“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…”

—  James Allen

Last update May 20, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the …" by James Allen?
James Allen photo
James Allen47
British philosophical writer 1864–1912

Related quotes

“That a man can change himself…and master his own destiny is the conclusion of every mind who is wide-awake to the power of right thought.”(Christian D. Larson)”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then — he needn't hope to find himself again.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Sir Thomas More, Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.”

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

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

John Locke photo

“If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX, sec. 123
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

Thomas Paine photo

“You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

Elbridge G. Spaulding photo

“The advanced state of civilized society does not recognize the right of one man to own another man against his will. The inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is conceded to all. The right of every man to himself, to enjoy the fruits of his own ingenuity and industry, are among the natural rights of every person made in the image of God.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

“It is certain that every man has a right to keep his own sentiments, if he pleases: he has certainly a right to judge whether he will make them public, or commit them only to the sight of his own friends. In that state the manuscript is, in every sense his peculiar property; and no man can take it from him or make any use of it which he has not authorized, without being guilty of a violation of his property.”

Joseph Yates (judge) (1722–1770) English barrister and judge

4 Burr. Part IV., 2379.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)

Seneca the Younger photo

“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Thomas Hobbes photo

“The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64
Leviathan (1651)

Related topics