"Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives"
About this Quote
The subtext is classic self-help populism with a motivational speaker’s edge: you are not trapped, you are interpreting. That’s both liberating and strategically convenient. It shifts agency back onto the individual at the exact moment many people feel least in control, offering a clean, actionable villain (a “disempowering” meaning) and a hero (a “saving” meaning). “Literally save their lives” spikes the stakes into near-medical territory, borrowing urgency from trauma recovery, addiction narratives, and crisis survival stories that frequently circulate in Robbins’ orbit.
Context matters: Robbins’ brand is built on high-intensity reframing, a performance style that makes cognitive behavioral ideas feel like a stadium event. The promise is emotional: you can rewrite your internal script and get a different life. The risk, quietly embedded, is the flip side of that agency. If beliefs create outcomes, then suffering can start to look like a failure of interpretation. That tension - empowerment bordering on blame - is the engine of the quote’s potency and its controversy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Robbins, Tony. (2026, January 18). Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/beliefs-have-the-power-to-create-and-the-power-to-22284/
Chicago Style
Robbins, Tony. "Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/beliefs-have-the-power-to-create-and-the-power-to-22284/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/beliefs-have-the-power-to-create-and-the-power-to-22284/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.










