If I had to express in one word what makes their [creative individuals'] personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude."

The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.

A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for - rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires.A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable..The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers.

Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic.

Optimal experience is that rare occasion when we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.

The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind...It seems that every time a pressing danger is avoided a new and more sophisticated threat appears on the horizon...Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe

Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.