Self-Help Quotes

The thing I love most about going to a book store is the self-help section is the biggest section because Americans know we’re screwed up. We know it. But we want to get better.

Many people come to self-help material because they feel like something is wrong with them or the way they are. The problem is that anything that tells you how to improve your life is also implying that there is something inherently wrong with you the way you are.

Music is gathering. Taking our scattered thoughts and senses and coalescing us back into our core. Music is powerful. The first few chords can change us where no self-help books can.

I have had moments where I’ve had mental-health issues and I’ve felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help.

I don’t usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer: ‘The Power of Intention,’ which I loved.

This is what he has been selling on the ‘The Apprentice’, through his self-help books, how to – you know, ‘Trump 101’ or the ‘Art of the Deal’ or, really, back to ‘Art of the Deal’. So almost the more he gets away with, the more he is reinforcing his brand.

What I like about graduation speeches is that they’re an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It’s like a sanctioned self-help moment.

I was inspired by self-help books.

I worked at a nursing home though high school… There’s a lost appreciation for a generation that has so much to tell us when we’re so full of self-help books and doctors on TV.

Work-life balance is not just a buzzy, self-help term that real business people laugh at. You need it.

I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It’s a form of self-help.

I’d been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

I don’t read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don’t read self-help books because I don’t believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

The one genre I’m not really into: self-help books.

How any person decides to emphasize strengths and mitigate weaknesses is something people have to figure out for themselves. I’m wary of the self-help literature that suggests there are certain rules. I’m very happy for people to look at my story and say it’s possible to achieve many things.

The self-help section of national bookstore chains in America is one of the largest sections. In a way, it’s nothing new, and in another way, very new. People have always searched for answers; that’s why we have religion. People have always been seeking some relief from their own mortality.

Labour grew out of popular movements of mutualism and self-help.

I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.

Many self-help books give you these neat, tidy formulas that are really illusions. They dupe people into thinking, ‘Well if I can just do that, then everything’s going to be okay.’ My work differs in that I don’t offer quick solutions and simple explanations.

I’ve experienced several different healing methodologies over the years – counseling, self-help seminars, and I’ve read a lot – but none of them will work unless you really want to heal.

I’m not that into reading. If I’m gonna read, I’m gonna read some cool sci-fi book or something, not some stupid self-help book.

I’m not a fan of self-help books – how can something be ‘self-help’ if the book itself is purportedly helping you?

Go to any bookstore, and you’ll see thousands of books on etiquette, which suggests there’s a lot of self-help going on. There is hope.

My favorite books are psychology, self-help, and I’m fascinated by Jung, by dream work.

I can’t get enough of self-help books of all kinds.

I’m really wary of self-help books.

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.

Self-help books are for the birds. Self-help groups are where it’s at.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I’ve just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I’ve read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that.

I don’t think of literary novels as self-help documents, although literature undoubtedly saved my life when I was young, enabling me to disappear into all manner of stories, to recognise feelings that I felt alone in.

I’m really into Deepak Chopra and self-help books.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

I went through a phase in my 20s when I was overdosing on self-help books, so it was really refreshing to read ‘The Alchemist’ because it was a novel, but it still had the same wisdom, wasn’t patronising and didn’t tell you how you should live your life.

I don’t want to get all self-help on everyone. But I definitely think there was a period in my life where I thought I would feel the same way, forever. And every day felt like ‘Groundhog Day,’ where I was super, super depressed.

I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends’ opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not.

Memory enhancement self-help programs abound and promise improved memory performance by the utilization of any number of seemingly unique techniques focused on the context of how information is encoded.

Our culture is steeped in positive thinking – from the self-help mega-industry to college courses in positive psychology to the enduring pull of the American dream. There is no dislike button on Facebook. Nobody wants to be a downer.

Human beings have kicked around the concept of what individual happiness means for centuries, from the Bible to the ancient Greeks to the 1859 bestseller ‘Self-Help.’

I felt that no self-help book had been written for millennials yet, so my ultimate goal was to write it.

Even though it doesn’t look like it, I run. On a treadmill. And I bounce around to all the songs on my iPod – the Pixies, Wagner, Richard and Linda Thompson, even books on tape. Just not self-help ones.

I recommend anybody go to a bookstore, go down the self-help or new-age section, and just walk those aisles. See what book jumps out at you; there’s a good chance it’s a book you need in your life. That’s basically how I find the books that I read.

Pain is important, and changing who you are is difficult, painful, and scary. Most of the self-help industry sees change as this euphoric, liberating thing and tells you that you can be happy all the time. I think the opposite.

In academe, we ought to temper our criticism of the idea of self-help because, in a more complex way, it is precisely what we offer our students through our teaching.

I didn’t intend ‘Hector’ to be a self-help book when I first started writing. I wrote it as a little tale about a psychiatrist, like me, who sets off around the world in order to discover the vital ingredients for happiness.

I’ve never read a self help book… the most self-help I’ve read is on a beer mat.