"If you want more, you have to require more from yourself"
About this Quote
The subtext is moral as much as motivational. You don’t just lack results; you’ve been under-demanding of yourself. That framing creates a jolt of agency, but it also smuggles in a verdict: your current life is, at least partly, your fault. In the Dr. Phil cultural universe, that’s the point. His brand is accountability as spectacle, a daytime courtroom where the defendant is your own habits.
Context matters: McGraw isn’t speaking from the quiet of a clinic but the bright lights of an audience built on transformation narratives. The line is engineered for that format - short, repeatable, and slightly prosecutorial. It’s a sound bite that converts messy structural realities into a single, actionable lever: self-requirement.
That’s its strength and its danger. As a mantra, it can snap people out of passivity. As a worldview, it can flatten the role of luck, inequality, trauma, and plain exhaustion. “Require more” is clean advice in a culture addicted to optimization; it’s also a convenient way to turn complexity into character.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Discipline |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
McGraw, Phil. (2026, January 15). If you want more, you have to require more from yourself. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-want-more-you-have-to-require-more-from-153145/
Chicago Style
McGraw, Phil. "If you want more, you have to require more from yourself." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-want-more-you-have-to-require-more-from-153145/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you want more, you have to require more from yourself." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-want-more-you-have-to-require-more-from-153145/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.









