Top 120 Peter McWilliams Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “We are all, right now, living the life we choose.”

— Peter McWilliams

52. “The road to positivity is strewn with the abandoned vehicles of the faint-hearted.”

— Peter McWilliams

53. “Heroes became heroes flaws and all. You don’t have to be perfect to fulfill your dream.”

— Peter McWilliams

54. “First, all relationships are with yourself-and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationship in your life-the one you have, like it or not, until the day you die-is with yourself.”

— Peter McWilliams

55. “If we learned everything there is to know in kindergarten, it was promptly drummed out of us in first grade.”

— Peter McWilliams

56. “The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste.”

— Peter McWilliams

57. “To the degree we’re not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.”

— Peter McWilliams

58. “Send the light of your own loving ahead of you. When you get there, the loving will have prepared a place for you. Be kind, gentle, and enjoy the journey.”

— Peter McWilliams

59. “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

60. “Definition of a victim: a person to whom life happens.”

— Peter McWilliams

61. “Guilt is anger directed at ourselves – at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others – at what they did or did not do.”

— Peter McWilliams

62. “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

63. “You are powerful. Sorry. Hate to be the bearer of bad news. You are. You can continue arm wrestling with yourself, or you can use both arms, your whole heart, and all your strength to wrestle with greatness. The choice is yours.”

— Peter McWilliams

64. “Acceptance is such an important commodity, some have called it “the first law of personal growth”.”

— Peter McWilliams

65. “When it comes time to teach, teach from your experience. Go out and do, learn from the doing, then teach from the knowing.”

— Peter McWilliams

66. “I’m a confirmed negaholic. I don’t just see a glass that’s half full and call it half-empty; I see a glass that’s completely full and worry that someone’s going to tip it over.”

— Peter McWilliams

67. “Because people are afraid of fear, they give up acre after acre of their own life.”

— Peter McWilliams

68. “While goals are chosen, a purpose is discovered. Our purpose is something we have been doing all along, and will continue to do, regardless of circumstances, until the day we die.”

— Peter McWilliams

69. “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

70. “I’d have a nervous breakdown except that I’ve been through this too many times to be nervous.”

— Peter McWilliams

71. “All the good, fine, noble, and creative acts of humanity were conceived as a spark in a single human consciousness.”

— Peter McWilliams

72. “Gays seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order: no matter how far down the pecking order another group is, its members still feel superior to and have no problem picking on gays.”

— Peter McWilliams

73. “The reason we feel hurt and anger when things and people outside us let us down is because we believe those things and people shouldn’t. Well, sorry, that’s not life here on earth.”

— Peter McWilliams

74. “Find your horse. Discover the direction the horse is going. Ride the horse in that direction.”

— Peter McWilliams

75. “Meditation creates more time than it takes.”

— Peter McWilliams

76. “Nausea is an unsolved problem of medicine and marijuana is the finest anti-nausea medication known to science.”

— Peter McWilliams

77. “Write 10 times: ‘Fear is my friend. Fear is the energy to do my best in a new situation.’ You don’t have to believe it; just write it.”

— Peter McWilliams

78. “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

79. “The value of action is that we make mistakes; mistakes show us what we need to learn.”

— Peter McWilliams

80. “The ongoing successful treatment of my depression is the single most important positive step I have taken in my life, hence my enthusiasm for the subject.”

— Peter McWilliams

81. “Wealth is enjoying what we already have, not getting more of what we think will make us happy.”

— Peter McWilliams

82. “I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now.”

— Peter McWilliams

83. “There is no answer to any of these questions. It’s a matter of time and timing, of seas and seasons, of breathing in and breathing out. It’s a matter of balance.”

— Peter McWilliams

84. “There are many misconceptions about depression-mostly negative. Unfortunately, because depressed people think negatively about depression and its treatment, they don’t get help, which allows the depression to worsen, which leads to more negative thinking, which produces a vicious cycle of suffering.”

— Peter McWilliams

85. “Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.”

— Peter McWilliams

86. “To the degree we can live without the things of this world, to that degree we are wealthy.”

— Peter McWilliams

87. “Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.”

— Peter McWilliams

88. “The amount of power freed by telling yourself you no longer choose to put energy into something can be remarkable. Be prepared for extra energy.”

— Peter McWilliams

89. “Running from fear only strengthens fear-you are demonstrating that fear has power over you. Fear must be faced and gone through.”

— Peter McWilliams

90. “Learn to forgive fully and completely. If you want health, wealth, and happiness, you can’t afford the luxury of lugging around all those unforgiven, unforgotten past events. Let them go.”

— Peter McWilliams

91. “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

92. “For writing, getting off our buts means getting on our butts-putting it into a chair and not moving from the chair for a set period of time.”

— Peter McWilliams

93. “By pursuing any one of our dreams, we can find fulfillment. We don’t need to pursue them all.”

— Peter McWilliams

94. “Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that’s true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes.”

— Peter McWilliams

95. “The comfort zone takes our greatest aspirations and turns them into excuses for not bothering to aspire.”

— Peter McWilliams

96. “Fear is something to be moved through, not something to be turned from.”

— Peter McWilliams

97. “You have to follow the old rule for a while. In fact, once you master the old rule, you are then the master-and masters get to change things.”

— Peter McWilliams

98. “Most of what’s around us we take for granted. We ignore it. Appreciation-spending time looking for the good-helps us overcome one of the primary limitations to enjoying the wealth we already have: ignoreance.”

— Peter McWilliams

99. “Capitalism is the only economic system compatible with free individuals.”

— Peter McWilliams

100. “Although a lot can be learned from adversity, most of the same lessons can be learned through laughter and joy.”

— Peter McWilliams