Martin Seligman Quotes

I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read - which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I'm told my books are on required reading lists.

A spirit, breathing the language of independence, is natural to Englishmen, few of whom are disposed to brook compulsion, or submit to the dictates of others, when not softened by reason, or tempered with kindness.

I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death.

I am not unconscious of the persuasive power exerted by these considerations to drag men along in the current; but I am not at liberty to travel that road.

I find when somebody says to me, 'I'm going to motivate you,' more often than not, they're not going to get me.

I have a hard time doing anything someone else tells me to do! I've always been driven to follow my own path and not be pushed down another lane because some executive thought I could be more commercially successful or whatever.

There is no one looking out for us. We are all alone.

Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced.

It's a poor kind of man that won't fight for his own freedom.

In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.

The moment I feel pressure to read a book, I instinctively rebel against it - which is probably one reason I didn't last long in college.

It's a simple quality of human nature that people prefer to choose to do things rather than be ordered to do them. In fact, as soon as you tell me I have to do something - give a speech, attend a banquet, go to Cannes - I immediately start looking for ways to avoid doing it.

I care about people, but if they try to control me, I don't care about them.

You can't push and force people to do what they don't want to do.

No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.

There is nothing more precious to a man than his will; there is nothing which he relinquishes with so much reluctance.

I hear them saying, "You'll never change things, and no matter what you do it's still the same thing." But it's not the world that I am changing. I do this so this world will know that it will not change me.

Well, you have the right to make a sacrifice of yourself, but I'll be damned if I'll let you sacrifice me!

I didn't start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn't become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run-simply because I wanted to. I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.

You can do right or you can do what you are told. And the prize of the victory will belong to the bold.

I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way/ And say I've been getting along/ For long before you came into the play.

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered !My life is my own.

Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.

The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

Self-determination has to mean that the leader is your individual gut, and heart, and mind or we're talking about power, again, and its rather well-known impurities. Who is really going to care whether you live or die and who is going to know the most intimate motivation for your laughter and your tears is the only person to be trusted to speak for you and to decide what you will or will not do.