The Way to Will Power Quotes

“If you devote one evening’s study to the quantity theory of money, the next evening to the problem of the freedom of the will, the next to incidents in the life of Theodore Roosevelt, the next to historic types of lampshades, your mind may eventually become an interesting depository of stray bits of knowledge, arousing the same sort of quaint enjoyment in the minds of your associates as an old curiosity shop, or a second-hand bookstore in which yellow-backed novels of passion and intrigue rub shoulders with scientific treatises and religious sermons.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power

“A man with lenient and unexacting ideals may be a tolerable character; he can never be a great one.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power

“Before you make any formal resolutions whatsoever, make certain that you genuinely desire to carry it out. Let there be no doubt that the end you have in view is so desirable or advantageous that it will outweigh all desires and advantages or all other ends that are likely to have to be foregone or abandoned in order to attain it. In short, be sure you are willing to pay the price.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power

“Will-Power, then, may be defined as the ability to keep a remote desire so vividly in mind that immediate desires which interfere with it are not gratified.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power

“What Goethe saw so powerfully, William James saw later, and elaborated the idea in a theory which goes beyond even this. That theory appeared in an essay called “The Energies of Men.” In all English and American literature there is nothing of its short length—a mere thirty-five pages—so calculated to inspire a man with a passion for work. It is published in his Memories and Studies (Longmans, Green), and separately. By all means read it. Read it, if you can, before your next meal. If it does not inspire you with a passion to go out immediately and do something large and glorious, you are probably not normal.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power

“in any civilization worthy of the name, the ends sought by individuals ought to be social well-being, and fame and money the by-products. When money is the end sought, and social well-being merely the bi-product, we produce more money than we need and not enough well-being. We over-eat and over-dress and turn out mountains of silly luxuries; we seek to outdo our neighbors in material display; while the enrichment of the mind and the elevation of the soul are ignored, or occupy us only in moments when we have nothing else to do.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power

“We continually try to obtain the things that the people around us want or profess to want, rather than what we want ourselves, because we have never really tried to examine whether there is any difference between the two.”
― Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Will Power