quote · Legacy record
I have devoted much of my life to studying, writing, and lecturing about the subject of happiness. In particular, I have advocated that people act as happy as possible even when they do not feel happy. This is, I believe, both a moral obligation to all those who are in our lives—it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them—and a particularly effective way to increase our own happiness, since acting happy elevates one’s mood. This is hardly controversial—in just about every area of life, human beings deeply influence how they feel by how they act. As a rule, those who object to this idea of acting contrary to how one feels are people on the Left—because on the Left, feelings are sacrosanct.
I have devoted much of my life to studying, writing, and lecturing about the subject of happiness. In particular, I have advocated that people act as happy as possible even when they do not feel happy. This is, I believe, both a moral obligation to all those who are in our lives—it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them—and a particularly effective way to increase our own happiness, since acting happy elevates one’s mood. This is hardly controversial—in just about every area of life, human beings deeply influence how they feel by how they act. As a rule, those who object to this idea of acting contrary to how one feels are people on the Left—because on the Left, feelings are sacrosanct.
Approximate author period: c. 1948 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Dennis Prager
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- Approximate author period: c. 1948 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1948; activity date not established; Wikidata Q982175, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q982175 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 24851; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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