40 Manifestation Quotes With Their Real Sources

Manifestation quotes travel fast: on vision boards, phone wallpapers, journal covers and captions. They also pick up the wrong names along the way. Some of the best-known lines credited to the Buddha, Walt Disney or Eleanor Roosevelt were written by someone else entirely. Every quote below has been checked against the book, sermon or interview it came from, with a link to the source where one exists.

Short manifestation quotes

Short enough for a lock screen or a sticky note on the mirror.

1. "Trust thyself." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841). The full line is "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."
2. "Cherish your visions." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (1903)
3. "Feeling is the secret." — Neville Goddard, the title of his book Feeling Is the Secret
4. "Man becomes what he imagines." — Neville Goddard, Awakened Imagination (1954)
5. "Feeling a state produces that state." — Neville Goddard, Feeling Is the Secret

Manifestation quotes about belief and self-concept

These are the lines behind the idea that your inner picture of yourself shapes what you do and notice.

6. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." — The Dhammapada, verse 1, translated by Max Müller (1881)
7. "A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (1903)
8. "Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts." — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.16, George Long translation
9. "The part you play on the world's stage is determined by your conception of yourself." — Neville Goddard, Feeling Is the Secret
10. "Your subconscious gives form to your desires only when you feel your wish fulfilled." — Neville Goddard, Feeling Is the Secret
11. "Mastery of self-control of your thoughts and feelings is your highest achievement." — Neville Goddard, Feeling Is the Secret
12. "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series (1841)
13. "We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Spiritual Laws (1841)
14. "Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
15. "In a world of individuals, comparison is a senseless activity." — Wayne Dyer, Pulling Your Own Strings (1978), via Wikiquote

Goddard's idea that you act from your self-concept is the root of the law of assumption, if you want the method behind the quotes.

Quotes about imagination and visualization

16. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." — Albert Einstein, interviewed by George Sylvester Viereck in The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929), sourced on Wikiquote
17. "Imagination is the very gateway of reality." — Neville Goddard, Awakened Imagination
18. "Experience has convinced me that an assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact." — Neville Goddard, Awakened Imagination
19. "The acceptance of the end automatically wills the means of realization." — Neville Goddard, Feeling Is the Secret
20. "The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart — this you will build your life by, this you will become." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
21. "Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Visualization quotes pair naturally with a vision board. One caution from research worth keeping beside them: in experiments by Heather Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen, people who indulged in idealised fantasies about the future showed less energy afterwards than people who pictured more questioning or neutral versions (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2011). Picture the outcome, then picture the next step.

Quotes about dreams and taking action

The classic writers on manifestation were surprisingly practical. Most of them insisted on effort.

22. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
23. "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
24. "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
25. "Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
26. "The dreamers are the saviours of the world." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
27. "Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
28. "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (English edition, 1993), p. 22 per Wikiquote
29. "Act now. There is never any time but now, and there never will be any time but now." — Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich (1910)
30. "I want everyone to bear witness, I am the greatest! I'm the greatest thing that ever lived." — Muhammad Ali, after defeating Sonny Liston on 25 February 1964, sourced on Wikiquote

Ali had been calling himself the greatest long before that night, including on his 1963 spoken-word album I Am the Greatest. It's one of the best-known examples of self-talk working the way an affirmation does: said loudly, early and often.

Gratitude and self-love quotes

31. "Today is the future I created yesterday." — Louise Hay, on her official site
32. "I love myself just the way I am." — Louise Hay, from her self-esteem affirmations
33. "The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith." — Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich
34. "If a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful, that would suffice." — Meister Eckhart, Sermon XXVII in Maurice Walshe's translation, as sourced on Wikiquote
35. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
36. "Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom." — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

For a longer list of lines to repeat on hard days, see our self-love affirmations.

Bible verses often quoted about manifestation

These verses come up constantly in manifestation circles. They're quoted here from the King James Version.

37. "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." — Proverbs 23:7. James Allen took the title of As a Man Thinketh from this verse.
38. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." — Hebrews 11:1
39. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." — Romans 12:2
40. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." — Philippians 4:8

8 famous quotes with the wrong name attached

These circulate widely as manifestation quotes. The words may still be worth keeping; the credit belongs elsewhere.

How to use a manifestation quote

A quote is most useful when it becomes something you repeat. Three ways to do that:

1. Turn it into an affirmation. Rewrite the quote in the first person and present tense. Allen's "as you dream, so shall you become" becomes "I'm becoming the person I picture." Our guide to writing affirmations for manifestation covers the wording.
2. Keep one quote for a whole week. Switching daily means none of them sinks in. Repeated statements come to feel more familiar and more true, an effect psychologists call the illusory truth effect (Fazio and colleagues, 2015).
3. Put it where you'll see it. A wallpaper, a mirror, the first page of a journal.

If you'd like the line on your phone, save your rewritten quote as an affirmation in Manifestly and tap the counter each time you say it; the Home Screen widget counts too.

For quotes from the New Thought teachers who coined the term, from William Walker Atkinson to Rhonda Byrne, see our companion list of law of attraction quotes.

Pick the one line from this page that made you pause, and write it somewhere you'll read it tomorrow morning.