Eric Weiner Quotes

Thinking about happiness makes us less happy.

A simple question to identify your true home: where do you want to die?

The problem with finding paradise is that others might find it, too.

Toward the end of his life, Fred Terman wrote that he had no regrets: "If I had my life to live over again, I would play the same record.

Compassion arises spontaneously from wisdom.

When you drink coffee, you become very focused, and in fact, the key to creative genius is to be defocused.

We can't love a place or a person if we always have one foot out the door.

The narrator, in a voice-of-God tenor, explains the experiment.

Ancestry is not destiny,

Reason cannot account for those moments in life that "bewilder the intellect yet utterly quiet the heart," as G.K. Chesterton observed.

Depression, contrary to what we normally believe, is not sadness but an inability to fully feel sadness. Depression is sorrow denied.

The coffeehouse is good for genius, and the Viennese coffeehouse is a classic case. Freud had his favorite coffee shop, and so did Gustav Klimt.

Happiness is a choice. Not an easy choice, not always a desirable one, but a choice nonetheless.

Tell me, Comrade, what is capitalism?" "The exploitation of man by man." "And what is communism?" "The reverse." Okay,

Religion is like a knife. If you use it the wrong way you can cut yourself.

You can be as good as Rembrandt, but if no one discovers you, you will only be a genius in theory.

It's not what we believe that makes us happy but the act of believing. In anything.

It is pure id. Freud would not approve. He regarded the obvious with the same contempt most of us reserve for wine spritzers.

Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it.

There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

The problems we discover on our own are the ones that motivate us the most

The expectation of a reward or evaluation, even a positive evaluation, squelched creativity.

A confused mind is one that is open to the possibility of change.

Everyone has their own idea of happiness.

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

Why do we lose our temper? Because we love perfection. Create a little room for imperfection in your life.

mandating innovation is an oxymoron, maybe not as absurd as "scheduling spontaneity," but perilously close. I

messiness stimulates creative thought.

When the last tree is cut, When the last river is emptied, When the last fish is caught, Only then will Man realize that he can not eat money.

The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth," observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan

Happiness doesn't require words.

The British scholar Avner Offer calls attention "the universal currency of well-being." Attentive people, in other words, are happy people. Tashi

Hotels are wonderful inventions, but they are not the ideal window to the soul of a nation.

What doesn't kill you not only make you stronger, but also more honest.

Where we are is vital to who we are,

If you've ever had a rational thought or asked Why? or gazed at the night sky in silent wonder, then you have had a Greek moment.

thambos, "that reverential terror and awe aroused by the proximity of any supernatural force or being which one discerns,

See what is before you, the thing itself. Analyze later.

Nevertheless, a few brave researchers have bellied up to the laboratory.

if everyone is a genius, then nobody is. I

The point is, the "best" technology or idea doesn't always prevail. Sometimes chance and the law of unintended consequences win out.

Who travels widely needs his wits about him. The stupid should stay at home. And

I've always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is fining the right corner.

Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.

Ideas are like bananas. That bananas grow only in tropical regions doesn't make them any less delicious in Scandinavia.

Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.

Paradise is a moving target.

Here is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.

What doesn't kill you not only makes you stronger but also more honest. Laurey

[Happiness is] a ghost, it's a shadow. You can't really chase it. It's a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.

Just as not all butterflies produce a hurricane, not all outbreaks of bubonic plague produce a Renaissance.

Philosophy is like wine. There are good years and bad years but, in general, the older the better.

The act of underlining always contains an element of self-recognition.

Believing in everything looks a lot like believing in nothing.

The measure of a society, he said, is how well it transforms pain and suffering into something worthwhile.

First of all, nothing good ever came from a beanbag chair. Nothing. I am speaking from personal experience.

Nothing kills creativity faster than a wall.

We need to a new word to describe Swiss happiness.

Joseph Campbell, who when asked what spiritual practice he followed said, "I underline books." Me too.

When you're stuck on something creatively, you can't solve a problem, you go to a coffee shop.