"Attitude determines the altitude of life"
About this Quote
That rhetorical move carries a reassuring subtext. If life feels stuck, the lever is inside your own hand. For an audience drawn to personal responsibility, faith-inflected discipline, and character building, that’s empowering. It relocates agency from institutions, luck, and other people to the self - the one variable you can always “control.” As a piece of leadership talk, it also flatters the listener: you’re not a victim of circumstances, you’re a pilot.
The catch is the quiet moral accounting baked into it. If altitude equals success, peace, or purpose, then falling short reads as an attitude problem. That can be bracing (a call to resilience) or bluntly convenient (a way to ignore structural realities: money, health, discrimination, timing). Cole’s line works because it’s both portable and absolute: easy to repeat, hard to argue with in the moment, and flexible enough to cover everything from career ambition to spiritual growth.
In the late 20th-century self-help ecosystem - especially its evangelical wing - that blend of uplift and accountability wasn’t accidental; it was the brand.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Cole, Edwin Louis. (2026, January 15). Attitude determines the altitude of life. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/attitude-determines-the-altitude-of-life-144882/
Chicago Style
Cole, Edwin Louis. "Attitude determines the altitude of life." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/attitude-determines-the-altitude-of-life-144882/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Attitude determines the altitude of life." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/attitude-determines-the-altitude-of-life-144882/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.





