Widely credited as the first author to use the exact phrase "Law of Attraction" in print, William Walker Atkinson was a lawyer turned New Thought pioneer who published prolifically in the early 1900s. His 1906 work Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World remains a foundational text of the movement. Read Atkinson slowly — his legal precision means that almost every sentence rewards careful attention.

The best way to overcome undesirable or negative thoughts and feelings is to cultivate the positive ones.

— William Walker Atkinson

A mental image gives you a framework upon which to work. It is like the drawing of the architect, or the map of the explorer. Think over this for a few moments until you get the idea firmly fixed in your mind.

— William Walker Atkinson

The presence of an active, energetic, successful man, or set of men, in a place, will permeate the place with positive vibrations that will stimulate all who abide there.

— William Walker Atkinson

The use of the will as the projector of mentative currents is the real base of all mental magic.

— William Walker Atkinson

The mind has been likened to a piece of paper that has been folded. Ever afterwards it has a tendency to fold in the same crease — unless we make a new crease or fold, when it will follow the last lines.

— William Walker Atkinson

Genevieve Behrend holds a unique distinction in New Thought history: she was the only personal student of Thomas Troward, the British judge whose mental science lectures shaped an entire generation of LOA thinkers. Behrend's writing on visualisation is among the most practical and direct in the canon. She did not merely teach these principles — she documented using them to fund her own journey to study under Troward, making her work a lived demonstration of what she taught.

Nothing can prevent your picture from coming into concrete form except the same power which gave it birth — yourself.

— Genevieve Behrend

Everyone visualizes whether he knows it or not. Visualizing is the great secret of success.

— Genevieve Behrend

We all possess more power and greater possibilities than we realize, and visualizing is one of the greatest of these powers.

— Genevieve Behrend

Siddhartha Gautama — the Buddha — taught in northern India roughly 2,500 years ago. While Buddhism is a complete spiritual path in its own right, its observations about the relationship between thought, action, and lived experience align directly with what the New Thought movement would later call the Law of Attraction. For the Buddha, the mind was not a passive observer of reality. It was its architect.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.

— Buddha

The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings.

— Buddha

Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.

— Buddha

What you are is what you have been. Who you will be is what you do now.

— Buddha

Jack Canfield is best known as the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, but his deeper contribution to the Law of Attraction movement came through his role in The Secret and his decades of work on success principles. Canfield trained under W. Clement Stone, a direct intellectual heir of Napoleon Hill, giving him a lineage that connects back to the founding generation of New Thought. His approach is practical and grounded, focused on the daily habits and mental disciplines that turn attraction from concept into lived result.

The Law of Attraction states that whatever you focus on, think about, read about, and talk about intensely, you're going to attract more of into your life.

— Jack Canfield

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

— Jack Canfield

Mahatma Gandhi is not typically listed among Law of Attraction teachers, yet his writings and speeches contain some of the most precise articulations of its principles ever recorded. Gandhi understood, through both philosophy and lived political experience, that the internal state of a person or a movement determines its external outcome. His observations on the relationship between thought, habit, and destiny are as relevant to personal development as they are to social change.

Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviours. Keep your behaviours positive, because your behaviours become your habits. Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.

— Gandhi

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

— Gandhi

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

— Gandhi

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

— Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927)

Neville Goddard stands apart from every other teacher in this collection. Where most LOA thinkers describe a process of attracting something toward you from the outside world, Goddard taught that there is no outside world, not in the way we habitually experience it. The outer world is a mirror, pushed out entirely from within. Change your inner assumption and the mirror changes. Born in Barbados in 1905, he lectured and wrote prolifically from the late 1930s until his death in 1972, and his influence on contemporary manifestation communities remains larger than almost any other single figure in this tradition. Read these quotes slowly, each one is a complete teaching compressed into a single line.

Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows.

— Neville Goddard

A change of feeling is a change of destiny.

— Neville Goddard

Imagination is the only reality. All things exist in imagination before they exist in reality.

— Neville Goddard

The world is yourself pushed out. Ask yourself what you want and then give it to yourself.

— Neville Goddard

Man is all imagination. God is man and man is God.

— Neville Goddard

Charles Haanel was a successful businessman before he became one of the most influential figures in New Thought history. His Master Key System, first published in 1912, treated the mind as a precision instrument — trainable, directable, and capable of producing measurable results. What distinguishes Haanel from many of his contemporaries is his insistence that metaphysical principle and practical application are not separate concerns but the same concern approached from different angles.

The predominant thought or the mental attitude is the magnet, and the law is that like attracts like. Consequently, the mental attitude will invariably attract such conditions as correspond to its nature.

— Charles Haanel

There is no limit to what this law can do for you; dare to believe in your own ideal; think of the ideal as an already accomplished fact.

— Charles Haanel

To acquire love, fill yourself up with it until you become a magnet.

— Charles Haanel

The vibrations of mental forces are the finest and consequently the most powerful in existence.

— Charles Haanel

Napoleon Hill spent over twenty years interviewing the most successful people in America at the personal direction of Andrew Carnegie, distilling those conversations into Think and Grow Rich (1928) — still one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill's contribution was not mysticism but methodology: he identified the specific mental habits, emotional states, and practical disciplines that separated those who achieved their goals from those who did not.

Any idea, plan or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

— Napoleon Hill

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

— Napoleon Hill

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

— Napoleon Hill

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

— Napoleon Hill

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

— Napoleon Hill

Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher credited with writing the Tao Te Ching around the 6th century BC, articulated a vision of reality that aligns closely with the Law of Attraction — though he would never have used that language. For Lao Tzu, the universe operated according to a natural intelligence, the Tao, and the wisest path for any person was to align with that intelligence rather than resist it. His teachings on stillness, surrender, and effortless action offer a dimension of the Law that purely Western approaches often miss entirely.

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.

— Lao Tzu

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

— Lao Tzu

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

— Lao Tzu

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.

— Lao Tzu

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

— Lao Tzu

Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven.

— Lao Tzu

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

— Lao Tzu

Prentice Mulford is one of the least celebrated and most important figures in the history of this movement. His 1889 work Thoughts Are Things gave the New Thought movement its defining mantra and established a premise that every major teacher who followed him would build on: thought is not merely a metaphor for creative power. It is a literal force. Read Mulford for the clarity and plainness of his language — he was writing for ordinary people at a time when these ideas were genuinely radical.

The man who succeeds must always in mind or imagination live, move, think, and act as if he had gained that success, or he never will gain it.

— Prentice Mulford

Fear is but another name for lack of power to control our minds, or, in other words, to control the kind of thought we think or put out.

— Prentice Mulford

The arrow always tipped with ill nature and sarcasm is deadliest to him who sends it.

— Prentice Mulford

Our thought is the unseen magnet, ever attracting its correspondence in things seen and tangible.

— Prentice Mulford

Bob Proctor traced his own awakening directly to a single reading of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich at age 26, and spent the next five decades teaching those principles to millions of people worldwide. What distinguished Proctor from many in the modern LOA space was his insistence on understanding the mechanics behind the law — the science of mind, the role of the subconscious, and what he called paradigm change. He taught until his passing in 2022, and his body of work remains one of the most accessible entry points into serious LOA study.

Gratitude is an attitude that hooks us up to our source of supply. And the more grateful you are, the closer you become to your maker, to the architect of the universe, to the spiritual core of your being. It's a phenomenal lesson.

— Bob Proctor

If you're thinking of debt, that's what you're going to attract.

— Bob Proctor

Let's start with what we can be thankful for, and get our mind into that vibration, and then watch the good that starts to come, because one thought leads to another thought.

— Bob Proctor

Joe Vitale came to the Law of Attraction through a period of genuine hardship — he was homeless in Dallas in his twenties before rebuilding his life through the principles he would later teach. That personal history gives his work a credibility that purely theoretical teachers often lack. Vitale gained wide recognition through his appearance in The Secret and went on to author dozens of books on attraction, abundance, and what he calls "zero limits" — the state of complete mental and emotional clearance that allows manifestation to flow without resistance.

It's really important that you feel good. Because this feeling good is what goes out as a signal into the universe and starts to attract more of itself to you. So the more you can feel good, the more you will attract the things that help you feel good and that will keep bringing you up higher and higher.

— Joe Vitale

As soon as you start to feel differently about what you already have, you will start to attract more of the good things, more of the things you can be grateful for.

— Joe Vitale

Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing the parallel back to you.

— Joe Vitale

Wallace D. Wattles lived most of his life in obscurity, yet in his final years produced a body of work that has never gone out of print. The Science of Getting Rich (1910) was the direct inspiration for Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, making Wattles, more than any other single figure, the hidden source of the modern LOA revival. He died in 1911, never knowing the reach his words would eventually have. What made his work distinctive was its insistence that the Law operated like a science: consistent, learnable, and available to anyone regardless of circumstance.

You can serve God and man in no more effective way than by getting rich; that is, if you get rich by the creative method and not by the competitive one.

— Wallace D. Wattles

Thought is the creative power, or the impelling force which causes the creative power to act; thinking in a Certain Way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock upon which many otherwise scientific metaphysical thinkers meet shipwreck — the failure to connect thought with personal action.

— Wallace D. Wattles

You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now.

— Wallace D. Wattles

Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways, are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude.

— Wallace D. Wattles

The grateful mind is constantly fixated upon the best. Therefore it tends to become the best. It takes the form or character from the best, and will receive the best.

— Wallace D. Wattles

By thought, the thing you want is brought to you. By action, you receive it.

— Wallace D. Wattles

Give every man more in use value than you take from him in cash value; then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction.

— Wallace D. Wattles

The more gratefully we fix our minds on the Supreme when good things come to us, the more good things we will receive, and the more rapidly they will come; and the reason simply is that the mental attitude of gratitude draws the mind into closer touch with the source from which the blessings come.

— Wallace D. Wattles