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Portrait of Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz

(1889–1975) Physician United States

130 quotes in 583 categories

Maxwell Maltz compares life to a bicycle that must keep moving to stay balanced. He advises tackling one problem at a time and not standing still. He also says making friends with yourself prevents loneliness and gives purpose. He believes faith, courage, and optimism bring new life, while living in the past leads to frustration.

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Maxwell Maltz was a physician from the United States, best known for Psycho-cybernetics.

Quick Facts About Maxwell Maltz

Born: March 10, 1889
Died: April 7, 1975
Nationality: United States
Profession: Physician
Notable works: Psycho-cybernetics

About Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and the author of Psycho-Cybernetics (1960), which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one's self-image leading to 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.

Quotes by Maxwell Maltz

Life is a series of problems.

Life

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Worry is one of the most destructive scourges of mankind.

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The greatest miracle you can hope for is self-acceptance.

Acceptance

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Times will change for the better when you change.

Change

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Happiness is the art of relaxation.

Art

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When you believe you can... you can!

Attitude

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Ignore past failures and forge ahead.

Failure

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Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars.

Emotional

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Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.

Balance

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

Crisis

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

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

Goal

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

Goal

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

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Self-esteem is as necessary to the spirit as food is to the body.

Body

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

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Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one…

Calculated risk

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For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will,…

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As soon as the error has been recognized and corrections made, it's equally important that the error be forgotten and the successful…

Corrections

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Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology…

Behaviour

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Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have not goal that is important enough to you, or…

Effort

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To really 'live,' that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can life…

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Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome: for it is a pit…

Cybernetics

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Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, to take a calculated risk…

Ability

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What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will…

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Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in…

Action

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When a person has adequate self-esteem little slights offer no threat at all - they are simply "passed over" and ignored. Even…

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It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted…

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Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can…

Action

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“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his…

Action

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One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of…

Change

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Visualizing, creative mental picturing, is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or…

Acting

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

Being real

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“Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other. The word “habit” originally…

Habit

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I may be a mistake maker, but I'm also a mistake breaker.

Breaker

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It takes 21 days to develop a habit.

Habit

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Why not imagine yourself successful?

Imagination

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Unthaw and become more natural.

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You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.

Failure

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

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Maxwell Maltz by topic

Self (23) Life (23) Inspirational (18) Psycho cybernetics (17) Success (14) Failure (14) Cybernetics (14) Time (12) Motivational (12) Goals (12) Identity (11) Happiness (11) Habits (11) Psychology (10) Mind (10) Goal (10)