Quotes from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we
make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“...It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.

What does this contradictory pattern mean? There are several possible explanations, but one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“The mystique of rock climbing is climbing; you get to the top of a rock glad it’s over but really wish it would go on forever. The justification of climbing is climbing, like the justification of poetry is writing; you don’t conquer anything except things in yourself…. The act of writing justifies poetry. Climbing is the same: recognizing that you are a flow. The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self-communication.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“...success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue...as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“it's a wise parent who allows her children to give up the things of childhood in their own time.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we use this energy. Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how use it. And it is an energy under control, to do with as we please; hence attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly,” in the words of J. H. Holmes. “It is simply indifferent.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“The rules themselves are clear enough, and within everyone’s reach. But many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way. It is a little like trying to lose weight: everyone knows what it takes, everyone wants to do it, yet it is next to impossible for so many.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one’s skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how to the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe. Certainly we should keepo on learning how to master the external environment, because our physical survival may depend on it. But such mastery is not going to add one jot to how good we as individuals feel, or reduce the chaos of the world as we experience it. To do that we must learn to achive mastery over conciousness itself.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“The roots of the word “compete” are the Latin con petire, which meant “to seek together.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Control over consciousness is not simply a cognitive skill. At least as much as intelligence, it requires the commitment of emotions and will. It is not enough to know how to do it; one must do it, consistently, in the same way as athletes or musicians who must keep practicing what they know in theory.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“It might be true that it is “quality time” that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully,”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“..Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary; they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be; they come to believe they have no other options.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“It’s exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, quote from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

About the author

Popular quotes

“We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs--people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "Dear Sire," and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from A Short History of Nearly Everything

“He began by talking about daughters and how special they are. How they are different from little boys and need special protection. He told them of his own daughter and the special bond that exists between father and daughter, a bond that could not be explained and should not be tampered with.”
― John Grisham, quote from A Time to Kill

“One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of Creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift, but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument that life did not just happen.”
― Charles Frazier, quote from Cold Mountain

“––Querida, no pienses en cosas tristes. Tengamos esperanzas en cosas mejores. Animémonos con la idea de que puedo sobrevivirte.”
― Jane Austen, quote from The Complete Novels

“And I remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation… For he argued thus; that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated… …he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long.”
― Jonathan Swift, quote from Gulliver's Travels

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.