"The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good... The strong, calm man is always loved and revered." -James Allen
James Allen was a British philosopher, writing in the New Thought school (which was, very loosely, an early spiritual and philosophical approach to the idea of motivational thinking). Allen's first book, As A Man Thinketh, perfectly summarized the tenets of the movement. "A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's; they are brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be altered by himself, never by another," he writes. "His condition is also his own, and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within... All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts."
