The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future.

Curing the negatives does not produce the positives.

Psychology is much bigger than just medicine, or fixing unhealthy things. Its about education, work, marriage - its even about sports. What I want to do is see psychologists working to help people build strengths in all these domains.

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.

If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago.

Psychology should be just as concerned with building strength as with repairing damage

In 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.