Top 40 Dan Buettner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The people you surround yourself with influence your behaviors, so choose friends who have healthy habits.”

— Dan Buettner

2. “Singapore is the happiest place in Asia.”

— Dan Buettner

3. “Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile.”

— Dan Buettner

4. “Having a purpose and knowing exactly what your values are will add additional years to your life.”

— Dan Buettner

5. “The longest-lived people eat a plant-based diet. They eat meat but only as a condiment or a celebration. Nothing they eat has a plastic wrapper.”

— Dan Buettner

6. “Drink without getting drunk Love without suffering jealousy Eat without overindulging Never argue And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave.”

— Dan Buettner

7. “So learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language – those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come.”

— Dan Buettner

8. “Deepen your existing spiritual commitment.”

— Dan Buettner

9. “True happiness involves the pursuit of worth goals; without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.”

— Dan Buettner

10. “Serve yourself, put the food away, then eat.”

— Dan Buettner

11. “Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline – it works.”

— Dan Buettner

12. “A long healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits.”

— Dan Buettner

13. “Have fun, be active. Ride a bike instead of driving, for example.”

— Dan Buettner

14. “So setting up automatic savings plans, and buying insurance as opposed to buying a new thing. The newness effect of a new thing wears off in nine months to a year, but financial security can last a lifetime.”

— Dan Buettner

15. “Inconvenience yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel.”

— Dan Buettner

16. “Exercise, from a public health perspective, is an unmitigated failure. The world’s longest-lived people live in environments that nudge them into more movement. They don’t use power tools, they do their own yard work, they grow a garden.”

— Dan Buettner

17. “Genuinely happy people do not just sit around being content. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings.”

— Dan Buettner

18. “Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.”

— Dan Buettner

19. “Diet and supplements and exercise programs aren’t what is achieving longevity. Having a faith-based community can add four to 14 years.”

— Dan Buettner

20. “Select your friendships carefully. Gather people around you who will reinforce your lifestyle.”

— Dan Buettner

21. “I live on the water. I live in a neighborhood that’s consummately connected to my neighbors. I bump into them every day. I can bike to work.”

— Dan Buettner

22. “You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that’s a good feeling.”

— Dan Buettner

23. “If you’re eating vegetables you are probably pushing unhealthier food out of your diet.”

— Dan Buettner

24. “Life expectancy in America is about 79, we should be able to live to 92. Somewhere along the line, we’re leaving 13 years on the table. So my quest is – how do we get those extra 13 years? And how do we make those extra 13 years good years?”

— Dan Buettner

25. “Kids in a home with grandparents are healthier.”

— Dan Buettner

26. “A doctor may know more than a peasant, but a peasant and a doctor know more together.”

— Dan Buettner

27. “The average American, however, by living a fast and furious lifestyle, pushes that accelerator too hard and too much.”

— Dan Buettner

28. “I used to be very beautiful,” Kamada replied. “I had hair that came down to my waist. It took me a long time to realize that beauty is within. It comes from not worrying so much about your own problems. Sometimes you can best take care of yourself by taking care of others.”

— Dan Buettner

29. “The more things for which you develop a fondness the richer the life you live.”

— Dan Buettner

30. “Recent studies found bitter melon an “effective anti-diabetic” as powerful as pharmaceuticals in helping to regulate blood sugar.”

— Dan Buettner

31. “Materialistic people, that is, are seldom the happiest people because they want too much.”

— Dan Buettner

32. “The brutal reality about aging is that it has only an accelerator pedal. We have yet to discover whether a brake exists for people.”

— Dan Buettner

33. “If you’re around people who are more positive in general, you get more positive. On the other hand, when you’re unhappy and you’re bitching all the time, you’re not just affecting yourself, you’re affecting other people, too, and you’re also teaching them about how to act or not act.”

— Dan Buettner

34. “You have to know why you get up every morning.”

— Dan Buettner

35. “The average American now consumes 46 slices of pizza, 200 pounds of meat, and 607 pounds of milk and other dairy products, and washes it down with 57 gallons of soda pop a year. We consume 8,000 teaspoons of added sugar and 79 pounds of fat annually. We eat 4.5 billion pounds of fries and 2 billion pounds of chips a year.”

— Dan Buettner

36. “I found that when you are depressed, that’s when you do something for somebody else.”

— Dan Buettner

37. “Finally, exasperated, I asked her if after 107 years she had any advice for younger people. She looked up at me, eyes flashing. “Yes,” she shot back. “Life is short. Don’t run so fast you miss it.”

— Dan Buettner

38. “Begin by answering this question in a single, memorable sentence: Why do you get up in the morning?”

— Dan Buettner

39. “Before each meal she takes a moment to say hara hachi bu, and that keeps her from eating too much.” “Hara hachi bu?” I repeated. “It’s a Confucian-inspired adage,” Craig chimed in. “All of the old folks say it before they eat. It means ‘Eat until you are 80 percent full.”

— Dan Buettner

40. “A stranger is a friend i haven’t met yet.”

— Dan Buettner

41. “Scientific studies suggest that only about 25 percent of how long we live is dictated by genes, according to famous studies of Danish twins. The other 75 percent is determined by our lifestyles and the everyday choices we make.”

— Dan Buettner