Quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Yet a culture could not survive long unless all of its members paid attention to at least a few of the same things. In fact it could be said that a culture exists when the majority of people agree that painting X deserves more attention than painting Y, or idea X deserves more thought than idea Y.

It was because the leading citizens, as well as the common people, were so seriously concerned with the outcome of their work that the artists were pushed to perform beyond their previous limits.

creativity must, in the last analysis, be seen not as something happening within a person but in the relationships within a system.

Sometimes fields that are not competent in the domain take control over it.

creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation

In contemporary preliterate societies this knowledge is so deeply ingrained that a person who likes to be alone is assumed to be a witch, for a normal person would not choose to leave the company of others unless forced to do so.

A leading philosopher in our study maintains that if a young person wants to learn philosophy these days, he or she would be better advised to become immersed in the domain directly and avoid the field altogether: "I'd tell him to read the great books of philosophy. And I would tell him not to do graduate study at any university. I think all philosophy departments are no good. They are all terrible.

You can drive a car all your life without knowing how the engine works, because the goal of driving is to get from one place to the next, regardless how it's done. But to live without understanding how we think, why we feel the way we feel, what directs our actions is to miss what is most important in life, which is the experience itself.

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives… most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity… [and] when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

It also seems true that centers of creativity tend to be at the intersection of different cultures, where beliefs, lifestyles, and knowledge mingle and allow individuals to see new combinations of ideas with greater ease. In cultures that are uniform and rigid, it takes a greater investment of attention to achieve new ways of thinking. In other words, creativity is more likely in places where new ideas require less effort to be perceived.

Lack of true friends is often the main complaint of people confronting an emotional crisis in the second half of life.

Artists agree that a painter cannot make a creative contribution without looking, and looking, and looking at previous art, and without knowing what other artists and critics consider good and bad art. Writers say that you have to read, read, and read some more, and know what the critics' criteria for good writing are, before you can write creatively yourself.

Variety and frequency of sexual encounters have taken precedence over the depth and intensity of the relationship in which they are embedded. It is ironic that on this issue the traditional teachings of the churches are closer to a scientific position than the up-to-date beliefs of the populace, for an evolutionary approach confirms that the original purpose of sexuality is making children and binding the parental couple.

It's fun to come up with an idea, and if nobody wants it, I don't give a damn. It's just fun to come up with something strange and different.

Now, people don't like this explanation. They say, "What? You think of junk?" I say, "Yup. You must." You cannot a priori think only of good ideas.

Yeah, there's a trick I pull for this. When I have a job to do like that, where you have to do something that takes a lot of effort, slowly, I pretend I'm in jail. Don't laugh. And if I'm in jail, time is of no consequence. In other words, if it takes a week to cut this, it'll take a week. What else have I got to do? I'm going to be here for twenty years. See? This is a kind of mental trick.

Albert Einstein once wrote that art and science are two of the greatest forms of escape from reality that humans have devised.

Normal people are rarely original, but they are sometimes bizarre.

Thus the creative process is less linear than recursive. How many iterations it goes through, how many loops are involved, how many insights are needed, depends on the depth and breadth of the issues dealt with.

Openness to experience, a fluid attention that constantly processes events in the environment, is a great advantage for recognizing potential novelty.

person also needs access to a domain. This depends to a great extent on luck. Being born to an affluent family, or close to good schools, mentors, and coaches obviously is a great advantage. It does no good to be extremely intelligent and curious if I cannot learn what it takes to operate in a given symbolic system.

It is true that since time immemorial those who paid another person's wages were not particularly concerned with the well-being of their employees. It takes extraordinary inner resources to achieve flow while digging a mile below ground in a South African mine, or cutting sugarcane on a sweltering plantation. Even in our enlightened days, with all the emphasis on "human resources," management is all too often disinterested in how employees experience work.

If one does not use the mind to its fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess.

without disinterested interest life is uninteresting.