Top 500 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “If an enterprise does not aspire to be the best of its kind, it will attract second-rate employees, and it will be soon forgotten.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

252. “The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments. And the most effective form of socialization is achieved when people identify so thoroughly with the social order that they no longer can imagine themselves breaking any of its rules.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

253. “Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

254. “So people take intelligence very seriously, because the mental ability we call by that name can be measured by tests; whereas few bother about how sensitive, altruistic, or helpful someone is, because as yet there is no good way to measure such qualities.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

255. “Those who always worry about what can go wrong might be well prepared against dangers but will never know how enjoyable life can be.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

256. “True, most married men are convinced that their lives are dedicated to the family, and from a material standpoint this might be true. But it takes more than food in the fridge and two cars in the garage to keep a family going.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

257. “To be distracted against one’s will is the surest sign that one is not in control.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

258. “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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

259. “If the functions of the body are left to atrophy, the quality of life becomes merely adequate, and for some even dismal. But if one takes control of what the body can do, and learns to impose order on physical sensations, entropy yields to a sense of enjoyable harmony in consciousness.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

260. “Few would argue that a simpler consciousness, no matter how harmonious, is preferable to a more complex one. While we might admire the serenity of the lion in repose, the tribesman’s untroubled acceptance of his fate, or the child’s wholehearted involvement in the present, they cannot offer a model for resolving our predicament. The order based on innocence is now beyond our grasp. Once the fruit is plucked from the tree of knowledge, the way back to Eden is barred forever.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

261. “Whatever the dictates of fashion, it seems that those who take the trouble to gain mastery over what happens in consciousness do lead a happier life.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

262. “Freeman Dyson said: “It is characteristic of scientific life that it is easy when you have a problem to work on. The hard part is finding your problem.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

263. “If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one’s attention.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

264. “In less well-ordered families a great deal of energy is expended in constant negotiations and strife, and in the children’s attempts to protect their fragile selves from being overwhelmed by other people’s goals.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

265. “In reality, to achieve such an ordered mental condition is not as easy as it sounds. Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos. Without.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

266. “So to extract meaning from a system of beliefs a person must first compare the information contained in it with his or her concrete experience, retain what makes sense, and then reject the rest.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

267. “It is in the company of friends that we can most clearly experience the freedom of the self and learn who we really are. The ideal of a modern marriage is to have one’s spouse as a friend.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

268. “Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

269. “Using this scheme, it can be said that games offer opportunities to go beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience in four different ways. In agonistic games, the participant must stretch her skills to meet the challenge provided by the skills of the opponents. The roots of the word “compete” are the Latin con petire, which meant “to seek together.” What each person seeks is to actualize her potential, and this task is made easier when others force us to do our best.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

270. “Yet even if their advice were to work, what would be the result afterward in the unlikely event that one did turn into a slim, well-loved, powerful millionaire? Usually what happens is that the person finds himself back at square one, with a new list of wishes, just as dissatisfied as before. What would really satisfy people is not getting slim or rich, but feeling good about their lives. In the quest for happiness, partial solutions don’t work.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

271. “Stern endorses Pascal’s maxim “To understand is to forgive.” In fact, one of the most exciting opportunities in being a writer, he feels, is to take a villain or criminal character and make him human by showing what caused him to be so.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

272. “All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

273. “When adversity threatens to paralyze us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

274. “If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner’s greed at the expense of working conditions, of the stability of the community, and of the health of the environment, chances are that the quality of our lives will be worse than it is now.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

275. “No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

276. “Decent” people the world over do not spend too much energy on the task of sexual reproduction, or on the practices that have been built on it. Romance resembles sports in this respect as well: instead of doing it personally, most people are content to hear about it or watch a few experts perform it. A.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

277. “While we cannot foresee the eventual results of creativity – of the attempt to impose our desires on reality, to become the main power that decides the destiny of every form of life on the planet – at least we can try to understand better what this force is and how it works. Because for better or for worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity. The result will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

278. “Everything the body can do is potentially enjoyable. Yet many people ignore this capacity, and use their physical equipment as little as possible, leaving its ability to provide flow unexploited. When.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

279. “In normal life, we keep interrupting what we do with doubts and questions. “Why am I doing this? Should I perhaps be doing something else?” 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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

280. “Unfortunately many serious thinkers devote all their mental effort to becoming well-known scholars, but in the meantime they forget their initial purpose in scholarship. In.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

281. “Instead of accepting the unity of purpose provided by genetic instructions or by the rules of society, the challenge for us is to create harmony based on reason and choice.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

282. “In the 1960s, when abstract expressionism was the reigning style, those art students who tended to be sullen, brooding, and antisocial were thought by their teachers to be very creative.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

283. “The apologists for the medium claim that all sorts of interesting information is provided by television. This is true, but as it is much easier to produce programs that titillate rather than elevate the viewer, what most people watch is unlikely to help in developing the self.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

284. “If I were starving, I would have taken her money. But since I am not, why should I make a deal that isn’t any fun? I enjoy the clash of wits involved in bargaining, when two persons try to outdo each other with ruses and with eloquence. She didn’t even flinch. She didn’t know any better. She didn’t pay me the respect of assuming that I was going to try to take advantage of her. If I had sold those pieces to that woman at that ridiculous price, I would have felt cheated.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

285. “The autotelic self transforms potentially entropic experience into flow.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

286. “How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

287. “Without challenge, life had no meaning.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

288. “The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

289. “Even the approach of death itself can serve to create harmony in consciousness, rather than despair.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

290. “Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

291. “Almost every situation we encounter in life presents possibilities for growth.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

292. “When all a person’s relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person’s attention is completely absorbed by the activity.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

293. “A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

294. “When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

295. “It is true that if one finds flow in work, and in relations with other people, one is well on the way toward improving the quality of life as a whole.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

296. “A symbolic system is like a game in that it provides a separate reality, a world of its own where one can perform actions that are permitted to occur in that world, but that would not make much sense anywhere else.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

297. “As long as we obey the socially conditioned stimulus-response patterns that exploit our biological inclinations, we are controlled from the outside.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

298. “Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

299. “After each episode of flow a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

300. “When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi