Maxwell Maltz > Quotes

“Times will change for the better when you change.”
― Maxwell Maltz

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

“You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

“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

“It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

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

“We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have no goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“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

“If you make friends with yourself, you'll never be alone.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

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

“It is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves, short-change ourselves, sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a superiority complex. People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority; their "superior" self is a fiction, a coverup, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity.”
― Maxwell Maltz, The New Psycho-Cybernetics: The Original Science of Self-Improvement and Success That Has Changed the Lives of 30 Million People

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

“Conscious effort inhibits and ‘jams’ the automatic creative mechanism.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

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

“You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search.”
― Maxwell Maltz

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

“The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognize your own worth.”
― Maxwell Maltz

“Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today”
― Maxwell Maltz

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

“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

“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

“Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the othe”
― Dr. Maxwell Maltz

“Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have "experienced" rather than what we have learned intellectually.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

“Do not tolerate for a minute the idea that you are prohibited from any achievement by the absence of in-born talent or ability. This is a lie of the grandest order, an excuse of the saddest kind.”
― Maxwell Maltz, New Psycho-Cybernetics

“The "Success-type" personality is composed of: S-ense of direction U—nderstanding C-ourage C-harity E-steem S-elf-Confidence S-elf-Acceptance.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“The most liberating of all thoughts is disregard or “disconcern” for what other people think. Famous mail-order impresario and entrepreneur J. Peterman wrote (in his autobiography Peterman Rides Again); “Once you realize that most people are keeping up appearances and putting on a show, their approval becomes less important.” Excessive concern over what other people think inhibits personality more than any other factor.”
― Maxwell Maltz, New Psycho-Cybernetics

“He must have a burning desire to solve the problem. But after he has defined the problem sees in his imagination the desired end result secured all the information and facts that he can then additional struggling fretting and worrying over it does not help but seems to hinder the solution.”
― Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life