Top 90 Hugh Prather Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen.”

— Hugh Prather

2. “Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.”

— Hugh Prather

3. “Support your friends – even in their mistakes. But be clear, however, that it is the friend and not the mistake you are supporting.”

— Hugh Prather

4. “It’s not that “today is the first day of the rest of my life,” but that now is all there is of my life.”

— Hugh Prather

5. “Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.”

— Hugh Prather

6. “A messy mortal is my friend. Come walk with me in the mud.”

— Hugh Prather

7. “Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side...”

— Hugh Prather

8. “It’s this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.”

— Hugh Prather

9. “Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.”

— Hugh Prather

10. “We are all saying the same thing in different words.”

— Hugh Prather

11. “When I have listened to my mistakes, I have grown.”

— Hugh Prather

12. “All my life, I have made it complicated, but it is so simple. I love when I love. And when I love, I am myself.”

— Hugh Prather

13. “Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield.”

— Hugh Prather

14. “Don’t strive for love, be it.”

— Hugh Prather

15. “No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves.”

— Hugh Prather

16. “Don’t fight a fact, deal with it.”

— Hugh Prather

17. “Stands must be taken. If I am to respect myself I have to search myself for what I believe is right and take a stand on what I find. Otherwise, I have not gathered together what I have been given; I have not embraced what I have learned; I lack my own conviction.”

— Hugh Prather

18. “Perfectionism is slow death.”

— Hugh Prather

19. “A whole mind cannot create chaos. A conflicted mind can create nothing else.”

— Hugh Prather

20. “But it’s morning. Within my hands is another day. Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day.”

— Hugh Prather

21. “There are only three things you need to let go of judging, controlling, and being right. Release these three and you will have the whole mind and twinkly heart of a child.”

— Hugh Prather

22. “Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues.”

— Hugh Prather

23. “Now that I know that I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me wiser?”

— Hugh Prather

24. “An argument is always about what has been made more important than the relationship.”

— Hugh Prather

25. “Selfishness is neither good nor bad – it depends on the way we are selfish as to whether it nourishes or injures.”

— Hugh Prather

26. “If your reaction to your partner’s fear-or any other form of distress- is disdain or irritation, you do not want oneness or even friendship with your partner at that moment.”

— Hugh Prather

27. “There is nothing more painful than walking around with bitterness in your heart.”

— Hugh Prather

28. “When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.”

— Hugh Prather

29. “If my attention is wandering, there is somewhere it wants to go, so obviously it does not want to be where I am holding it in the name of some self-styled obligation.”

— Hugh Prather

30. “One element of maturity is the realization that we don’t get away with anything. Any advantage gained or convenience taken, any private procrastination or insincerity, no matter how subtle or quick in passing, is paid for.”

— Hugh Prather

31. “True humor is fun – it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, and cut off. True humor has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together.”

— Hugh Prather

32. “The fatal mistake is waiting for life’s circumstances to be right before we begin. Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel. Practice knowing and you will know.”

— Hugh Prather

33. “Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behavior, trying new ways of ‘being myself’, so that I can see who it is I want to be.”

— Hugh Prather

34. “Negative feedback is better that none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I make a difference.”

— Hugh Prather

35. “Why choose to be right instead of happy when there is no way to be right?”

— Hugh Prather

36. “Letting people in is largely a matter of not expending the energy to keep them out.”

— Hugh Prather

37. “We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don’t – and those feelings are probably realistic.”

— Hugh Prather

38. “Before, I thought I was actually fighting for my own self-worth; that is why I so desperately wanted people to like me. I thought their liking me was a comment on me, but it was a comment on them.”

— Hugh Prather

39. “We become what we look at most.”

— Hugh Prather

40. “Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.”

— Hugh Prather

41. “By approaching my problems with “What might make things a little better?” rather than “What is the solution?” I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I am only going to chip away at it.”

— Hugh Prather

42. “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.”

— Hugh Prather

43. “Moods should be heard but never danced to.”

— Hugh Prather

44. “Whenever I find myself arguing for something with great passion, I can be certain I’m not convinced.”

— Hugh Prather

45. “There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorize, a part that wants to sculpt, a part that wants to teach... To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just on thing in life, would kill off large parts of me.”

— Hugh Prather

46. “When we persist in looking for and finding what there is to value within our self, we discover a pure and loving being.”

— Hugh Prather

47. “Books seek us out. They slip themselves into our hands just at the time we are ready for a new self-concept.”

— Hugh Prather

48. “Sometimes the only way for me to find out what it is I want to do is go ahead and do something. Then the moment I start to act, my feelings become clear.”

— Hugh Prather

49. “Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.”

— Hugh Prather

50. “Life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats-with very few moments of clear peace.”

— Hugh Prather