“Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so.”

“Our chief want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what we can.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking— you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation….”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

“If we spend our lives resisting what happened, which is what we are doing when we cannot accept the reality of what has happened, we are living our life pushing against what was instead of putting our energy towards what we want to create instead.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe

“What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

“We do what we have to so we can do what we want to.”

Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer

“sometimes our future is
dictated by what we are, as opposed to what we want.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker