A Quote by Mason Cooley

Prudence does not make people happy; it merely deprives them of the excitement of being constantly in trouble. — © Mason Cooley
Prudence does not make people happy; it merely deprives them of the excitement of being constantly in trouble.
When people get frustrated, it's when they feel they are living in a context that deprives them of dignity, deprives them of justice and deprives them of the freedom to realize their full potential, and that to me is what the Arab awakening was all about. I think it applied to every country, and so I have been an unmitigated supporter of it.
Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
The market is like a machine that needs to be constantly excited. It needs to constantly produce wealth and more excitement. There are some leading players who are always there before everyone else, and they set market trends, they make people safe about the excitement. Of course, those who buy it first are the first to drop it. It's an ongoing game.
The foreman today does not merely deal with trouble, he forestalls trouble. In fact, we don't think much of a foreman who is always dealing with trouble; we feel that if he is doing his job properly, there won't be so much trouble.
You should never value people according to the size of their bank balances. Being poor does not make them bad and being rich does not make them good
I think you write only out of a great trouble. A trouble of excitement, a trouble of enlargement, a trouble of displacement in yourself.
Envy, envy eats them alive. If you had money, they’d envy you that. But since you don’t, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.
The step between prudence and paranoia is short and steep. Prudence wears a seat belt. Paranoia avoids cars. Prudence washes with soap. Paranoia avoids human contact. Prudence saves for old age. Paranoia hoards even trash. Prudence prepares and plans, paranoia panics. Prudence calculates the risk and takes the plunge. Paranoia never enters the water.
Being onstage and performing, the high of that, and people coming to see you, and getting to make them laugh - that's what gets me hyped up. It's a nervous excitement.
People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble. No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it. Q.E.D. - No two happy people are happy in the same way. . . . Every day brilliant people, people smarter than I, wallow in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts - recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands.
The sad thing is most people have to check with someone before they do the things that make them happy. We're all passing through; the least we can do is be happy, and the only way to do that is by being selfish.
As the excitement of the game increases, prudence is sure to diminish.
People don't understand what happiness is, so they have an idea of what will make them happy, but it never does.
The way we still essentializ, we're constantly essentializing people as merely poor, or merely other, and in the end you can't have a relationship with people. I think the biggest job of adulthood is to learn to imagine other people complexly.
Does is make the dragon happy?" Matt asked. "Does is make the dragon happy?" echoed Tam Lin. "Why, I never thought of that. I suppose it does. What other pleasure can a creature have whose life consists of making everyone else miserable?
If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.
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