Quotes from book
Stumbling on Happiness

Name: Stumbling on Happiness
Author: Daniel T. Gilbert

Daniel T. Gilbert

Stumbling on Happiness is a non-fiction book by Daniel Gilbert. It was published in the United States and Canada in 2006 by Knopf, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. It is a New York Times bestseller.

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it. In one chapter after another, I've described the ways in which imagination fails to provide us with accurate previews of our emotional futures. I’ve claimed that when we imagine our futures we tend to fill in, leave out, and take little account of how differently we will think about the future once we actually get there. I’ve claimed that neither personal experience nor cultural wisdom compensates for imagination’s shortcomings. I’ve so thoroughly marinated you in the foibles, biases, errors, and mistakes of the human mind that you may wonder how anyone ever manages to make toast without buttering their kneecaps. If so, you will be heartened to learn that there is a simple method by which anyone can make strikingly accurate predictions about how they will feel in the future. But you may be disheartened to learn that, by and large, no one wants to use it.”

Daniel T. Gilbert book Stumbling on Happiness

Source: Stumbling on Happiness, 2006, p. 223

“Among life’s cruelest truths is this one: Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. Just compare the first and last time your child said "Mama" or your partner said "I love you" and you’ll know exactly what I mean. When we have an experience hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sunset from a particular window of a particular room—on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage. But human beings have discovered two devices that allow them to combat this tendency: variety and time.”

Daniel T. Gilbert book Stumbling on Happiness

Source: Stumbling on Happiness, 2006, p. 30

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