Top 200 Eric Weiner Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “I’m interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.”

— Eric Weiner

52. “I would love to think there is a direct relationship between coffee and genius, but they’ve done studies, and if anything, caffeine probably makes you a little less creative.”

— Eric Weiner

53. “Nor would the Athenian golden age have happened had the Persians not first sacked Athens, burning it to the ground, and clearing the way for Pericles’s ambitious rebuilding. It is the law of unintended consequences on a grand scale.”

— Eric Weiner

54. “What is the ideal audio atmosphere for creativity and it turns out it is not complete silence, and it is not a very loud atmosphere, it’s something about 70 decibels.”

— Eric Weiner

55. “Don’t forget that Mozart worked on commission. He almost always would write something if he knew exactly who was paying for it and where it would be performed. So you can’t really separate the creation of genius from the appreciation of it.”

— Eric Weiner

56. “For Socrates, the worst kind of ignorance was the kind that masquerades as knowledge. Better a wide and honest ignorance than a narrow and suspect knowledge.”

— Eric Weiner

57. “All genuinely creative ideas are initially met with rejection, since they necessarily threaten the status quo. An enthusiastic reception for a new idea is a sure sign that it is not original.”

— Eric Weiner

58. “Who travels widely needs his wits about him. The stupid should stay at home. And.”

— Eric Weiner

59. “Set clear goals and channel all your energies into reaching them, the self-help books advise. This approach assumes we’ve identified our destination before beginning our journey. Life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you don’t know where you’re going until you start moving. So move. Start where you are. Make a single brushstroke and see where it leads.”

— Eric Weiner

60. “Ridicule is the price of wisdom.”

— Eric Weiner

61. “These empty desires cause the most suffering, Epicurus thought, since they are difficult to obtain. “It is better for you to lie upon a bed of straw and be free of fear, than to have a golden couch and an opulent table, yet be troubled in mind.”

— Eric Weiner

62. “Culture is the enormous yet invisible ocean in which we swim.”

— Eric Weiner

63. “Just as not all butterflies produce a hurricane, not all outbreaks of bubonic plague produce a Renaissance.”

— Eric Weiner

64. “Fighting, done properly, is productive. Both sides can arrive not only at a win-win solution but something more: a solution that neither would have found had they not fought in the first place.”

— Eric Weiner

65. “Music is not what I think it is, Schopenhauer tells me. It does not convey emotion. It conveys the essence, the container, of emotions without the content. When we listen to music, we perceive not a particular sadness or a particular joy but sadness itself and joy itself – “the extracted quintessence of these feelings,” says Schopenhauer.”

— Eric Weiner

66. “Canadian happiness researcher John Helliwell believes that quality of government is the single most important variable that explains why some countries are happier than others.”

— Eric Weiner

67. “It’s a silly argument, and unnecessary. Creativity doesn’t happen “in here” or “out there” but in the spaces in between. Creativity is a relationship, one that unfolds at the intersection of person and place.”

— Eric Weiner

68. “Happiness is a by-product, never an objective. It’s an unexpected windfall from a life lived well.”

— Eric Weiner

69. “Thai culture, while rare in its distrust of thinking, is not unique. The Inuit frown upon thinking. It indicates someone is either crazy or fiercely stubborn, neither of which is desirable.”

— Eric Weiner

70. “Rousseau: his final and unfinished work, Reveries of the Solitary Walker.”

— Eric Weiner

71. “Respond to adversity, real or imagined, not with self-pity or hand-wringing, but simply by starting over. Viewed this way, life no longer feels like a narrative gone awry, or a botched ending. None of that is real. There are no endings. Only an infinite chain of beginnings.”

— Eric Weiner

72. “Nothing kills creativity faster than a wall.”

— Eric Weiner

73. “We must have a different, less transactional, relationship with music. We must experience it from a disinterested perspective. Disinterested but not uninterested. There is a difference. To be uninterested in a piece of music is to be apathetic toward it. To be disinterested is to harbor no expectations, make no demands of the music, yet remain open to the possibility of aesthetic delight.”

— Eric Weiner

74. “My favorite theory is one I call the Get-Along-or-Die Theory. In warm places, this theory states, life is too easy; your next meal simply falls from a coconut tree. Cooperation with others is optional. In colder places, though, cooperation is mandatory.”

— Eric Weiner

75. “The British scholar Avner Offer calls attention “the universal currency of well-being.” Attentive people, in other words, are happy people. Tashi.”

— Eric Weiner

76. “Indians, and Indian men in particular, are great sitters. World-class. I can’t compete with them, but I do my best. At some point, Chandra, the friendly Martian, will suggest we go to Khoshy’s, a coffee shop, and continue our sitting there.”

— Eric Weiner

77. “We need to a new word to describe Swiss happiness.”

— Eric Weiner

78. “All our mistakes, says Weil, “are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily, and being prematurely blocked, is not open to the truth.”

— Eric Weiner

79. “If you do not annoy anyone, you are not a philosopher,” says Peter Kreeft.”

— Eric Weiner

80. “He who tastes, knows,” goes the old Sufi saying. France’s most famous epicure, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, believed that food is the mirror to our souls: “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are.”

— Eric Weiner

81. “For Socrates, philosophy and conversation were virtually synonymous.”

— Eric Weiner

82. “Schopenhauer is not an easy man to like – “a nasty piece of work,” says one biographer – but he is an easy man to admire. A lover of art and music, he developed one of philosophy’s most profound, and beautiful, theories of aesthetics, and influenced generations of artists and writers.”

— Eric Weiner

83. “We are at our most vulnerable when we wake, for that is when the memory of who we are, and how we got here, returns.”

— Eric Weiner

84. “We lead telephoto lives in a wide-angle world. We never see the big picture.”

— Eric Weiner

85. “Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”

— Eric Weiner

86. “Yes, I will take Japan’s ersatz politeness over Moldova’s genuine rudeness any time. Thank you very much.”

— Eric Weiner

87. “Our demons do not haunt us at nighttime. They strike in the morning. We are at our most vulnerable when we wake, for that is when the memory of who we are, and how we got here, returns.”

— Eric Weiner

88. “Social scientists estimate that about 70 percent of our happiness stems from our relationships, both quantity and quality, with friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors. During life’s difficult patches, camaraderie blunts our misery; during the good times, it boosts our happiness.”

— Eric Weiner

89. “Recent research into happiness, or subjective wellbeing, reveals that money does indeed buy happiness. Up to a point. That point, though, is surprisingly low: about fifteen thousand dollars a year. After that, the link between economic growth and happiness evaporates.”

— Eric Weiner

90. “We are like travelers at an inn, just passing through, observing the “No Smoking” sign, leaving the room the way we found it, and perhaps dropping.”

— Eric Weiner

91. “Brainstorming sounds like a great idea, but it doesn’t work. Dozens of studies have demonstrated this conclusively. People produce more good ideas – twice as many – alone than they do together. One problem with brainstorming is.”

— Eric Weiner

92. “It is the absence of anxiety rather than the presence of anything that leads to contentment.”

— Eric Weiner

93. “Wonder is a skill, one we’re all capable of learning. He.”

— Eric Weiner

94. “The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere”. That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A life time of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman.”

— Eric Weiner

95. “True listening demands we postpone judgment. When we listen like this, hearing without judging, says Schopenhauer, we “feel positively happy.”

— Eric Weiner

96. “To describe yourself as an entrepreneur or a disrupter is as meaningless as describing yourself as an athlete or a thinker. Really? What sports do you play? What do you think about?”

— Eric Weiner

97. “As the British musician Miles Kington said: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” Knowledge knows. Wisdom sees.”

— Eric Weiner

98. “Knowledge is always tentative, imperfect. Today’s certainty is tomorrow’s nonsense. “Who can say what is? He can only say how he sees.”

— Eric Weiner

99. “If goodness comes your way, enjoy it. Don’t seek it. Good things come to those who don’t expect good things to come to them.”

— Eric Weiner

100. “Philosophy is like wine. There are good years and bad years but, in general, the older the better.”

— Eric Weiner