Quotes from Daniel Goleman

The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.

Emotional 'literacy' implies an expanded responsibility for schools in helping to socialize children. This daunting task requires two major changes: that teachers go beyond their traditional mission and that people in the community become more involved with schools as both active participants in children's learning and as individual mentors.

The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy.

A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'

When I went on to write my next book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills.

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

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal.

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.

emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood

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.

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.

But the rational mind usually doesn't decide what emotions we "should" have !

When the eyes of a woman that a man finds attractive look directly at him, his brain secretes the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine - but not when she looks elsewhere.

Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and "proofs" all their own.

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.

out-of-control emotions can make smart people stupid.

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.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant," Albert Einstein once said. "We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway.

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.