When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity.
Martin SeligmanWhat determines how much time and deliberate practice a child is willing to devote to achievement? Nothing less than her character.
Martin SeligmanIn a society in which individualism is becoming rampant, people more and more believe that they are the center of the world. Such a belief system makes individual failure almost inconsolable.
Martin SeligmanI'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.
Martin SeligmanThe defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback or a challenge, that its causes are just confined to this one case.
Martin Seligman