Quotes by Martin Seligman

About Martin Seligman:

Martin E. P. is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. Since the late 90's, Seligman has been an avid promoter within the scientific community for the field of positive psychology. His theory of learned helplessness is popular among scientific and clinical psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Seligman as the 31st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
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We have children to pursue other elements of well-being. We want meaning in life. We want relationships.

Martin Seligman

One of my signature strengths is the love of learning, and by teaching, I have built it into the fabric of my life. I try to do some of it every day.

Martin Seligman

When we take time to notice the things that go right - it means we're getting a lot of little rewards throughout the day.

Martin Seligman

If you were an optimistic teen, then you'll be an optimist at 80. People's reactions to bad events are highly stable over a half century or more.

Martin Seligman

One of the things psychologists used to say was that if you are depressed, anxious or angry, you couldn't be happy. Those were at opposite ends of a continuum. I believe that you can be suffering or have a mental illness and be happy - just not in th...

Martin Seligman

It is the combination of reasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat that leads to success.

Martin Seligman

If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago.

Martin Seligman

P is positive emotion, E is engagement, R is relationships, M is meaning and A is accomplishment. Those are the five elements of what free people chose to do. Pretty much everything else is in service of one of or more of these goals. That's the huma...

Martin Seligman

Positive psychology is not remotely intended to replace therapy or pharmacology. So when depressed, anxious or in panic or post-traumatic stress disorder, I am all for therapies that will work. Positive psychology is another arrow in the quiver of pu...

Martin Seligman

I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to z...

Martin Seligman

If the point of the inner-child movement is to cure adult problems, it doesn't work. Reliving childhood traumas gives you a nice afterglow, but it lasts only for hours or days. There is no evidence it changes adult problems.

Martin Seligman

It's my belief that, since the end of the Second World War, psychology has moved too far away from its original roots, which were to make the lives of all people more fulfilling and productive, and too much toward the important, but not all-important...

Martin Seligman

Author Bio

  • NameMartin Seligman
  • DescriptionAmerican psychologist and writer
  • BornAugust 12, 1942
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPsychologist; Bridge Player; Writer
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship