Mitch Horowitz > Quotes

“As I said, I decided to try an experiment: Right now, from within my perception of my current circumstances, and from within the starkness of this realization, I determined to conceive and focus on what I would tell—and what I have told—my younger self, and live with the consequences. Here is what I wrote down: Immediately disassociate from destructive people and forces, if not physically then ethically—and watch for the moment when you can do so physically. Use every means to improve your mental acuity. Every sacrifice of empty leisure or escapism for study, industry, and growth is a fee paid to personal freedom. Train the body. Grow physically strong. Reduce consumption. You will be strengthened throughout your being. Seek no one’s approval through humor, servility, or theatrics. Be alone if necessary. But do not compromise with low company. At the earliest possible point, learn meditation (i.e., Transcendental Meditation), yoga, and martial arts (select good teachers). Go your own way—literally. Walk/bike and don’t ride the bus or in a car, except when necessary. Do so in all weather: rain, snow, etc. Be independent physically and you will be independent in other ways. Learn-study-rehearse. Pursue excellence. Or else leave something alone. Go to the limit in something or do not approach it. Starve yourself of the compulsion to derive your sense of wellbeing from your perception of what others think of you. Do this as an alcoholic avoids a drink or an addict a needle. It will be agonizing at first, since you may have no other perception of self; but this, finally, is the sole means of experiencing Self. Does this kind of advice, practicable at any time of life, really alter or reselect the perceived past, and, with it, the future? I intend to find out. You”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“The principle of positive thinking is simplicity itself. Picture an outcome, dwell on it in your thoughts and feelings, and unseen agencies—whether metaphysical or psychological—will supposedly come to your aid. Seen in this way, the mind is a causative force.”
― Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

“Practicality and protest go hand in hand. The revolution does not solve my problems next Thursday. For that, I need help that conforms to the boundaries we currently live in, while fighting to expand them. After all these years of the American left wandering in the wilderness, does this really require restating?”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“the data emerging from the quantum physics field suggests some vital, not-yet-understood verity about how the mind interplays with the surrounding world.”
― Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

“The reader of almost any motivational or success-oriented book has urgent needs, often financial. But the dedicated seeker--the person whose questions are persistent and ever deepening--will inevitably find that the quest for a "better way" in material affairs broadens to include the meaning and nature of all of life. The sincere search for a "better way" leads to questions of purpose and existence.”
― Mitch Horowitz

“A young man asked Socrates how he could get wisdom. Socrates replied, “Come with me.” He took the lad to a river, pushed the boy’s head under the water, held it there until the boy was gasping for air, then relaxed and released his head. When the boy regained his composure, the teacher asked, “What did you desire most when you were under water?” “I wanted air,” said the boy. Socrates told him, “When you want wisdom as much as you wanted air, you will receive it.”
― Mitch Horowitz, Miracle: The Ideas of Neville Goddard

“I challenge you: Select one sacred or ethical book. Live by its principles for nine months. Dedicate yourself to its ideal with total commitment and unreserved abandon. Attempt, for a time, to live a principle-based life, as James Allen did. See what happens.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“There is nothing to change but our concept of self. As soon as we succeed in transforming self, our world will dissolve and reshape itself in harmony with that which our change affirms.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Ideal Realized: Practical Instructions From Neville Goddard

“Assume the state of the wish fulfilled. Live from the end. Live from the state of your wish fulfilled.”
― Mitch Horowitz, Magician of the Beautiful: An Introduction to Neville Goddard

“Fawn Brodie observed that Westerners traditionally “demanded personality rather than diplomas from the men who called them to God.” Metaphysical teachers journeying from the east in the twentieth century found that they faced little scrutiny concerning educational credentials. Science of Mind’s Ernest Holmes was a playground instructor and purchasing agent for Venice, California. The scribe of the Masters of the Far East, Baird T. Spalding, was a gold prospector. William Dudley Pelley, who spent “seven minutes in eternity,” was a screenwriter. Psychiana’s Frank B. Robinson was a druggist. Levi Dowling, author of The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, was a homeopathic healer. Spencer Lewis, founder of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), was a commercial illustrator. These were entirely self-made religious leaders. But this is not to say that they were less than able. The occult denizens of the twentieth century, particularly those who found audiences on the West Coast, were extremely capable and often displayed an admirable fluidity to shatter the bonds of social position that might have held back earlier generations. Occultists”
― Mitch Horowitz, Occult America: White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of OurNation

“A dramatic turn in how the Western world came to view the mind played out in Maine in 1833. This development hinged upon the experience of a simple and extremely influential man: a New England clockmaker named Phineas P. Quimby. That year, quietly and with little forethought, Quimby embarked on a psychological experiment that formed the germination of the positive-thinking outlook.”
― Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

“Peer into any corner of current American life, and you’ll find the positive-thinking outlook. From the mass-media ministries of evangelists such as Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, and T.D. Jakes to the millions-strong audiences of Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Mehmet Oz, from the motivational bestsellers and seminars of the self-help movement to myriad twelve-step programs and support groups, from the rise of positive psychology, mind-body therapies, and stress-reduction programs to the self-affirmative posters and pamphlets found on walls and racks in churches, human-resources offices, medical suites, and corporate corridors, this one idea—to think positively—is metaphysics morphed into mass belief. It is the ever-present, every-man-and-woman wisdom of our time. It forms the foundation of business motivation, self-help, and therapeutic spirituality, including within the world of evangelism. Its influence has remade American religion from being a salvational force to also being a healing one.”
― Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

“So to recap the formula: First, clarify a sincere and deeply felt desire. Second, enter a state of relaxed immobility, bordering on sleep. Third, enact a mental scene that contains the assumption and feeling of your wish fulfilled. Run the little drama over and over in your mind until you experience a sense of fulfillment. Then resume your life. Evidence of your achievement will unfold at the right moment in your outer experience.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“Wattles wrote of him: Mr. Debs reverences humanity. No appeal for help is ever made to him in vain. No one receives from him an unkind or censorious word. You cannot come into his presence without being made sensible of his deep and kindly personal interest in you. Every person, be he millionaire, grimy workingman, or toil worn woman, receives the radiant warmth of a brotherly affection that is sincere and true. No ragged child speaks to him on the street without receiving instant and tender recognition. Debs loves men. This has made him the leading figure in a great movement, the beloved hero of a million hearts, and will give him a deathless name.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“The common denominator in all placebo experiments is the presence of hopeful expectancy. Whether this arrives through moral support, credible encouragement, education, religious belief, anticipation of reward, or a combination, the arousal of expectancy is the catalyzing event. Belief is the fee of actualization.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“One of the ironies of twenty-first-century politics is how the nationalistic, anti-immigration activists of the Tea Party often extol Reagan as their hero. However passionately Reagan favored tax cutting or getting rid of “government waste,” his outlook was fundamentally globalist and even a touch utopian.”
― Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life

“Stated in another way, every act and every thought you release modifies your own character in exact conformity with the nature of the act or thought, and your character is a sort of center of magnetic attraction, which attracts to you the people and conditions that harmonize with it. You cannot indulge in an act toward another person without having first created the nature of that act in your own thought, and you cannot release a thought without planting the sum and substance and nature of it in your own subconscious mind, there to become a part and parcel of your own character.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path … This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies … You can form other organizations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set man absolutely, unconditionally free.”
― Mitch Horowitz, Modern Occultism: History, Theory, and Practice

“if you recede into laziness, procrastination, dishonesty, exaggeration, or entitlement, the circle of productivity will correspondingly recede and so will the flow of finances to you. (And note that the things I’ve just mentioned are usually forms of fear.)”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“Can a person by holding certain thoughts create wealth? Yes, he can. A man by holding certain thoughts—if he knows the Law that relates effect and cause on the mental plane—can actually create wealth by the character of thoughts he entertains.” But, she added, such thought “must be supplemented by courageous action.” Never omit that.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“John Milton put it this way in Paradise Lost: “The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”
― Mitch Horowitz, Miracle: The Ideas of Neville Goddard

“We’re often told that you should never give up on your dreams, and I agree with that—but at the same time your dreams must not be idle or fantastical, and they must employ powers that are within your reach.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“Is everything else in your life secondary to this? Then write it down as your goal.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“Procrastination and fear are the same. The best way to approach procrastination is to first acknowledge it as fear.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Habits: The Secret of Turning Your Moments into Miracles

“I think it’s vital to resort to prayer—in a direct appeal to the Higher—when we feel incapable of mustering a feeling-state of fulfillment or the ability to use our minds constructively.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“In the period since I wrote that sum, I have listed another sum yet further off in the future. As I am writing these words, certain unforeseeable forms of income have flowed to me in considerable amounts, and I’ve turned away other offers for reasons of preference and time management.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“You must know exactly what you want to accomplish, and you must feel it passionately, even obsessively. You must be willing to turn aside everything and everyone who doesn’t contribute to your realization of that aim.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“In short, it involves saying a traditional Rosary prayer in two cycles: first, in petition of your request for 27 days, and second, in thanksgiving for another 27 days, for a total 54 days.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“It begins with one absolutely dedicated goal.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality

“Why does the listing of a sum and date make any difference? Well, it’s far more than just jotting down a number and date. You must have that sum and deadline firmly in mind and fully embrace them as goals. It makes you honest and focused about what you desire. The sum should be believably attainable to you. It must be inwardly persuasive. There are always opportunities to go further—but be reasonable at first so that you do not pit the faculties of logic in opposition to your goal.”
― Mitch Horowitz, The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality