Top 500 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

302. “As a result, one of the most universal and distinctive features of optimal experience takes place: people become so involved in what they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

304. “The last great attempt to free consciousness from the domination of impulses and social controls was psychoanalysis; as Freud pointed out, the two tyrants that fought for control over the mind were the id and the superego, the first a servant of the genes, the second a lackey of society – both representing the “Other.” Opposed to them was the ego, which stood for the genuine needs of the self connected to its concrete environment.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

305. “Yet we have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, 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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

306. “How we feel at any given moment of a flow activity is strongly influenced by the objective conditions; but consciousness is still free to follow its own assessment of the case.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

307. “The roots of the discontent are internal, and each person must untangle them personally, with his or her own power.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

308. “Creative people are constantly surprised. They don’t assume that they understand what is happening around them, and they don’t assume that anybody else does either. They question the obvious – not out of contrariness but because they see the shortcomings of accepted explanations before the rest of us do. They sense problems before they are generally perceived and are able to define what they are.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

309. “When do we get to the interesting part – the tortured souls, the impossible dreams, the agony and the ecstasy of creation?”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

310. “The worst solitude,” wrote Sir Francis Bacon, “is to be destitute of sincere friendship.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

311. “I am fooling around not doing anything, which probably means that this is a creative period, although of course you don’t know until afterward. I think that it is very important to be idle. I mean, they always say that Shakespeare was idle between plays. I am not comparing myself to Shakespeare, but people who keep themselves busy all of the time are generally not creative. So I am not ashamed of being idle.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

312. “The important thing is that the energy is under their own control.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

313. “Neither parents nor schools are very effective at teaching the young to find pleasure in the right things. Adults, themselves often deluded by infatuation with fatuous models, conspire in the deception. They make serious tasks seem dull and hard, and frivolous ones exciting and easy. Schools generally fial to teach how exciting, how mesmerizingly beautiful science or mathematics can be; they teach the routine of literature or history rather than the adventure.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

314. “We have learned how to develop five-minute and even one-minute managers. But we would do better to ask ourselves what it takes to be an executive who helps build a better future.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

315. “The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

316. “Observing, recording, and preserving the memory of both the large and small events of life is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

317. “There is no way to know whether a thought is new except with reference to some standards, and there is no way to tell whether it is valuable until it passes social evaluation. Therefore, creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

318. “Athletes know well that to improve performance beyond a certain point they must learn to discipline their minds.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

319. “What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

320. “One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. We grow either bored or frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again pushes us to stretch our skills, or discover new opportunities for using them.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

321. “The opposite state from the condition of psychic entropy is optimal experience. When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly. There is no need to worry, no reason to question one’s adequacy. But whenever one does stop to think about oneself, the evidence is encouraging: “You are doing all right.” The positive feedback strengthens the self, and more attention is freed to deal with the outer and the inner environment.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

322. “The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

323. “There is an old Italian saying: “Il lavoro nobilita I’uomo, e lo rende simile alle bestie”; or, “Work gives man nobility, and turns him into an animal.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

324. “Jefferson’s uncomfortable dictum “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” applies outside the fields of politics as well; it means that we must constantly reevaluate what we do, lest habits and past wisdom blind us to new possibilities.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

325. “Why is solitude such a negative experience? The bottom-line answer is that keeping order in the mind from within is very difficult. We need external goals, external stimulation, external feedback to keep attention directed. And when external input is lacking, attention begins to wander, and thoughts become chaotic.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

326. “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 is almost immeasurably huge, and most of it is hostilely empty and cold.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

327. “And the reality is that the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own. The bottom line is, rather, how we feel about ourselves and about what happens to us. To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

328. “It is important to realize that seeking pleasure is a reflex response built into our genes for the preservation of the species, not for the purpose of our own personal advantage.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

329. “The normal condition of the mind is chaos. Only when involved in a goal-directed activity does it acquire order and positive moods.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

330. “Yet such blows do not necessarily diminish happiness. It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

331. “Early ethnographers have described North American Plains Indians so hypnotically involved in gambling with buffalo rib bones that losers would often leave the tepee without clothes in the dead of winter, having wagered away their weapons, horses, and wives as well.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

332. “Perhaps the most powerful effect flow theory could have in the public sector is in providing a blueprint for how institutions may be reformed so as to make them more conducive to optimal experience.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

333. “The profits made from the widespread dependence on illicit drugs are enriching murderers and terrorists. It seems possible that in the near future we shall be ruled by an oligarchy of former drug dealers, who are rapidly gaining wealth and power at the expense of law-abiding citizens. And in our sexual lives, by shedding the shackles of “hypocritical” morality, we have unleashed destructive viruses upon one another.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

334. “It is easier to enhance creativity by changing conditions in the environment than by trying to make people think more creatively.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

335. “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

336. “This paradox of rising expectations suggests that improving the quality of life might be an insurmountable task. In fact, there is no inherent problem in our desire to escalate our goals, as long as we enjoy the struggle along the way. The.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

337. “The “battle” is not really against the self, but against the entropy that brings disorder to consciousness. It is really a battle for the self; it is a struggle for establishing control over attention.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

338. “Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

339. “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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

341. “The term “autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

342. “This simple truth – that the control of consciousness determines the quality of life – has been known for a long time; in fact, for as long as human records exist.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

343. “The challenges of the activity are what force us to concentrate.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

344. “Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically. At that point the goal of studying is no longer to make the grade, earn a diploma, and find a good job. Rather, it is to understand what is happening around one, to develop a personally meaningful sense of what one’s experience is all about.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

345. “A similar distinction is that between discovered life themes, when a person writes the script for her actions out of personal experience and awareness of choice; and accepted life themes, when a person simply takes on a predetermined role from a script written long ago by others. Both.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

346. “The meaning of life is meaning: whatever it is, wherever it comes from, a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life. The.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

347. “Setting goals. Becoming immersed in the activity. Paying attention to what is happening. Learning to enjoy the immediate experience.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

348. “When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

349. “Although average Americans have plenty of free time, and ample access to leisure activities, they do not, as a result, experience flow often. Potentiality does not imply actuality, and quantity does not translate into quality.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

350. “If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi