Michael Pollan Quotes

...Stop blaming me, thinking I'm the problem. If you think I'm the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change themselves. Let me tell you, it's easier to change yourself than everyone else.

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

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

My most earnest prayer is that every man and every woman will get it into his or her heart that they are in very deed the architects of their lives.

Just as your hand has the power to hide the sun, mediocrity has the power to hide your inner light. Do not blame others for your own incompetence.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

In the end, I want to be able to say, 'My life was what I made it.'

As long as you blame someone or something else - something outside you that's bigger than you are - as the source of your problems, the problems won't get solved.

What makes a person is the ability to look at themselves and deal with their own lives.

Scientology helps you lose your insanities. One of the keys is, they say, 'You're in charge of your life, buster. You're responsible for any condition you're in.' If I look at it that way, it helps.

We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.

I started reading about people of great accomplishment... and it dawned on me suddenly that the person who has the most to do with what happens in your life is you.

Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

I'm of the school of thought where if you can't sort something out for yourself then no one can help you.

Take hold of your future or the future will take hold of you

If I'm not happy with what's going on, I try to change it myself.

In Buddhism, you have to believe in yourself. You don't believe something external guides your life. You do it yourself.

I'm a person, when something's not going right, I'm looking at myself and seeing how I can improve and what I can do better.

When I talk about self-management, self-regulation, self-government, the word I emphasize is self, and my concern is with the reconstruction of the self. Marxists and even many, I think, overly enthusiastic anarchists have neglected that self.

How can we resent the life we've created for ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit, but us? Who can change it, any time we wish, but us?

Buddah says once you understand that you are lost and you have to find your own way and there is no help coming, you become responsible. Prayer is irresponsible. To pray is just to avoid responsibility, to pray is to be lazy. To pray is just an escape. Buddha says effort is needed. It is an insult to pray.