Denis E. Waitley (b.1933) is an American motivational speaker and writer, consultant and best-selling author. Waitley is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, He was a founding member of the National Council for Self-Esteem.
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Time is the most precious element of human existence. The successful person knows how to put energy into time and how to draw success from time.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Existence, Time, Time Management
No man or woman is an island. To exist just for yourself is meaningless. You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life, something greater than yourself.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Teamwork, Teams
Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Attitude, Vision
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Happiness
We can’t afford to waste tears on might-have-beens. We need to turn the tears into sweat that can take us to what can be.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Regret
Knowledge is the frontier of tomorrow.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Knowledge
Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the “someday I’ll” philosophy.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Procrastination, Success, Fear
You must learn from your past mistakes, but not lean on your past successes.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Mistakes
The winners in life treat their body as if it were a magnificent spacecraft that gives them the finest transportation and endurance for their lives.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Health
You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Imagination, Innovation
If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won’t, you most assuredly won’t. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.
—Denis Waitley
Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Choice, Decisions, Decision
Winners are people with definite purpose in life.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Purpose
The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Winning
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Choice
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Parenting, Independence, Responsibility
Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. Success depends upon using it wisely—by planning and setting priorities.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time, Time
A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Smile, Sharing
Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Energy, Effort
Don’t ever let economic alone determine your career or how you spend the majority of your time.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Money
You must consider the bottom line, but make it integrity before profits.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Integrity
Get excited and enthusiastic about you own dream. This excitement is like a forest fire—you can smell it, taste it, and see it from a mile away.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Excitement, Enthusiasm
Time And health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Health
A life lived with integrity—even if it lacks the trappings of fame and fortune is a shinning star in whose light others may follow in the years to come.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Integrity, Fortune
Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Success & Failure
Our limitations and success will be based, most often, on your own expectations for ourselves. What the mind dwells upon, the body acts upon.
—Denis Waitley
Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Acceptance, Change
You must look within for value, but must look beyond for perspective.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Value
Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Integrity, Promises, Commitment
I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Gratitude, Perspective, Hypocrisy
Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Determination
Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life.
—Denis Waitley
Tomorrow’s leaders not only have dreams, goals and plans. They are willing to work hard and to take responsibility for turning their plans into energy, perspiration and effort. They don’t sit back and wait for someone else to turn their dreams into action. They take charge of executing their own plan.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Responsibility
One characteristic of winners is they always look upon themselves as a do it yourself project.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Winners, Winning
You must continue to gain expertise, but avoid thinking like an expert.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Learning, Thinking
It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit.
—Denis Waitley
You must accept responsibility for your actions, but not the credit for your achievements.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Responsibility
you must get money to chase you, but never let it catch up.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Money
You must be worthy of the best, but not more worthy than the rest.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Worth
The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.
—Denis Waitley
Topics: Achievement, Excellence
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