Sheena Iyengar Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

In order to 'hold fast' to something, one must allow oneself to be held to something. That commitment may be one of the hardest things to practice in a world of so much choice.

Sheena Iyengar
A clear right answer and the opportunity to change the options? This is the chooser's dream.

Sheena Iyengar
We are sculptors finding ourselves in the evolution of choosing, not in the results of choice.

Sheena Iyengar
A person of good character was one who acted in accordance with the expectations of his community

Sheena Iyengar
In reality, many choices are between things that are not that much different. The value of choice depends on our ability to perceive differences between the options.

Sheena Iyengar
We have the ability to create choice by altering our interpretations of the world.

Sheena Iyengar
What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. —Archibald MacLeish

Sheena Iyengar
When we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.

Sheena Iyengar
The great artist Michelangelo claimed that his sculptures were already present in the stone, and all he had to do was carve away everything else.
Our understanding of identity is often similar: Beneath the many layers of shoulds and shouldn'ts that cover us, there lies a constant, single, true self that is just waiting to be discovered.

Sheena Iyengar
What you see determines how you interpret the world, which in turn influences what you expect of the world and how you expect the story of your life to unfold.

Sheena Iyengar
Choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, ourselves.

Sheena Iyengar
When people are given a moderate number of options (4 to 6) rather than a large number (20 to 30), they are more likely to make a choice, are more confident in their decisions, and are happier with what they choose.

Sheena Iyengar
One could even argue that we have a duty to create and pass on stories about choice because once a person knows such stories, they can't be taken away from him. He may lose his possessions, his home, his loved ones, but if he holds on to a story about choice, he retains the ability to practice choice.

Sheena Iyengar
The quality of health care continues to improve, and people are living longer, but these developments mean that we're likely to eventually find ourselves in a situation in which we're forced to make difficult choices about our parents, other loved ones, or even ourselves that ultimately boil down to calculations of worth and value.

Sheena Iyengar
If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e. more and more choice, we're likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don't do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be.

Sheena Iyengar