Mark L > Mark's Quotes

“You make mistakes, mistakes don't make you”
― Maxwell Maltz

“If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment...For imagination sets the goal ‘picture’ which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of ‘will,’ as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.”
― Maxwell Maltz, The New Psycho-Cybernetics: The Original Science of Self-Improvement and Success That Has Changed the Lives of 30 Million People

“The ''self-image'' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one.”
― Maxwell Maltz, New Psycho-Cybernetics

“Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown -- but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present -- next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“We age not by years but by events and our emotional reactions to them.”
― Maxwell Maltz, New Psycho-Cybernetics

“Adopt the motto—"It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Conquest of Frustration

“Low self esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“If you intend to insist on justice in order to live a successful and happy life, you will not do so in this lifetime, on this planet.”
― Maxwell Maltz, New Psycho-Cybernetics

“The clay or putty-like material stays soft and malleable enough to do so many, many times. In his infinite wisdom, God manufactured the self-image of similar material, so it remains malleable throughout our entire lives. No one is ever too old, too jaded, too frightened, or too traumatized to “wet the clay” and begin remaking it as they imagine and desire.”
― Maxwell Maltz, New Psycho-Cybernetics

“Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem. When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy - period! Not happy "because of".”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live -- with your self-respect alive and growing.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle,” I told him. “A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It’s no wonder you feel shaky.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“Experimental and clinical psychologists have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an "actual" experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the “area of the possible.” The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, or enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even our humiliations, were necessary steps in the learning process. However, they were meant to be means to an end - and not an end in themselves. When they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we consciously dwell on the error, or consciously feel guilty about the error and keep berating ourselves because of it, then - unwittingly - the error or failure itself becomes the "goal" that is consciously held in imagination and memory.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“It doesn't matter who’s right but what's right.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“In expecting to grow “old” at a given age we may unconsciously set up a negative goal image for our Creative Mechanism to accomplish.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations, and talents (and not the symbols which the “Joneses” expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is “built that way,” he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function—as a goal striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“Within you, whoever you may be, regardless of how big a failure you may think yourself to be, is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs. Just as quickly as you can dehypnotize yourself from the ideas of “I can’t,” “I’m not worthy,” “I don’t deserve it,” and other self-limiting ideas.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“There are “standard” convictions which are strongly held by nearly everyone. These are (1) the feeling or belief that one is capable of doing his share, holding up his end of the log, exerting a certain amount of independence, and (2) the belief that there is “something” inside you which should not be allowed to suffer indignities.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
― Tom Robbins

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker