RD BK BGENCY X"Progress isn't driven by intelligence or wealth, but by agency: the power to author your own future."

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Key Quotes on Agency & Human Progress

Selected from the core thesis and foundational works of Martin Seligman

1. On the Definition of Agency

"Agency is one's belief that he or she can change the world for the better. It has three components: Efficacy, the belief that one is capable of making a difference; Optimism, the belief that the efficacy you have now will hold in the future; and Imagination, the range of scenarios and situations that one's agency holds over."

2. On Optimism vs. Passive Hope

"Optimism is my estimate that I can reach [a goal] in the future. Imagination is my representation of the range of goals available to me. Efficacy causes us to try."

3. On the True Engine of Human Progress

"When cultures, religions, and epochs have the belief that they can make a positive difference in the world, that's when progress, creativity, and innovation occur. Conversely, when people have the belief... that they can't make a positive difference, that's when stagnation has occurred in history."

4. On Overcoming Helplessness & Building Well-Being

"The skills of becoming happy turn out to be almost entirely different from the skills of not being sad, not being anxious, or not being angry. Curing the negatives does not produce the positives."

5. On Shaping the Future

"We are not prisoners of the past... We, whom the cosmos shaped for a billion years to fit this place, know it failed. For we can reshape, reach an arm through the bars, and, Escher-like, pull ourselves out."