382 Quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting investment of attention. Otherwise it is just an empty gesture, a hypocritical pretense indistinguishable from disinterest.

Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws. In other words, accepting limitations is liberating.

The record seems to suggest that a society begins to rely heavily on leisure-and especially on passive leisure-only when it has become incapable of offering meaningful productive occupation to its members.

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.

Almost every situation we encounter in life presents possibilities for growth... But these transformations require that a person be prepared to perceive unexpected opportunities.

When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free.

Because optimal experience depends on the ability to control what happens in consciousness moment by moment, each person has to achieve it on the basis of his own individual efforts and creativity.

Perform with elan, brilliance and dash – at concert pitch.

The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself.