John C. Maxwell Quotes

Before you can do something you must first be something.

We can’t change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring.

You may not seem able to change some outer circumstances but you can start by changing your inner experience of life and yourself.

We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at least some part of that finished product in whose fabrication we are most concerned: ourselves.

You've got to take responsibility for your own actions. We all know people who reach rock bottom. However much that they're told that what they're doing is harming their own life or whatever, you cannot make someone do it unless that person reaches the point where they know that they have to deal with it themselves.

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

Not even analysis, by itself, can transform you. You must still do the changing yourself.

I don't want to change the world; I want to evolve myself.

Getting to know myself changed everything. It's the best thing I've ever done.

Why is it that for many persons changing others is so exciting and so relevant, while changing oneself is so boring and irrelevant?

It's really about connecting to your own humanity and your own behaviors, and getting to a level of self-awareness so that you can have perspective and step outside of yourself and transform and become another person.

The final goal of human effort is man's self-transforma tion.

If you think the cause of your problem is 'out there,' you'll try to solve it from the outside. Take the shortcut: solve it from within.

There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn't do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.

You learn in life that the only person you can really correct and change is yourself.

The change we are looking for is always a change within ourselves. And the change will come. I've noticed that as long as I'm willing to be different, something or someone arrives to show me how.

Humans don't really improve on our own functioning, we only interfere with it, distort it, and disguise it.

The most difficult matter is not so much to change the world as yourself.

To change what you get you must change who you are.

Changing your nature is the hardest thing to do. But I discovered that you can be who you choose to be.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

I believe that men are here to grow themselves into best good that they can be - at least, this is what I want to do.

I think every individual has his or her own power, and it's a matter of working, taking time and defining what that power is.

The benefits of the accomplished journey cannot be weighed in terms of perfect moments, but in terms of how this journey affects and changes our character.