Ellen Langer Quotes

Virtually all of life's ills boil down to mindlessness. If you can understand someone else's perspective, then there's no reason to be angry at them, envy them, steal from them.

There is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there's always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable.

Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.

Out of an intuitive experience of the world comes a continuous flow of novel distinctions. Purely rational understanding, on the other hand, serves to confirm old mindsets, rigid categories. Artists, who live in the same world as the rest of us, steer clear of these mindsets to make us see things anew.

Knowing what is and knowing what can be are not the same thing.

Mindfulness is the cure for everything; the essence of being alive.

My ideas sometimes get the better of me. Before I clearly explain one, another comes to mind and seizes my attention ...

We should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace a psychology of possibility.

Certainty is a cruel mindset.

Stress is a function not of events, but of our view of those events.

Boredom can be just another construct of the mind....There is always something new to notice.

What we have learned to look for in a situation determines mostly what we see.

Once you've seen there is another perspective, you can never not see that there's another point of view.

People are at their most mindful when they are at play. If we find ways of enjoying our work blurring the lines between work and play the gains will be greater.

Out of the questions of students come most of the creative ideas and discoveries.

In the perspective of every person lies a lens through which we may better understand ourselves.