Inspirational Quotes by Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

Inspirational Quotations by Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics, which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one’s self-image. In turn, the person would lead a more successful and fulfilling life. He wrote several books, among which Psycho-Cybernetics was a long-time bestseller—influencing many subsequent self-help teachers. His orientation towards a system of ideas that would provide self-help is considered the forerunner of the now popular self-help books.

Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by 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
Topics: Identity

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
Topics: Imagination

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

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, on the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Happiness, Courage

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.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Mind, The Mind

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
Topics: Opportunity

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
Topics: Goal

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
Topics: Identity, Behavior

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Self Respect, Self-Esteem

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
Topics: The Present, Present

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
Topics: Imagination

To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Habits, Habit

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
Topics: Self-love

Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Balance, Security

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
Topics: Laughter

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
Topics: Success, Courage, Risk, Risk-taking, Failure

Our self-image strongly held essentially determines what we become.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Identity, Optimism, Positive Attitudes

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
Topics: Help, Cooperation

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 act.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Ability, Ideas, Action

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
Topics: Goals

We, whoever we are, must have a daily goal in our lives, no matter how small or great, to make that day mean something.
—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
Topics: Imagination

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
Topics: Attitude

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
Topics: Compromise

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
Topics: Imagination

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
Topics: Mistakes, Failure

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
Topics: Dance, Thinking, Lies, Better, Achieve, Thought, Goals, Results, Give, Think