7 Quotes by Dacher Keltner

Human beings are wired to care and give and it’s probably our best route to happiness.

The power paradox is this: we rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst. We gain a capacity to make a difference in the world by enhancing the lives of others, but the very experience of having power and privilege leads us to behave, in our worst moments, like impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths.

The truest you can be is taking off those clothes.

It isn’t just dictators, power-mad politicians, kings of high finance, and drug-addled rock stars who are vulnerable to abuses of power; the power paradox can undermine the social life of any of us at any moment. Whether we are at work, out with friends, in encounters with strangers, or with our children, the very skills that enable us to gain respect and esteem are corrupted when we are feeling powerful.

Money, fame, class, and titles are just symbols, or opportunities, for making a difference. Real power means enhancing the greater good, and your feelings of power will direct you to the exact way you are best equipped to do this.

Being poor produces a way of responding to life circumstances that, while warm and giving, is continually vigilant to threat and chronically stressed in ways that harm a person’s mental and physical health.

Emotions are signs of our commitment to others; emotions are encoded into our bodies and brains; emotions are our moral gut, the source of our most important moral intuitions.