Greg Lukianoff > Quotes

“From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Grant offers the following four rules for productive disagreement:10 Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict. Argue as if you’re right, but listen as if you’re wrong (and be willing to change your mind). Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person’s perspective. Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you’ve learned from them.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“The notion that a university should protect all of its students from ideas that some of them find offensive is a repudiation of the legacy of Socrates, who described himself as the “gadfly” of the Athenian people. He thought it was his job to sting, to disturb, to question, and thereby to provoke his fellow Athenians to think through their current beliefs, and change the ones they could not defend.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Argue as if you're right, but listen as if you're wrong (and be willing to change your mind). Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person's perspective. Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you've learned from them.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

“teaching kids that failures, insults, and painful experiences will do lasting damage is harmful in and of itself. Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“The nine in our list are based on a longer list in Robert Leahy, Stephen Holland, and Lata McGinn’s book, Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders. For more on CBT—how it works, and how to practice it—please see Appendix 1.) EMOTIONAL REASONING: Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” CATASTROPHIZING: Focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely. “It would be terrible if I failed.” OVERGENERALIZING: Perceiving a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” DICHOTOMOUS THINKING (also known variously as “black-and-white thinking,” “all-or-nothing thinking,” and “binary thinking”): Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” MIND READING: Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” LABELING: Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking). “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” NEGATIVE FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” BLAMING: Focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”11”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Being offended is an emotional state, not a substantive argument; we cannot afford to give it the power to stifle debate.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“there are just two activities that are significantly correlated with depression and other suicide-related outcomes (such as considering suicide, making a plan, or making an actual attempt): electronic device use (such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer) and watching TV. On the other hand, there are five activities that have inverse relationships with depression (meaning that kids who spend more hours per week on these activities show lower rates of depression): sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books and other print media, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“So what happens when students get the message that saying the wrong thing can get you in trouble? They do what one would expect: they talk to people they already agree with, keep their mouths shut about important topics in mixed company, and often don’t bother even arguing with the angriest or loudest person in the room (which is a problem even for the loud people, as they may not recognize that the reason why others are deferring to their opinions is not because they are obviously right).”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“Though often used interchangeably, the concept of freedom of speech and the First Amendment are not the same thing. While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press as they relate to duties of the state and state power, freedom of speech is a far broader idea that includes additional cultural values. These values incorporate healthy intellectual habits, such as giving the other side a fair hearing, reserving judgment, tolerating opinions that offend or anger us, believing that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and recognizing that even people whose points of view we find repugnant might be (at least partially) right.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Freedom from Speech

“...those in power often invoke civility to punish speech they dislike, but overlook the equally acid-tongued statements that are in agreement with their own assumptions.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“No one individual is immune to the criticism of others and none can claim to be above intellectual reproach. No one is omniscient or infallible, so we are all forced to defend our arguments with logic, evidence, and persuasion.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“As the sociologist Diana C. Mutz discovered in her book Hearing the Other Side (2006), those with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view, while those who have not graduated from high school can claim the most diverse discussion mates.19 In other words, those most likely to live in the tightest echo chambers are those with the highest level of education.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

“Rather than teaching students to be skeptical of confirmation bias, we appear to be teaching them to have an expectation of confirmation: a sense of entitlement to an environment in which their beliefs are not contradicted (at least not too harshly). Expectation of confirmation is yet another manifestation of the desire for intellectual comfort, and it is also likely to increase over time.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Freedom from Speech

“Taleb opens the book with a poetic image that should speak to all parents. He notes that wind extinguishes a candle but energizes a fire. He advises us not to be like candles and not to turn our children into candles: "You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“This is not a book about Millennials; indeed, Millennials are getting a bad rap these days, as many people erroneously attribute recent campus trends to them. This is a book about the very different attitudes toward speech and safety that spread across universities as the Millennials were leaving.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“vital that people who have survived violence become habituated to ordinary cues and reminders woven into the fabric of daily life.31 Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“While it is easy to see how this way of thinking, when brought to a college campus, could lead to requests for safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggression training, and bias response teams, it is difficult to see how this way of thinking could produce well-educated, bold, and open-minded college graduates.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“these self-righteous censors often construct a “hero narrative” about themselves in which they are morally pure crusaders who must protect society from the objectionable opinions of the unenlightened masses.”
― Greg Lukianoff, Freedom from Speech

“When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. MENG TZU (MENCIUS), fourth century BCE1”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“But efforts to protect kids from risk by preventing them from gaining experience— such as walking to school, climbing a tree, or using sharp scissors— are different. Such protections come with costs, as kids miss out on opportunities to learn skills, independence, and risk assessment.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“There is the moral dualism that sees good and evil as instincts within us between which we must choose. But there is also what I will call pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically . . . divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Mobs can rob good people of their conscience, particularly when participants wear masks (in a real mob) or are hiding behind an alias or avatar (in an online mob). Anonymity fosters deindividuation—the loss of an individual sense of self—which lessens self-restraint and increases one’s willingness to go along with the mob.73”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“But overprotection is just one part of a larger trend that we call problems of progress. This term refers to bad consequences produced by otherwise good social changes. It’s great that our economic system produces an abundance of food at low prices, but the flip side is an epidemic of obesity. It’s great that we can connect and communicate with people instantly and for free, but this hyperconnection may be damaging the mental health of young people. It’s great that we have refrigerators, antidepressants, air conditioning, hot and cold running water, and the ability to escape from most of the physical hardships that were woven into the daily lives of our ancestors back to the dawn of our species. Comfort and physical safety are boons to humanity, but they bring some costs, too. We adapt to our new and improved circumstances and then lower the bar for what we count as intolerable levels of discomfort and risk. By the standards of our great-grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point, even though these generational changes reflect real and positive progress. To repeat, we are not saying that the problems facing students, and young people more generally, are minor or “all in their heads.” We are saying that what people choose to do in their heads will determine how those real problems affect them. Our argument is ultimately pragmatic, not moralistic: Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised.”
― Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure