110+ Peter McWilliams Quotes On Education, Religion And Inspirational

Peter McWilliams was an American writer, poet and activist. He wrote numerous self-help books, including Life 101, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, and You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought. He was an advocate for the legalization of marijuana and was a vocal opponent of censorship. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Peter McWilliams on education, leadership, life.

Top 10 Peter McWilliams Quotes

1. Nausea is an unsolved problem of medicine and marijuana is the finest anti-nausea medication known to science.
2. The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news... and it's not entirely the media's fault, bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.
3. If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts.
4. It is a risk to love. What if it doesn't work out? Ah, but what if it does.
5. The road to positivity is strewn with the abandoned vehicles of the faint-hearted.
6. To the degree we're not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.
7. Definition of a victim: a person to whom life happens.
8. For many, negative thinking is a habit which, over time, becomes an addiction.
9. To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
10. Willingness opens the doors to knowledge, direction, and achievement. Be willing to know, be willing to do, be willing to create a positive result. Be willing, especially, to follow your dream.

Peter McWilliams Short Quotes

• When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
• If you're not actively involved in getting what you want, you don't really want it.
• Fear is something to be moved through, not something to be turned from.
• You can always find some expert who will say something hopelessly hopeless about anything.
• You can't afford the luxury of a negative thought
• Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.
• By pursuing any one of our dreams, we can find fulfillment. We don't need to pursue them all.
• Capitalism is the only economic system compatible with free individuals
• We are all, right now, living the life we choose.
• The only difference between 'fear' and 'excitement' is what we label it.

Peter McWilliams Quotes About Life

If you want physical peace, stop the struggle of life. Don't push the body beyond its fatigue point. Rest the body enough. Exercise it enough. Then let it be. ... If you want peace with others, don't fight them. Go your own way. Live your own life. If some walk with you, fine. — Peter McWilliams

Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that's true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes. — Peter McWilliams

One of the great joys of life is creativity. Information goes in, gets shuffled about, and comes out in new and interesting ways — Peter McWilliams

In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts. — Peter McWilliams

First, all relationships are with yourself-and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationship in your life-the one you have, like it or not, until the day you die-is with yourself. — Peter McWilliams

Meditation creates more time than it takes. — Peter McWilliams

It's your life. Live it with people who are alive. It tends to be contagious. — Peter McWilliams

Depression is an illness that robs one of the meaning of life. Heal the illness. As the depression heals, enthusiasm, well-being, and a sense of life's purpose will return. — Peter McWilliams

In life, we have either reasons or results — Peter McWilliams

We can consciously end our life almost anytime we choose. This ability is an endowment, like laughing and blushing, given to no other animal... in any given moment, by not exercising the option of suicide, we are choosing to live. — Peter McWilliams

Peter McWilliams Quotes About Love

Send the light of your own loving ahead of you. When you get there, the loving will have prepared a place for you. Be kind, gentle, and enjoy the journey. — Peter McWilliams

This is our true wealth: the riches we take with us, the joy we carry inside, the support we learn to give ourselves, and the self-loving that flows as a natural by-product of that support. — Peter McWilliams

Positive thoughts: joy, happiness, fulfillment, achievement, worthiness, have positive results: enthusiasm, calm, well-being, ease, energy, love. — Peter McWilliams

I must conquer my loneliness alone. I must be happy with myself or I have nothing to offer you. Two halves have little choice but to join; and yes, they do make a whole. But two wholes when they coincide... that is beauty. That is love. — Peter McWilliams

Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people dont understand whats involved. The real writers persevere. The ones that dont either dont have enough fortitude and they probably wouldnt succeed anyway, or they fall in love with the glamour of writing as opposed to the writing of writing. — Peter McWilliams

Two halves have little choice but to join;And yes, they do make a wholebut two wholes when they coincide...That is beauty.That is love. — Peter McWilliams

Desire happiness, aspire to gratitude, long for health, crave compassion, seek satisfaction, lust after God, however & whatever you perceive God to be, want to love yourself, others & everything around you more and more each day — Peter McWilliams

Peter McWilliams Quotes About Inspirational

We can do anything we want. The next time you hear yourself saying, to another-and especially yourself-I Can't, take a deep breath and say instead, My resources are otherwise engaged. — Peter McWilliams

Keep your goals away from the trolls. — Peter McWilliams

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. We are not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. — Peter McWilliams

Most people, once they graduate from the School of Hard Knocks, automatically enroll in the University of Adversity. — Peter McWilliams

Choosing what you want to do, and when to do it, is an act of creation. — Peter McWilliams

What's more important-your goal, or others' opinions of your goal? — Peter McWilliams

If you change the belief first, changing the action is easier. — Peter McWilliams

And neither shall we learn to war with ourselves anymore. — Peter McWilliams

The reason we feel hurt and anger when things and people outside us let us down is because we believe those things and people shouldn't. Well, sorry, that's not life here on earth. — Peter McWilliams

We are not responsible for every thought that goes wandering through our mind. We are, however, responsible for the ones we hold there. We're especially responsible for the one's we put there. — Peter McWilliams

Peter McWilliams Quotes About Learn

When people don't understand that being uncomfortable is part of the process of achievement, they use the discomfort as a reason not to do. They don't get what they want. We must learn to tolerate discomfort in order to grow. — Peter McWilliams

Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on? — Peter McWilliams

The value of action is that we make mistakes; mistakes show us what we need to learn. — Peter McWilliams

No matter what you do, no matter how stupid, dumb or damaging you judge it to be, there is a lesson to be learned from it. No matter what happens to you, no matter how unfair, inequitable or wrong, there's something you can take from the situation and use for your advancement. — Peter McWilliams

Your Master Teacher knows all you need to learn, the perfect timing for your learning it, and the ideal way of teaching it to you. You don't create a Master Teacher -- that's already been done. You discover your Master Teacher. — Peter McWilliams

No matter what you do, no matter how stupid, dumb or damaging you judge it to be, there is a lesson to be learned from it. — Peter McWilliams

Learn to forgive fully and completely. If you want health, wealth, and happiness, you can't afford the luxury of lugging around all those unforgiven, unforgotten past events. Let them go. — Peter McWilliams

Learn to ask for what you want. The worst people can do is not give you what you ask for which is precisely where you were before you asked. — Peter McWilliams

When it comes time to teach, teach from your experience. Go out and do, learn from the doing, then teach from the knowing. — Peter McWilliams

Although a lot can be learned from adversity, most of the same lessons can be learned through laughter and joy. — Peter McWilliams

Peter McWilliams Quotes About Action

When thought and action are combined, the results are powerful-among the most powerful forces on earth. The combination of successful communication-the sharing of thoughts-and physical action can, literally, move mountains. — Peter McWilliams

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take. — Peter McWilliams

To overcome a fear, here's all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway. — Peter McWilliams

Fill your life with people who applaud your positive thoughts, feelings, and actions; who encourage you toward more and better; who know how to praise the good and beautiful. — Peter McWilliams

Peter McWilliams Famous Quotes And Sayings

Marijuana is the finest anti-nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have lied about this consistently. [Arresting people for] medical marijuana is the most hideous example of government interference in the private lives of individuals. It's an outrage within an outrage within an outrage. — Peter McWilliams

Pain (any pain--emotional, physical, mental) has a message. The information it has about our life can be remarkably specific, but it usually falls into one of two categories: We would be more alive if we did more of this and Life would be more lovely if we did less of that. Once we get the pain's message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away. — Peter McWilliams

The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste. — Peter McWilliams

Happiness requires courage, stamina, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, bravery, boldness, valor, vigor, concentration, solidity, substance, backbone, grit, guts, moxie, nerve, pluck, resilience, spunk, tenacity, tolerance, will power, chutzpah, and a good thesaurus. — Peter McWilliams

To visualize is to see what is not there, what is not real - a dream. To visualize is, in fact, to make visual lies. Visual lies, however, have a way of coming true. — Peter McWilliams

Ultimately, censorship comes down to taste. What offends me may enlighten you. Do you want me deciding-based on my taste-what you should or should not be exposed to? — Peter McWilliams

The more severe the pain or illness, the more severe will be the necessary changes. These may involve breaking bad habits, or acquiring some new and better ones. — Peter McWilliams

For many, negative thinking is a habit, which over time, becomes an addiction... A lot of people suffer from this disease because negative thinking is addictive to each of the Big Three - the mind, the body, and the emotions. If one doesn't get you, the others are waiting in the wings. — Peter McWilliams

Prison is a crash course in the darker side of life. Few survive it without becoming a different person: more cynical, jaded, fearful, angry. Its hard to trust again, hard to believe, easy to hate a system that destroyed your life behind the pompous pretense of saving you from yourself, for your own good. — Peter McWilliams

Most of what's around us we take for granted. We ignore it. Appreciation-spending time looking for the good-helps us overcome one of the primary limitations to enjoying the wealth we already have: ignoreance. — Peter McWilliams

The comfort zone takes our greatest aspirations and turns them into excuses for not bothering to aspire. — Peter McWilliams

If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger how much happier we would all be. — Peter McWilliams

Anger begins as an inner twinge. We sense something long before it blossoms (explodes?) into an emotional tirade. If we listen to this twinge -- and follow its advice -- the emotional outburst (or in burst) is not needed. — Peter McWilliams

The simple solution for disappointment depression Get up and get moving. Physically move. Do. Act. Get going. — Peter McWilliams

Pettiness seems to go hand in hand with vindictiveness. The smaller the person, the larger the need for revenge. This may account for the fact that some consensual crimes have stiffer penalties than do most crimes with innocent victims. — Peter McWilliams

While goals are chosen, a purpose is discovered. Our purpose is something we have been doing all along, and will continue to do, regardless of circumstances, until the day we die — Peter McWilliams

I'm a confirmed negaholic. I don't just see a glass that's half full and call it half-empty; I see a glass that's completely full and worry that someone's going to tip it over. — Peter McWilliams

Don't accept the limitations of other people who claim things are 'unchangeable'. If it's written in stone, bring your hammer and chisel. — Peter McWilliams

I am the representative of all the sick people and what they are doing to me is only the worst case right now, but there will be others. I am living on borrowed time anyway. I owe this part of my life to luck and modern medical science. But I can't imagine what the rest of it will be like if they won't let me use medical marijuana. — Peter McWilliams

..Since depression is a genetic biological illness, like diabetes, or low thyroid, it wasn't lack of character, laziness, or something I could "snap out of"-it would be like trying to snap out of a toothache. — Peter McWilliams

This is a lifetime of good-byes. In our time, we will say good-bye to cherished people, things, and ideas. Eventually, we say good-bye to life itself with our death. Learn to say a good good-bye. Allow yourself to mourn each loss. As with a physical wound, the body has its own schedule for healing. It will tell you when it has healed. — Peter McWilliams

..we are trained as children to get good grades, get a good job, get a good spouse, get children, get ahead. In all this getting we get something else: anxiety and depression. — Peter McWilliams

Contrary to popular belief, a good number of transvestites-both male and female-are also heterosexual. Just because they want to get dressed up like the opposite sex does not necessarily mean they want to go to bed with the same sex. Some have successful heterosexual marriages & enjoy the most delightful shopping experiences. — Peter McWilliams

There are many misconceptions about depression-mostly negative. Unfortunately, because depressed people think negatively about depression and its treatment, they don't get help, which allows the depression to worsen, which leads to more negative thinking, which produces a vicious cycle of suffering. — Peter McWilliams

The irony is that the person not taking risks feels the same amount of fear as the person who regularly takes risks. — Peter McWilliams

That's what depression had wrought inside me: one, vast, barren rock garden-without the garden — Peter McWilliams

AIDS has come upon us with cruel abandon. It has forced us to confront and deal with the frailty of our being and the reality of death. It has forced us into a realization that we must cherish every moment of the glorious experience of this thing we call life. We are learning to value our own lives of our loved ones as if any moment may be the last. — Peter McWilliams

For writing, getting off our buts means getting on our butts-putting it into a chair and not moving from the chair for a set period of time. — Peter McWilliams

Worrying is the interest paid on a debt you may not owe. — Peter McWilliams

Pain (any pain-emotional, physical, mental) has a message. Once we get the pains message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away. — Peter McWilliams

As the world gets dumber and dumber, I feel more and more at home. — Peter McWilliams

Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook . . . and use it to list all the good in your life. — Peter McWilliams

Write 10 times: 'Fear is my friend. Fear is the energy to do my best in a new situation.' You don't have to believe it; just write it. — Peter McWilliams

For the most part, most people most often choose comfort - the familiar, the time-honored, the well-worn but well-known. After a lifetime of choosing between comfort and risk, we are left with the life we currently have. — Peter McWilliams

If we want the freedom to take part in our bit of differentness, then we must allow others their rights to take part in theirs, as long as they do not harm the person or property of a non-consenting other, of course. IT'S JUST common sense. It's also constitutional and it forms the cornerstone of the American ideal: free individual expression, tolerance and compassion. — Peter McWilliams

The ongoing successful treatment of my depression is the single most important positive step I have taken in my life, hence my enthusiasm for the subject. — Peter McWilliams

I'm tired of people thinking that Libertarians don't have morality- that they don't have values. that's a lot of hogwash. Libertarians are the ONLY politicians with values. — Peter McWilliams

The part of us that feels anger and depression is the same part that feels peace and love. If you refuse to feel the anger and the pain of a loss, you will not be able to feel anything else until that area heals. In other words, stay out of your own way. Let yourself feel bad if you want to feel bad. Feel joy, too. Healing is taking place. Give yourself the gift of healing. — Peter McWilliams

Do we indulge our heart, or cater to our fear? — Peter McWilliams

..Because when medical marijuana is fully accepted for what it is, we will see a phenomenon that makes Viagra's phenomenon seem limp. — Peter McWilliams

The media tends to report rumors, speculations, and projections as facts... How does the media do this? By quoting some "expert"... you can always find some expert who will say something hopelessly hopeless about anything. — Peter McWilliams

Every time we give our word, it counts. For the most part, people give their word entirely too often. Our word is a precious commodity and should be treated as such. — Peter McWilliams

People who want to appear clever rely on memory. People who want to get things done make lists. — Peter McWilliams

Gays seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order: no matter how far down the pecking order another group is, its members still feel superior to and have no problem picking on gays. — Peter McWilliams

Emotion is energy in motion. — Peter McWilliams

Our thoughts create our reality-not instantly, necessarily, as in "Poof! There it is" - but eventually. Where we put our focus - our inner and outer vision - is the direction we tend to go. That's our desire, our intention. — Peter McWilliams

Find your horse. Discover the direction the horse is going. Ride the horse in that direction. — Peter McWilliams

All the good, fine, noble, and creative acts of humanity were conceived as a spark in a single human consciousness. — Peter McWilliams

The Bible, taken as a whole, can be used to praise or condemn practically any human activity, thought, belief, or practice. — Peter McWilliams

You have to follow the old rule for a while. In fact, once you master the old rule, you are then the master-and masters get to change things. — Peter McWilliams

Running from fear only strengthens fear-you are demonstrating that fear has power over you. Fear must be faced and gone through. — Peter McWilliams

The only difference between fear and excitement is what we label it. The two are pretty much the same physiological/emotional reaction. With fear, we put a negative spin on it: "Oh no!" With excitement, we give it some positive english: "Oh, boy!" — Peter McWilliams

The most recent studies both behavioral and biological, indicate one's sexual orientation is genetic — something determined at conception. — Peter McWilliams

When you start noticing even a small portion of all there is to be grateful for, you'll find there is no room for lack, hurt, or want. The attitude of gratitude: the great, full feeling. — Peter McWilliams

Drugs, gambling, and prostitution are the Big Three underground 'moneymakers' in consensual crime. There would be, however, significant boosts to the economy if the stigma attached to the other consensual crimes were eliminated through legalization. — Peter McWilliams

Life Lessons by Peter McWilliams

1. Peter McWilliams taught us to always be open to learning new things and to never give up on our dreams. He also encouraged us to focus on the positive and to be grateful for the small things in life. Lastly, he showed us that it is possible to make a difference in the world, no matter how small our contribution may be.