Books, A to Z On 4 of the 12 ideas

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Dale Carnegie 1948

3 Cites1 Echoes

Ideas we link to this book

What you think, you become

Echoes, per a summary

Wikiquote has Carnegie writing “Our thoughts make us what we are”, the same claim in his own words, and the excerpt credits no one.

3rd to 1st c. BCE
“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.”
Dhammapada. Earliest we can find, more than 1,900 years earlier.
1948
“If I knew what you think, I would know what you are. Our thoughts make us what we are.”

Secondhand, from Wikiquote. Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948).

This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.

Sources

Wikiquote: en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie.

Live one day at a time

Cites Sibyl F. Partridge, per a summary

Quote Investigator has Carnegie including a programme called “Just for Today”, to “live through this day only”, and crediting it to Sibyl F. Partridge, a credit Quote Investigator doubts.

23 BCE
“A wise deity shrouds in obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that which is present.”
Horace, Odes. Earliest we can find, about 1,970 years earlier.

Secondhand, from Quote Investigator. Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948).

This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.

Sources

Quote Investigator: quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/26/just-for-today.

We suffer more in fear than in fact

Cites Montaigne, per a summary

Quote Investigator has Carnegie crediting Montaigne with a life “full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened”, and doubts that Montaigne said it. The credit is Carnegie’s all the same.

c. 64 CE
“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca, Moral Letters. Earliest we can find, about 1,880 years earlier.
1948
“Even the great French philosopher, Montaigne, made that mistake. ‘My life,’ he said, ‘has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.’”

Secondhand, from Quote Investigator. Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948).

This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.

Sources

Quote Investigator: quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/04/never-happened.

The obstacle is the way

Cites Julius Rosenwald, per a summary

Quote Investigator has Carnegie’s chapter crediting Julius Rosenwald, by way of Robert Maynard Hutchins, for “When you have a lemon, make a lemonade”. The maxim is a looser form of the idea.

c. 170 to 180 CE
“for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Earliest we can find, about 1,770 years earlier.
1948
“When you have a lemon, make a lemonade.”

Secondhand, from Quote Investigator. Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948).

This book is still in copyright, so we read an account of it, not the book.

Sources

Quote Investigator: quoteinvestigator.com/2024/04/04/life-lemonade.

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