Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it really wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it is doing seems to be making itself more unhappy and calling that unhappiness progress.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Civilizations have come and gone and, in spite of our vaunted progress, I am tempted to ask again and again, 'To what purpose?'

life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand, we find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.

Whatever field of human activity one may take, only those trends that are in harmony with the needs of society show rapid progress.

One of the chief inhibitions to human progress arises because of the extreme slowness with which the advances in knowledge become translated into action for the benefit of society as a whole. There is no step more important for the removal of that inhibition than that of providing for intimate contact between the leaders in the fields of pure and applied science.

Men die and they are not happy.

Life is a hurdle and you'll never clear it. Death is the end of the ride and you fear it.

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

And that wreched creature without hands or feet, who had to be put to bed and fed like a child, that pitiable remnant of a man, whose almost vanished life was nothing more than one scream of pain, cried out in furious indignation: 'What a fool one must be to go and kill oneself!' " - 'Joy of Life

I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.

But I know I would not go out. I had taken this time to fall in love instead — in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in death — the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human — feeling as you went, groping in corners and opening your arms to light - all of it part of navigating the unknown.

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

What a terrible thing life can be.

Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.

Those who in this world have the courage to try and solve in their own lives new problems of life, are the ones who raise society to greatness.

Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care.

Chacun de nous a un jour, plus ou moins triste, plus ou moins lointain, o u' il doit enfin accepter d'e" tre un homme. There will come a day for each of us, more or less sad, more or less distant, whenwe must accept the condition of being human.

Man ... feels lost without the direction-finder provide by progress.

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

My belief in the growth and permanence of democracy is undimmed. I know that the people will cast off the new dictatorship as they did the old. I believe as firmly as in my youth that humanity will surmount the era of poverty and war. Life will be happier and more beautiful for all. I believe in the GOLDEN AGE.

The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.

Were all conning ourselves, one way or another, just to get through life.