Eric Weiner Quotes

“The problems we discover on our own are the ones that motivate us the most.”

“A confused mind is one that is open to the possibility of change.”

“Believing in everything looks a lot like believing in nothing.”

“Depression, contrary to what we normally believe, is not sadness but an inability to fully feel sadness. Depression is sorrow denied.”

“I read, and underline, anything I can get my hands on, but I have a particular weakness for self-help books. I love these books, though I dislike the term "self-help." For one thing, it's not accurate. You're not helping yourself. The person who wrote the book is helping you. The only book that can accurately be called self-help is the one you write yourself. The other problem, of course, with self-help books is that they broadcast weakness, and thus invite judgement. That's why my wife insists I keep my sizable collection hidden in the basement, lest dinner guests suspect she is married to a self in need of help.”

“Saying grace before a meal. Watching our breath. Repeating the ninety-nine names of Allah. Whirling like a dervish. Prayer. They all have one objective: to get us to pause just long enough to realize that life, your life, is a freaking miracle. The least you can do is pay attention.”

“The act of underlining always contains an element of self-recognition.”

“A simple question to identify your true home: where do you want to die?”

“Better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake.”

“Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don't like the way things are, they aren't interesting enough for you, so you decide- and boredom is a decision that you are bored.”

“Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.”

“For me, a place unvisited is like an unrequited love. A dull ache that- try as you might to think it away, to convince yourself that she really wasn't the right country for you- just won't leave you in peace.”

“Happiness doesn't require words.”

“Happiness is a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.”

“Hilmar owns many books, even by Icelandic standards. The other day, when he came home with a wheelbarrowful, his five-year-old daughter looked him in the eye and implored, “Please, Daddy, please, no more books!” Hilmar has a stock answer to those who criticize his excessive book buying. “It is never a waste of time to study how other people wasted time.”

“Hotels are wonderful inventions, but they are not the ideal window to the soul of a nation.”

“Humans, even nomadic ones, need a sense of home. Home need not be one place or any place at all, but every home has two essential elements: a sense of community and, even more important, a history.”

“I've always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is finding the right corner.”

“I've spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I am not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking but thinking itself.”

“In fact, researchers have found that people who are too busy are happier than those who are not busy enough. In other words, the playwright Noël Coward got it right when he observed that interesting work is “more fun than fun.”

“In the late 1960s, a young Martin Seligman, now the pooh-bah of the positive-psychology movement, conducted experiments with dogs. He would place a dog in a cage and give it a (supposedly harmless) electric shock. The dog, though, could escape to another side of the cage and avoid the shock, the onset of which was signaled by a loud noise and a flashing light. Then Seligman put the dog in a no-win situation. No matter what he did, he couldn’t avoid getting shocked. Then, and this is the part that surprised Seligman, when he returned the same dog to a cage where he could easily avoid the shock (by jumping over a low fence), the dog did nothing. He just sat there and endured the shocks. He had been taught to believe that the situation was hopeless.”

“Indeed, there was a difference, one that any Thai person could spot instantly but not most foreigners. What the Thais know instinctively is that a smile, a real smile, is not located in the lips or any other part of the mouth. A real smile is in the eyes. To be precise, the orbicularis oculi muscles that surround each eye. We cannot fool these tiny muscles. They spring to life only for a genuine smile.”

“It's not what we believe that makes us happy but the act of believing. In anything.”

“Maybe happiness is this: not feeling that you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.”

“Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”

“Music is playing. "We will, we will rock you!" But no one will be rocked here. There will be no revolution. People are too comfortable, and comfort is the revolutionaries’ worst enemy.”

“My favorite theory is one I call the Get-Along-or-Die Theory. In warm places, this theory states, life is too easy; your next meal simply falls from a coconut tree. Cooperation with others is optional. In colder places, though, cooperation is mandatory.”

“Only a fool or philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness.”

“Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbours and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.”

“Paradise is a moving target.”