Baumeister Quotes & Sayings

someone who fulfils a role in society as a producer of artefacts and activities which confront death by telling us we are alive. — Declan McGonagle

Willpower is what separates us from the animals. It's the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation - do what's right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It's central, in fact, to civilisation. — Roy Baumeister

People with high but unstable self-esteem exhibit the greatest hostility. — Roy Baumeister

However you define success - a happy family, good friends, a satisfying career, robust health, financial security, the freedom to pursue your passions - it tends to be accompanied by a couple of qualities. — Roy F. Baumeister

Evil is not likely to result where people firmly believe that ends do not justify the means. — Roy Baumeister

But the eventual results were too intriguing to ignore. When people were placed in front of a mirror, or told that their actions were being filmed, they consistently changed their behavior. These self-conscious people worked harder at laboratory tasks. They gave more valid answers to questionnaires (meaning that their answers jibed more closely with their actual behavior). They were more consistent in their actions, and their actions were also more consistent with their values. — Roy F. Baumeister

Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned. — Steven Pinker

She read on and on, enraptured. She could not understand half, but it excited her oddly, like words in a foreign language sung to a beautiful air. She followed the poem vaguely as she followed the Latin in her missal, guessing, inventing meanings for herself, intoxicated by the mere rush of words. And yet she felt she did understand, not with her eyes or her brain, but with some faculty she did not even know she possessed. — Antonia White

The best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up. — Roy F. Baumeister

Baumeister's group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. In — Daniel Kahneman

Most of the problems that plague our society - addiction, overeating, crime, domestic violence, prejudice, debt, unwanted pregnancy, educational failure, underperformance at school and work, lack of savings, failure to exercise - are in some degree a failure of self-control. — Roy Baumeister

For most of us ... the problem is not a lack of goals but rather too many of them. — Roy Baumeister

Trophies should go to the winners. Self-esteem does not lead to success in life. Self-discipline and self-control do, and sports can help teach those. — Roy Baumeister

The societal pursuit of high self-esteem for everyone may literally end up doing considerable harm. — Roy Baumeister

I'm committed to fulfilling my promises to my people, including my pledge to engage in constructive interaction with the world. — Hassan Rouhani

The most surprising discovery made by Baumeister's group shows, as he puts it, that the idea of mental energy is more than a mere metaphor. The nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and effortful mental activity appears to be especially expensive in the currency of glucose. — Daniel Kahneman

Willpower is a muscle that can be strengthened. — Roy Baumeister

The bold implication of this idea is that the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose, and Baumeister and his colleagues have confirmed this hypothesis in several experiments. — Daniel Kahneman

The basic idea here is that for most people will power is a limited resource: if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, will power is like a muscle: overuse temporarily exhausts it. — James Surowiecki

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is ample reason to question whether low self-esteem is to blame for violence. Think of the obnoxious, hostile, or bullying people you have known - were they humble, modest, and self-effacing? (That's mainly what low self-esteem is like.) Most of the aggressive people I have known were the opposite: conceited, arrogant, and often consumed with thoughts about how they were superior to everyone else. — Roy F. Baumeister

Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil. Evil exists primarily in the eye of the beholder, especially in the eye of the victim. — Roy F. Baumeister

Religion deals with the highest levels of meaning. As a result, it can interpret each life or each event in a context that runs from the beginning of time to future eternity. Religion is thus uniquely capable of offering high-level meaning to human life. Religion
may not always be the best way to make life meaningful, but it is probably the most reliable way. — Roy F. Baumeister

What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions. — Roy F. Baumeister

I've realised that at the top of the mountain, there's another mountain. — Andrew Garfield

I want to note that, historically, the make-up of the court has changed just as elected branches have change. — Sam Brownback

Researchers were surprised to find that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did ... people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work. — Roy Baumeister

Getting things down to routines and habits takes willpower at first but in the long run conserves willpower," says Baumeister. — Laura Vanderkam

The best advice I ever heard is, don't take anyone else's advice." There's power in this because it puts you in the conductor's seat, right at "the controls" in your life. It doesn't mean you should stop seeking information or outside input, it just means that you're the one driving. You choose your own destination. — Sherry Argov

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans. — Roy Baumeister

Baumeister's point is that we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through what he calls "the myth of pure evil." Of this myth's many parts, the most important are that evildoers are pure in their evil motives (they have no motives for their actions beyond sadism and greed); victims are pure in their victimhood (they did nothing to bring about their victimization); and evil comes from outside and is associated with a group or force that attacks our group. Furthermore, anyone who questions the application of the myth, who dares muddy the waters of moral certainty, is in league with evil. — Jonathan Haidt