110+ Maxwell Maltz Quotes On Personality, Socialism And Death

Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of the best-selling book Psycho-Cybernetics. He was a pioneer in the fields of self-image psychology, and is credited with popularizing the idea of a "self-image". He developed techniques to help people overcome mental barriers and achieve success in their personal and professional lives. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Maxwell Maltz on personality, leadership, life.

Top 10 Maxwell Maltz Quotes

1. Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.
2. To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
3. 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.
4. Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.
5. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. We, whoever we are, must have a daily goal in our lives, no matter how small or great, to make that day mean something.
9. A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.
10. Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.

Maxwell Maltz Short Quotes

• If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
• Self-esteem is as necessary to the spirit as food is to the body.
• You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
• Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
• Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become
• When you believe you can... you can!
• Worry is one of the most destructive scourges of mankind.
• Fully 95 percent of our behavior, feeling, and response is habitual.
• Your automatic guidance system cannot guide you when you're stalled, “standing still”.
• The greatest miracle you can hope for is self-acceptance.

Maxwell Maltz Quotes About Personality

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

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk -- and to act. — Maxwell Maltz

Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel. — Maxwell Maltz

You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. — Maxwell Maltz

When a person has adequate self-esteem little slights offer no threat at all - they are simply "passed over" and ignored. Even deeper emotional wounds are likely to heal faster and cleaner, with no festering sores to poison life and spoil happiness. — 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

Realizing that our actions, feelings and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality. — Maxwell Maltz

People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Always have something ahead of you to look forward to -- to work for and hope for. — Maxwell Maltz

One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life, has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center. — Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz Quotes About Life

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a 'real' experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information which you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you THINK or IMAGINE to be 'true. — Maxwell Maltz

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. — Maxwell Maltz

The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognise your own worth. — Maxwell Maltz

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

A step in the wrong direction is better than staying on the spot all our life. Once you're moving forward you can correct your course as you go. Your automatic guidance system cannot guide you when you're standing still. — Maxwell Maltz

Mental pictures offer us an opportunity to practice new traits and attitudes, which otherwise we could not do. This is possible because again - your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined. — Maxwell Maltz

Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life. — Maxwell Maltz

Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome: for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, 'It's no use - I can't do it.' — Maxwell Maltz

Loneliness is caused by an alienation from life. It is a loneliness from your real self. — Maxwell Maltz

You are embarking on the greatest adventure of your life - to improve your self-image, to create more meaning in your life and in the lives of others. This is your responsibility. — Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz Quotes About Psycho-cybernetics

Our self image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other. — Maxwell Maltz

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown - but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. — Maxwell Maltz

Happiness isn't something that happens to you. It is what you yourself do and determine upon. — Maxwell Maltz

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience. — Maxwell Maltz

An idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis. — Maxwell Maltz

Conscious effort inhibits and ‘jams’ the automatic creative mechanism. — Maxwell Maltz

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have not 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

Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. — Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz Quotes About Change

Times will change for the better when you change. — Maxwell Maltz

Change your mental imagery, and the feelings will take care of themselves. — Maxwell Maltz

Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as you can change your beliefs. — Maxwell Maltz

The minute that we change our minds, and stop giving power to the past, the past with its mistakes loses power over us. — Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz Quotes About Imagination

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

Your nervous system can't tell real failure from imagined failure. — Maxwell Maltz

Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. Man alone can direct his success mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability. — Maxwell Maltz

Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead. — Maxwell Maltz

Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself. — Maxwell Maltz

The un-happiest of mortals is that man who insists upon reliving the past, over and over in imagination - continually criticizing himself for past mistakes - continually condemning himself for past sins. — Maxwell Maltz

Do not say to yourself, 'I am going to act this way tomorrow.' Just say to yourself - 'I am going to imagine myself acting this way NOW - for 30 minutes - today.' — Maxwell Maltz

Why not imagine yourself successful? — Maxwell Maltz

When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative success mechanism within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or willpower. — Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz Quotes About Mind

This is where you will win the battle -- in the playhouse of your mind. — Maxwell Maltz

Failure feelings - fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence - do not spring from some heavenly oracle. They are not written in the stars. They are not holy gospel. Nor are they intimations of a set and decided fate which means that failure is decreed and decided. They originate from your own mind. — Maxwell Maltz

Happiness is simply a state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time. — Maxwell Maltz

Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine. We think better, perform better, feel better, and are healthier when we are happy. — Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz Famous Quotes And Sayings

Successful people are able to rise above crises by relaxing no matter what the external situation. Their belief in themselves, the strength of their self-image is impenetrable armor, which protects them against shattering events. — Maxwell Maltz

The biggest secret of self-esteem is this: Begin to appreciate other people more; show respect for any human being merely because he is a child of God and therefore a thing of value. — Maxwell Maltz

We are injured and hurt emotionally, Not so much by other people or what they say and don't say, But by our own attitude and our own response. — Maxwell Maltz

If you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are likely to wait forever. — Maxwell Maltz

I am a firm believer in 'negative thinking' when used correctly. We need to be AWARE of negatives so that we can steer clear of them. A golfer needs to know where the bunkers and sand traps are - but he doesn't think continuously about the bunker - where he doesn't want to go. His mind glances at the bunker, but he DWELLS upon the green. — Maxwell Maltz

It is the job of conscious rational thought to decide what you want, select the goals you wish to achieve-and concentrate upon these rather than upon what you do not want. To spend time and effort concentrating upon what you do not want is not rational. — Maxwell Maltz

Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle. A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it's moving forward towards something. — Maxwell Maltz

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving. — Maxwell Maltz

You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment. — Maxwell Maltz

True success and true happiness not only go together but each other enhances the other. — Maxwell Maltz

It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear. — Maxwell Maltz

It doesn't matter how many times you have failed.... What matters is the successful attempt. — Maxwell Maltz

The greatest cause of ulcers is mountain-climbing over molehills. — Maxwell Maltz

When you're not goal-striving, not looking forward, you're not really living. — Maxwell Maltz

Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act. — Maxwell Maltz

Close scrutiny will show that most crisis situations are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are. — Maxwell Maltz

We simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue, but a vice. — Maxwell Maltz

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

Ignore past failures and forge ahead. — 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

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. — Maxwell Maltz

Do your worrying before you place your bet, not after the wheel stops turning. — Maxwell Maltz

Every day you must try to make your own self-image grow; this you can do. — Maxwell Maltz

It is well known that when Thomas A. Eddison was stymied by a problem, he would lie down and take a short nap. — Maxwell Maltz

One's capacity for friendship, which can be developed, is basic to one's capacity for happiness. — Maxwell Maltz

Visualizing, creative mental picturing, is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than deciding, then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way, without thought or decision. — Maxwell Maltz

Life is a series of problems. — Maxwell Maltz

Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars. — Maxwell Maltz

It takes 21 days to develop a habit. — Maxwell Maltz

Stand up to crises. Don't let them throw you! Fight to stay calm... even surmount the crisis completely and turn it into an opportunity. Refuse to renounce your self-image. No matter what happens, you must keep your good opinion of yourself. No matter what happens, you must hold your past successes in your imagination, ready for showing in the motion picture screen of your mind. No matter what happens, no matter what you lose, no matter what failures you must endure, you must keep faith in yourself. Then you can stand up to crises, with calm and courage, refusing to buckle; then you will not fall through the floor. You will be able to support yourself. — Maxwell Maltz

As soon as the error has been recognized and corrections made, it's equally important that the error be forgotten and the successful attempt remembered and dwelt upon. — Maxwell Maltz

Adopt the motto: It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right. — Maxwell Maltz

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

We act, we behave, and we feel the vibration that we're in at the present time according to what we consider our self image to be. And we do not deviate from that pattern. The image you hold of yourself is a premise, a foundation (idea) on which your entire personality is built. This image, not only controls your behavior but your circumstances as well. — Maxwell Maltz

A healthy strong ego, with plenty of self-esteem, does not feel itself threatened by every innocent remark. — Maxwell Maltz

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

To really 'live,' that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can life with. You must find yourself acceptable to 'you.' — Maxwell Maltz

Self-discipline is the golden key; without it, you cannot be happy. — Maxwell Maltz

Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought PLUS feelings. Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out. — Maxwell Maltz

Unthaw and become more natural. — Maxwell Maltz

See yourself reacting to threats, not by running away or evading them, but by meeting them, dealing with them, grappling with them in an aggressive intelligent manner. — Maxwell Maltz

Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than "you" ever could by conscious thought. "You" supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby. — Maxwell Maltz

Happiness is the art of relaxation. — Maxwell Maltz

Get into the habit of laughing; too many of us have forgotten how to laugh. As people grow older, they sometimes forget that they ever laughed. It is a part of their childhood that they can no longer remember. — Maxwell Maltz

When we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits, our self image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern. — Maxwell Maltz

Science has now confirmed what philosophers, mystics, and other intuitive people have long declared: every human being has been literally "engineered for success" by his Creator. Every human being has access to a power greater than himself. — Maxwell Maltz

Admit your mistakes but don't cry over them. Correct them and go forward. — Maxwell Maltz

Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are. — Maxwell Maltz

Another cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time. — Maxwell Maltz

Life Lessons by Maxwell Maltz

1. Maxwell Maltz taught that the power of self-image can be used to create positive change in one's life. He believed that by changing the way we think about ourselves, we can create a more positive and successful life.
2. He also believed that the power of visualization can be used to achieve goals and create positive outcomes. By visualizing success and focusing on positive outcomes, we can create the life we want.
3. Finally, Maxwell Maltz taught the importance of self-discipline and taking responsibility for our actions. He believed that by taking responsibility for our actions, we can create a more meaningful and successful life.