Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.

If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.

When you live positively it is impossible to not also be living for something greater than yourself.

The fullness or emptiness of life will be measured by the extent to which a man feels that he has an impact on the lives of others.

There is something permanent, and something extremely profound, in owning a home.

I don't want to be 60 years old standing on stage telling some jokes. I want my life to mean something.

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

I would like, before I die, to see the changes I've always fought for being made. If not, my life will have been worth nothing.

It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives.

I want to be able to say on my deathbed that I reached a few people. That would be very nice, just to be able to say that.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life.

It's a great feeling knowing you've helped someone. That's what I've spent my life doing and my practice.

To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark - in a way that you think is important and lasting - that's a life well-lived.

The point of life is to transcend the smallness of the finite self by identifying with things that last.

What good is my parents' wealth and education and upbringing if I'm not contributing to the world?

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Somehow economic growth and prosperity, political democracy and freedom are not enough—that we lack at some core level of meaning in our individual lives and meaning collectively, that sense that our lives are part of some greater effort, that we are connected to one another, that community means that we have a place where we belong no matter who we are.

If life only has the meaning you bring to it, we have the opportunity to bring rich meaning to our lives by the service we do for others.

It's really not about me. At the end of the day, God willing, I'll have another 40 or 50 years on this planet, and what I'm saying to myself is, 'What do I want to leave here?'

I want to be remembered for doing something bigger than myself and making a positive impact on the world. I want to make my life worth something and to die a legend and to make my family proud.

I think about legacy, of course. I don't want to make my life nothing. I want to know that I died and made a massive difference. I want to know that my life purpose was bigger than myself, and I want to pay forward because the amount of people that have helped me... the list of people that have contributed to where I am now is insane.

At the end of my life, I just want to make sure I made a big difference in this world.

I ain't no saint, but I've tried never to do anything that would hurt my family or offend God...I figure all any kid needs is hope and the feeling he or she belongs. If I could do or say anything that would give some kid that feeling, I would believe I had contributed something to the world.