"Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile."
Read quote
11 likes
Pursuit Of Happiness quotes
Pursuit Of Happiness
129 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Pursuit Of Happiness
Browse quotes that often appear alongside pursuit of happiness — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Pursuit Of Happiness quotes (page 2 of 7)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"the right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right ... Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."
Read quote
9 likes
"The pursuit of happiness is an overview kind of thing. It's not in the Bill of Rights."
Read quote
9 likes
"July 4, 1776 was the historic day on which the representatives of three millions of people vocalized Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the world that they proposed to establish an independent nation on the theory that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Read quote
8 likes
"If there is an abiding theme in 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories."
Read quote
8 likes
"To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation."
Read quote
8 likes
"All unprejudiced persons objectively surveying the grim events in Bangla Desh since March 25 have recognized the revolt of 75 million people, a people who were forced to the conclusion that neither their life, nor their liberty, to say nothing of the possibility of the pursuit of happiness, was available to them."
Read quote
8 likes
"The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings."
Read quote
7 likes
"All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Read quote
7 likes
"Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of "fun," constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger "high." A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now."
Read quote
7 likes
"Don't ever let someone tell you, you can't do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it."
Read quote
7 likes
"Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness."
Read quote
7 likes
"That is our generation’s task - to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American."
Read quote
6 likes
"Our unalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blackburg and Santa Barbara, and from high schoolers at Columbine. And, and from first graders in Newtown, first graders."
Read quote
6 likes
"We believe, as our founders did, that 'the pursuit of happiness' depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government."
Read quote
6 likes
"All around the country, individuals are choosing to redefine their lives and the pursuit of happiness in ways much closer to the original notion put forth by our Founding Fathers. Their notion of the "pursuit of happiness" wasn't just about acquiring money and power, but about doing your part to add to the civic happiness of the community."
Read quote
6 likes
"People can't do something themselves, they want to tell you you can't do it. You want something, go get it."
Read quote
5 likes
"Justice means that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people."
Read quote
5 likes
"If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness."
Read quote
5 likes
"The pursuit of happiness is such a large of concept."
Read quote
5 likes