Dyer opens chapter ten of The Power of Intention (Hay House, 2004) by calling this “an internal axiom that I use virtually every day of my life” and adding “this has always worked for me” — a man claiming a line, not quoting one. Quote Investigator verified the page with scans ↗ and concludes that Dyer deserves the credit. The physicist Max Planck, to whom it is just as often handed, died in 1947 and has no documented connection to it; the likely reason his name stuck is that Dyer, in the very next paragraph, attributes the maxim’s truth to quantum physics.
“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change” Wayne Dyer, The Power of Intention (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2004), chapter 10, page 173, where he introduces it as "an internal axiom that I use virtually every day of my life." Not Max Planck, who died in 1947 and has no documented connection to it; that credit traces to an uncited 2005 chapter epigraph. Verified by Quotle.info.
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In context
Evoking the world of Wayne Dyer — American self-help author & motivational speaker. Theme: "Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The 2004 book where Dyer claims it as his own
Work
The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way
Chapter
Chapter 10, “It Is My Intention To: Feel Successful and Attract Abundance into My Life” — quote page 173
Published
2004 · Hay House Inc., Carlsbad, California
Status
Verified with scans by Quote Investigator; Dyer presents the line as his own axiom
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.
The Power of Intention, 2004, p. 173
The opening of chapter ten, as Quote Investigator transcribes it from scans ↗. Two things are doing work here. First, “an internal axiom that I use” and “this has always worked for me” are the words of an author presenting his own formulation — he credits nobody. Second, the sentence immediately after it reaches for quantum physics, and that sentence is almost certainly the seed of the Planck misattribution.
2004 — the source.Quote Investigator locates the exact wording ↗ in The Power of Intention, chapter 10, quote page 173 (Hay House, Carlsbad, California), verified with scans, and concludes: “QI believes that Wayne Dyer deserves credit for the quotation under examination.”
2005 — the error appears, one year later.It’s All Connected: A Comprehensive Guide to Global Issues and Sustainable Solutions by Benjamin Wheeler, Gilda Wheeler and Wendy Church used a slightly reworded form as its chapter-three epigraph (quote page 125) and credited it to “Max Planck (German Nobel Laureate in physics, 1918)” — with no citation. QI verified that page with scans ↗.
2007 — and the correct credit appears too. Jackie Lapin’s The Art of Conscious Creation (quote page 42) quoted it as “Says Wayne Dyer, in his best seller The Power of Intention” — also verified by QI ↗. Both attributions have been circulating side by side since the mid-2000s; only one of them has a book and a page number behind it.
The Planck side is empty. QI states plainly that it “has found no substantive evidence that Max Planck said or wrote this remark,” noting he died in 1947. The line is also absent from Wikiquote’s Max Planck page ↗ — not among his sourced quotations, and not in its Misattributed section, which carries a single unrelated entry.
First published in The Power of Intention in 2004 by Hay House, Inc., and Dyer died in 2015 — so this sentence is firmly in copyright in the United States. Quote it as a short attributed excerpt with the book and page; it is not public-domain text, and the common labelling of it as a Max Planck line does nothing to change that.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Why a physicist gets the credit
This line is handed to Max Planck about as often as to Dyer, and the swap has a traceable cause: Dyer himself invoked quantum physics in the sentence immediately after the maxim. Planck was quantum theory’s originator, and a famous name is a stronger magnet than a correct one.
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The usual false creditMax Planck (1858–1947) No evidence
Where the error entered printIt’s All Connected (2005) Uncited epigraph
Benjamin Wheeler, Gilda Wheeler and Wendy Church used a reworded version — “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” — as a chapter epigraph on page 125, signed “Max Planck (German Nobel Laureate in physics, 1918).” QI verified the page and notes no citation was provided ↗. An epigraph needs no footnote, which is exactly how misattributions get laundered into print.
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How far it has travelledQuoted as Planck from conference stages Still spreading
In March 2018 the chief executive of the quantum-computing firm D-Wave told the Empire Club of Canada: “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.’” The address is in QI’s citations, quote page 657 ↗. The line is now being credited to Planck in front of audiences convened to discuss quantum computing.
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A wording noteThe “When you…” variant Reworded
Dyer wrote “Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.” The versions credited to Planck almost always open with “When you change the way you look at things…”, and Lapin’s 2007 quotation adds a “will” (“the things you look at will change”) — all three forms are in QI’s citations ↗. The imperative opening is Dyer’s; the conditional one is the drift.
Dyer built a career of nearly four decades on reframing — from Your Erroneous Zones in 1976 onward ↗, his subject was the gap between what happens to you and the story you tell about it. This maxim is that career compressed into one sentence, and he used it as a working tool rather than a quotation: an axiom he reached for daily.
What he then did with it is the reason this page exists. Rather than leave it as self-help, he grounded it in physics — “the truth of this little maxim is actually found in the field of quantum physics” — borrowing the authority of the hardest science available. Readers kept the borrowed authority and dropped the borrower. Within a year the sentence was in print over the name of the man who originated quantum theory and won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics ↗, a German theoretician who died when Dyer was seven.
“An internal axiom that I use virtually every day of my life.”
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1940–2015 · American self-help author & motivational speaker
Wayne Walter Dyer took a bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy, a master’s in psychology and an Ed.D. in guidance and counselling from Wayne State University in 1970, worked as a high-school guidance counsellor, and ran a private therapy practice before a literary agent approached him at St John’s University about turning his ideas into a book. That book was Your Erroneous Zones (1976), and it made him one of the defining voices of American self-help: twenty more best-sellers followed, along with a long run of PBS specials. His early work drew on Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis; his later work turned toward spirituality. He died in August 2015, aged 75.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Wayne W. Dyer, The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2004), chap. 10, “It Is My Intention To: Feel Successful and Attract Abundance into My Life,” 173. Page located and verified with scans by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Change the Way You Look at Things, and the Things You Look at Change,” 30 April 2026, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2026/04/30/change-look/.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change’?” Last verified 6 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/change-the-way-you-look-at-things-and-the-things-you-look/