Dan Buettner Quotations

Have fun, be active. Ride a bike instead of driving, for example.

The people you surround yourself with influence your behaviors, so choose friends who have healthy habits.

Select your friendships carefully. Gather people around you who will reinforce your lifestyle.

I know exactly what my values are and what I love to do. That's worth additional years right there. I say no to a lot of stuff that would be easy money but deviates from my meaning of life.

Inconvenience yourself: ditch the remote, the garage door opener, the leaf-blower; buy a bike, broom, rake, and snow shovel.

The newness effect of a new thing wears off in nine months to a year, but financial security can last a lifetime.

You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that's a good feeling.

The brutal reality about aging is that it has only an accelerator pedal. We have yet to discover whether a brake exists for people.

A long healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits.

The secret to longevity, as I see it, has less to do with diet, or even exercise, and more to do with the environment in which a person lives: social and physical. What do I mean by this? They live rewardingly inconvenient lives.

You have to know why you get up every morning.

Exercise, from a public health perspective, is an unmitigated failure. The world's longest-lived people live in environments that nudge them into more movement. They don't use power tools, they do their own yard work, they grow a garden.

People who are making it to 100 live in environments where they are regularly nudged into physical activity.

The luster of an experience can actually go up with time. So, learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language - those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come.

Black beans and soy beans are the cornerstones of longevity diets around the world.

I think we live in a culture that relentlessly pursues comfort. Ease is related to disease. We shouldn't always be fleeing hardship. Hardship also brings people together. We should welcome it.

I live on the water. I live in a neighborhood that's consummately connected to my neighbors. I bump into them every day. I can bike to work.

Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline - it works.

Having a purpose and knowing exactly what your values are will add additional years to your life.

Kids in a home with grandparents are healthier.

Of course, Minneapolis, we think, 'Oh well, it's cold there, lethally cold.' But the reality is you adapt to weather... Humans are consummately adaptable creatures.

The name of the game is to keep from pushing the accelerator pedal so hard that we speed up the aging process. The average American, however, by living a fast and furious lifestyle, pushes that accelerator too hard and too much.

The longest-lived people eat a plant-based diet. They eat meat but only as a condiment or a celebration. Nothing they eat has a plastic wrapper.

One of the big things I've learned is that there's an advantage to regular low-intensity activity.

Diet and supplements and exercise programs aren't what is achieving longevity. Having a faith-based community can add four to 14 years.

Serve yourself, put the food away, then eat.

Centenarians are still living near their children and feel loved and the expectation to love. Instead of being mere recipients of care, they are contributors to the lives of their families. They grow gardens to contribute vegetables, they continue to cook and clean.

We often think about happiness as trying to increase our joy, but it's also about decreasing our worry. So what you get for paying those high taxes is, if you're a parent thinking about putting your child through school, you don't have to worry about it, because all education through college is free.

I have always followed exactly what interests me and never really worried about the money. And when you think about it, to be able to travel the world... on an expense account and do exactly what interests you, it just doesn't get much better than that.

None of the longest-lived people ran marathons or pumped iron. They live exactly as their grandparents before them - surrounded by family and friends.

Drink without getting drunk Love without suffering jealousy Eat without overindulging Never argue And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave

Deepen your existing spiritual commitment.

It's hard to reach [the age of] 100. We're not programmed for longevity. We are programmed for something called procreative success.

Singapore is the happiest place in Asia

So learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language - those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come.

So setting up automatic savings plans, and buying insurance as opposed to buying a new thing. The newness effect of a new thing wears off in nine months to a year, but financial security can last a lifetime.

The more things for which you develop a fondness the richer the life you live.

A doctor may know more than a peasant, but a peasant and a doctor know more together.

True happiness involves the pursuit of worth goals; without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.

Life expectancy in America is about 79, we should be able to live to 92. Somewhere along the line, we're leaving 13 years on the table. So my quest is -- how do we get those extra 13 years? And how do we make those extra 13 years good years?

The happiest people in America socialize about seven hours a day,

If you’re eating vegetables you are probably pushing unhealthier food out of your diet.

Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.

Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile.

If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one’s existence, if one does not use the mind to it’s fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. True happiness involves the pursuit of worthy goals. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.

I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it's folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It's important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled and you will miss its beauty if you don't make the effort to do it now. Your life, eventually, is the same way.