Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Quodid

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Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi (29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental state conducive to creativity. He was the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. Earlier, he served as the head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College.

Quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi