14 Quotes by Csikszentmihaly

...the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.

We are always getting to live, as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, but never living. Or as poor Frances learned in the children's story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never brad and jam today.

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 superago, the first a servant of a genes, the second a lackey of society - both representing the "Other".

...what the social environment told them to want...

Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness. ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier.