Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

Good design is a visual statement that maximizes the life goals of the people in a given culture (or, more realistically, the goals of a certain subset of people in the culture) that draws on a shared symbolic expression for the ordering of such goals.

As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. Their random combinations are driven by forces we don't know about.

Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence.

I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.

Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.