Wayne Dyer? Max Planck? Benjamin Wheeler? Gilda Wheeler? Wendy Church? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: When you change your viewpoint on life the entire world can be altered. Carefully deciding where to focus your attention and your efforts is crucial to leading a successful life. Here is a pertinent adage:
Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.
This saying has been attributed to two very different people: U.S. self-help author Wayne Dyer and German theoretical physicist Max Planck. I have not seen a solid citation, and I am skeptical of these attributions. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has found no substantive evidence that Max Planck said or wrote this remark. Planck died in 1947.
In 2004 Wayne Dyer published “The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way”. The tenth chapter began with the following passage. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
One of my secrets for feeling successful and attracting bountiful abundance into my life has been an internal axiom that I use virtually every day of my life. It goes like this: Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change. This has always worked for me.
The truth of this little maxim is actually found in the field of quantum physics, which, according to some, is a subject that’s not only stranger than you think it is, it’s stranger than you can think.
QI believes that Wayne Dyer deserves credit for the quotation under examination.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Max Planck was an important quantum theorist, and Wayne Dyer linked the saying to quantum theory as mentioned above. This connection may have facilitated the misattribution to Planck.
In 2005 the book “It’s All Connected: A Comprehensive Guide to Global Issues and Sustainable Solutions” was published by Benjamin Wheeler, Gilda Wheeler, and Wendy Church. The epigraph of chapter three was a slightly rephrased version of the saying. The authors credited Planck, but no citation was provided:2
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
—Max Planck (German Nobel Laureate in physics, 1918)
In 2007 “The Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform the World” by Jackie Lapin printed the quotation together with an ascription to Dyer:3
Changing one’s attitude, goals or self-vision can change a person’s personal reality, as well as the global reality. (Remember that everything is interconnected.) Says Wayne Dyer, in his best seller The Power of Intention: “Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at will change.”
In 2018 business executive Vern Brownell delivered an address to the Empire Club of Canada and attributed the saying to Planck:4
To finish up, I really like this quote from Max Planck. He says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I think this is really true of quantum computing. It is a completely different tool.
In conclusion, QI believes that Wayne Dyer deserves credit for this quotation. Dyer included the statement in his 2004 book “The Power of Intention”. The attribution to Max Planck is unsupported.
Image Notes: Crystal sphere at the beach from Jake Willett at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Giles P Croft whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 2004 Copyright, The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way by Wayne W. Dyer, Chapter 10: It Is My Intention To: Feel Successful and Attract Abundance into My Life, Quote Page 173, Hay House Inc., Carlsbad, California. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2005 Copyright, It’s All Connected: A Comprehensive Guide to Global Issues and Sustainable Solutions by Benjamin Wheeler, Gilda Wheeler, and Wendy Church, Chapter 3: Going Global: Sustainable Structural Solutions, Quote Page 125, Facing the Future, Bellingham, Washington. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2007 Copyright, The Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform the World by Jackie Lapin, Chapter 3: How the Universe Works, Quote Page 42, Elevate, Charleston, South, Carolina. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2018, The Empire Club of Canada: Addresses 2017-2018, Date: March 6, 2018, Address by Vern Brownell (CEO of D-Wave Systems), Start Page 650, Quote Page 657, The Empire Club Foundation, Don Mills, Ontario. (Verified with scans) ↩︎