raising awareness blueprint quotes

Make Seattle Happy Report: A Blueprint for Raising

Awareness in Your Community about the importance of happiness as a guide for the future of our nation, neighborhoods

and personal life

QUOTES

Is happiness the business of government?

Is happiness important?

A few quotes...

To those who say this sounds like a distraction from the serious business of government, I say finding out what will improve lives and acting on it is the serious business of government.

We'll continue to measure gross domestic product. But it is high time we admitted that, taken on its own, GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country's progress.

David CameronPrime Minister of Great Britain

How happy are you? How happy is your city? HappyCounts.org

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

- Robert Kennedy


When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

– John Lennon


“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the only legitimate object of good government.” Thomas Jefferson


“The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.” Thomas Jefferson


“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. ” Thomas JeffersonThe Declaration of Independence



“Happiness of society is the end of government.” John Adams


“The aggregate happiness of the society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government…” George Washington


“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Aristotle

Make Seattle Happy: A Blueprint for Raising Awareness in Your Community.

Please use these materials to raise awareness about the importance of happiness and well-being, the happiness movement and the aim of a new economic paradigm. These materials may be used or reproduced for any non-commercial use. For more information, inquiries or comments, please email [email protected] or visit happycounts.org Report compiled by: Laura Musikanski, JD, MBAEditing team: Eldan Goldenberg, James BradburyCopyright © The Happiness Initiative 2013

raising awareness blueprint quotes

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