Daniel Goleman · 384 pages
Rating: (57.5K votes)
“In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels”
“A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"
His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence."
"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."
Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.
"And that,"said the monk "is heaven."
The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur.”
“Anyone can become angry —that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way —this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics”
“people's emotions are rarely put into words , far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels , tone of voice , gesture , facial expression and the like”
“Emotional self-control-- delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness- underlies accomplishment of every sort”
“Our emotional mind will harness the rational mind to its purposes, for our feelings and reactions-- rationalizations-- justifying them in terms of the present moment, without realizing the influence of our emotional memory.”
“But the rational mind usually doesn't decide what emotions we "should" have !”
“Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and "proofs" all their own.”
“emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood”
“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. HORACE WALPOLE”
“Benjamin Franklin put it well: “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.”
“Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal.”
“There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.”
“When we are in the grip of craving or fury, head-over-heals in love our recoiling in dread, it is the limbic system that has us in its grip.”
“Fear, in evolution, has a special prominence: perhaps more than any other emotion it is crucial for survival.”
“أننا لا شعورياً نقلد الانفعالات التي يظهرها أمامنا شخص آخر عن طريق محاكاة حركية لا واعية لتعبيرات الوجه وإيماءاته ونبرات صوته والمحددات غير اللفظية الأخرى للانفاعلات، وبهذه المحاكاة يعيد الأشخاص في داخلهم خلق هذه الحالات المزاجية للشخص الآخر. وهي صورة مبسطة من طريقة ستانيسلافسكي والذي كان يطلب من الممثلين أن يتذكروا الإماءات والحركات والتعبيرات الأخرى لانفعال أثر فيهم بقوة في الماضي من أجل استثارة هذه المشاعر مرة أخرى.”
“إن الخوف ربما الشعور الأكثر أهمية للحفاظ على البقاء!”
“People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought.”
“A child's readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity—all related to emotional intelligence:6 1. Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one's body, behavior, and world; the child's sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful. 2. Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure. 3. Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective. 4. Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one's own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control. 5. Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others. 6. Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults. 7. Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one's own needs with those of others in group activity. Whether or not a child arrives at school on the first day of kindergarten with these capabilities depends greatly on how much her parents—and preschool teachers—have given her the kind of care that amounts to a "Heart Start," the emotional equivalent of the Head Start programs.”
“Helping people better manage their upsetting feelings—anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, and loneliness—is a form of disease prevention. Since the data show that the toxicity of these emotions, when chronic, is on a par with smoking cigarettes, helping people handle them better could potentially have a medical payoff as great as getting heavy smokers to quit.”
“Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”
“The guiding visionary behind Project Spectrum is Howard Gardner, a psychologist at the Harvard School of Education.7 “The time has come,” Gardner told me, “to broaden our notion of the spectrum of talents. The single most important contribution education can make to a child’s development is to help him toward a field where his talents best suit him, where he will be satisfied and competent. We’ve completely lost sight of that. Instead we subject everyone to an education where, if you succeed, you will be best suited to be a college professor. And we evaluate everyone along the way according to whether they meet that narrow standard of success. We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed, and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.”
“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.”
“many people with IQs of 160 work for people with IQs of 100, if the former have poor intrapersonal intelligence and the latter have a high one.”
“For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway.”
“Once when I was about 13, in an angry fit, I walked out of the house vowing I would never return. It was a beautiful summer day, and I walked far along lovely lanes, till gradually the stillness and beauty calmed and soothed me, and after some hours I returned repentant and almost melted. Since then when I am angry, I do this if I can, and find it the best cure.”
“If there is a remedy, I feel it must lie in how we prepare our young for life.”
“The neocortex allows for the subtlety and complexity of emotional life, such as the ability to have feelings about our feelings.”
“We transmit and catch moods from each other in what amounts to a subterranean economy of the psyche in which some encounters are toxic, some nourishing.”
“goal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification" is perhaps the essence of emotional self-regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the Stanley Cup. His finding underscores the role of emotional intelligence as a meta-ability, determining how well or how poorly people are able to use their other mental capacities.”
“It’s All in Your Mind Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind. —Anonymous INTRODUCTION One of my favorite sayings is, “Where the mind goes, the man follows.”
“Me big strong man. Me take woman from behind.”
“This dude could read Pat the Bunnyand make it terrifying.”
“Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin.
I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.
I should mention that sometimes I leave my penis on.
I find it difficult to ignore the temptation.
Then I am a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter.”
“Is it true that your last name is Goodend? Are you really a gay guy with the last name Goodend? Because if it is, man, that's like, totally freakin' awesome!”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.