Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

You must accept the fact that there is no help but self-help. I cannot tell you how to gain freedom since freedom exists within you.

It's such a liberating feeling to go out of your comfort zone, to be independent and strike out on my own without my parents.

Learning to live with not meeting other people's expectations has been extremely freeing and is the only gift I wish to pass on to any future offspring.

Freedom is the supreme good; freedom from self imposed limitation.

in freeing myself from the romantic dream of finding another man to come along and rescue me, I learned that no one can rescue me except myself.

Life is about recapturing lost freedoms.

What's truly important--and what I find myself forgetting and having to relearn--is that right here, right now, I am free. Free to be myself and to express myself.

The only thing that can free you is the belief that you can be free.

If you want to be free be free

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.

Teach yourself freedom with the same zeal that the world has taught you limits.

So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves.

Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines. Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute. Listening to others, and considering well what they say. Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating. Gently but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

A sense of freedom is something that, happily, comes with age and life experience.

Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.

I've never particularly liked travelling with large groups or being told where to go by somebody else. I prefer to find out for myself.

I'm standing for real freedom.

Maturity and experience are part of my liberation.

Today, charting your own course isn't just more necessary than ever before. It's also much easier - and much more fun.

Render yourself free to choose, to be, to live, to see.

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.