Peter McWilliams Quotes

70 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
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.

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

Peter McWilliams
Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear. Courage is the wisdom to act in spite of fear....

Peter McWilliams
If you were arrested for being kind to yourself..would there be enough evidence to convict you?

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
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
All the things you think you should have done that you didn't do, and all of the things that you shouldn't have done, accept them. You did (or did not) do them. That's Reality. That's happened. No changing the past.

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
Approach life with acceptance, patience, flowing, giving, grace, effortlessness, simplicity, allowing, acquiescing, permitting, forgiving.

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

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
If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts.

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
The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people.

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

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

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
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 you're not actively involved in getting what you want, you don't really want it.

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
Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am 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. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.

Peter McWilliams
Acceptance is such an important part of happiness, contentment, health, and growth that some people have called it the 'first law of personal growth'.

Peter McWilliams