot of different things to different people, and also because it's subjective.

I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness.

It isn’t happiness I am concerned with but experience.

Education, and I regret to say this as an educator, but there's no indication that education has a direct effect on happiness.

There's often a discussion about, 'Well, how do we know what happiness is? Is it real?' I've always argued that all of us know that there's a huge difference between how we feel when we feel happy and when we don't feel happy.

There is a huge wave of interest in happiness among researchers. There is a lot of happiness coaching. Everybody would like to make people happier.

Happiness is not the same as life satisfaction, while neither are identical to what we might call flourishing.

Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP.

Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

There is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are.

It must be born in mind that one does not see directly - as is the case in the exploration of the surface of the brain - where the electrodes are attacking.

The concept of happiness has to be reorganised.

Happiness is a state of mind, you know. I don't think you are permanently happy. One is happy about certain things and not so happy about others.

I am emotional, but that's not a negative.

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.

Good thinking brings good feeling and good feeling brings good thinking.

A sense of contentment is a key factor for attaining happiness

Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel

If by happiness you mean instead an ordinary contentment, then yes - I'm fairly contented. Not satisfied - contented.

By activating an expansive, tolerant, and creative mindset, positive feelings maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits that will accrue.