Eric Weiner Quotes

what doesn't kill you not only make you stronger, but also more honest.

[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.

If you walk into a coffee shop in 1903 Vienna, you might find at the same table the artist Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky and possibly Adolf Hitler, who lived in Vienna at the same time.

When you're stuck on something creatively, you can't solve a problem, you go to a coffee shop.

We help other people because we can, or because it makes us feel good, not because we're counting on some future payback. There is a word for this; love.

God is not an exclamation point. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called “human grace.” Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of this.

Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.

I've always been a big believer in the power of place. I believe that where we are affects who we are when it comes to happiness, spirituality, economics and creative genius.

A confused mind is one that is open to the possibility of change.

I've always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is fining the right corner.

..there is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.

a simple question to identify your true home: where do you want to die?

You look around the world at geniuses, and they don't appear randomly, they appear in genius clusters. Athens in 50 BC, Florence 1500, Silicon Valley today. This is not a coincidence.

Someone like Mozart moves from Salzburg to Vienna, where all of the sudden he finds this musical city that is not only asking for music, it's demanding music of him.

When you drink coffee, you become very focused, and in fact, the key to creative genius is to be defocused.

Believing in everything looks a lot like believing in nothing.

I would love to think there is a direct relationship between coffee and genius, but they've done studies, and if anything, caffeine probably makes you a little less creative.

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

People don't go to Starbucks for the coffee - of that I'm pretty sure - they go for the atmosphere, they go for the 70 decibels, they go for the Starbucks effect.

What is the ideal audio atmosphere for creativity and it turns out it is not complete silence, and it is not a very loud atmosphere, it's something about 70 decibels.

The coffeehouse is good for genius, and the Viennese coffeehouse is a classic case. Freud had his favorite coffee shop, and so did Gustav Klimt.

Some places are like family. They annoy us to no end, especially during the holidays, but we keep coming back for more because we know, deep in our hearts, that our destinies are intertwined.

Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.

A Mozart symphony is very much like a Pixar movie - in the sense that Pixar movies are hugely successful because they operate on several levels at the same time.

Reason cannot account for those moments in life that "bewilder the intellect yet utterly quiet the heart," as G.K. Chesterton observed.

Joseph Campbell, who when asked what spiritual practice he followed said, "I underline books." Me too.

There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

It's not what we believe that makes us happy but the act of believing. In anything.

Where we are is vital to who we are.

Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.

We can't love a place or a person if we always have one foot out the door.

Philosophy is like wine. There are good years and bad years but, in general, the older the better.

To describe yourself as an entrepreneur or a disrupter is as meaningless as describing yourself as an athlete or a thinker. Really? What sports do you play? What do you think about?

You can be as good as Rembrandt, but if no one discovers you, you will only be a genius in theory.

Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it.

First of all, nothing good ever came from a beanbag chair. Nothing. I am speaking from personal experience.

Ideas are like bananas. That bananas grow only in tropical regions doesn't make them any less delicious in Scandinavia.

The point is, the "best" technology or idea doesn't always prevail. Sometimes chance and the law of unintended consequences win out.

Yes, failure is part of the mix, he says, but it is a means, not an end. If you fail repeatedly, and in the same manner, you're an idiot, not a genius.

The act of underlining always contains an element of self-recognition.

Nothing kills creativity faster than a wall.

All genuinely creative ideas are initially met with rejection, since they necessarily threaten the status quo. An enthusiastic reception for a new idea is a sure sign that it is not original.