Daniel Goleman Quotes

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.

People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for the failure, ascribing it to some characteristic they are helpless to change.

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

Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a primal task of leadership.

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

Gifted leadership occurs when heart and head—feeling and thought—meet. These are the two winds that allow a leader to soar.

For the high achievers, studying gave them the pleasing, absorbing challenge o flow 40 percent of the hours they spent at it. But for low achievers, studying produced flow only 16 percent of the time; more often that not, it yielded anxiety, with the demands outreaching their abilities.

Life without passion would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself.