Hans Selye Quotations

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.

Its not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.

Man should not try to avoid stress any more than he would shun food, love or exercise

If you want to live a long life, focus on making contributions .

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older.

Fight for your highest attainable aim/ But never put up resistance in vain.

Almost no germ is unconditionally dangerous to man; its disease-producing ability depends upon the body's resistance.

I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled by a mould falling on it, and I propose to recognize the possibility of extracting an antibiotic from this mould.'

The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement.

The builder of the best racing car is not necessarily its best driver.

Gratitude is the most important of all human emotions.

The element of chance in basic research is overrated. Chance is a lady who smiles only upon those few who know how to make her smile.

Indeed, not all attacks-especially the bitter and ridiculing kind leveled at Darwin-are offered in good faith, but for practical purposes it is good policy to assume that they are.

Even after the greatest defeats, the depressing thought of being a failure is best combated by taking stock of all your past achievements.

Unlock your natural drives by doing what you enjoy.

Random search for data on ... off-chance is hardly scientific. A questionnaire on 'Intellectual Immoralities' was circulated by a well-known institution. 'Intellectual Immorality No. 4' read: 'Generalizing beyond one's data'. [Wilder Dwight] Bancroft asked whether it would not be more correct to word question no. 4 'Not generalizing beyond one's data.

Complete freedom from stress is death

My advice to any young person at the beginning of their career is to try to look for the mere outlines of big things with their fresh, untrained and unprejudiced mind.

Leaders are leaders only as long as they have the respect and loyalty of their followers.

What makes me so certain that the natural human lifespan is far in excess of the actual one is this. Among all my autopsies (and I have performed over 1000), I have never seen a person who died of old age. In fact, I do not think that anyone has ever died of old age yet. We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body.

Stress, in addition to being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of itself.

It is generally assumed that recurrent miscarriage may be due to progesterone deficiency, hypothyroidism or vitamin E deficiency and should be treated in theses cases with progesterone, thyroid extracts and vitamin E respectively. In theory, thyroid therapy appears to be the least well-founded, especially when applied to women without manifest signs of hypothyroidism, yet among the measures mentioned above it is most frequently claimed to have been successful.

Nothing erases unpleasant thoughts more effectively than conscious concentration on pleasant ones.

To remain healthy a man must have some goal, some purpose in life that he can respect and be proud to work for.

Who would enjoy a life of no runs, no hits, no errors?

To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great dream.

Gratitude conserves the vital energies of a person more than any other attitude tested.

Stress is the spice of life.

To be totally without stress is to be dead.

Stress is not necessarily something bad it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental.

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it not, and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. We all had this priceless talent when we were young. But as time goes by, many of us lose it. The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement. It is the essence of his being.

The healthiest of all human emotions is gratitude.

Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness.