Edmund Phelps Quotes

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

I've worked all my life to shed myself of any character.

The only thing that I am ambitious about is to live a good life. Full stop.

I just try to live my life and do my thing.

The greatest thing is, at any moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

I just need to believe that we're not in some form of stasis, that we can try to be whoever we want to be. We probably won't get there, but we might get a little bit closer, you know?

The world is always reinventing itself, and so should you. I used to say, 'I haven't started yet.' Sadly, most people don't develop their potential.

Everyone needs to carry out his own personal revolution.

We can change who we are. We can improve ourselves in various ways, and we can give ourselves possibilities.

To me that's what Jobs was about. He said at the end of the movie, 'When you realize that the world was created by people no smarter than you, your life will change.' That, to me, is a message for right now and people figuring out what they're going to do with themselves.

Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is.

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.

If you do the things you enjoy and are good at, I really have a feeling that that will lead to having a fulfilling life, and people with fulfilling lives are able to be 'good people.'

My transformation represents more than what is just skin deep; it represents my motivation, drive, and willingness to constantly improve.

When I came to Cambridge, I was involved in the ward for a little bit, but I did have a very gradual process of trying to work out what I thought a good life consisted of.

If you don't like who you are and where you are, don't worry about it because you're not stuck either with who you are or where you are. You can grow. You can change. You can be more than you are.

Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself

Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power.

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

To change what you get you must change who you are.