Master Key System Quotes: Notable Lines From All 24 Parts

These Master Key System quotes come from all 24 parts of Charles Haanel's course, one or two lines from each part, with a short note on what each line means in plain language.

Every quotation is copied from a public domain scan of the St. Louis edition titled The Master Key System in Twenty-Four Parts with Questionnaire and Glossary, which carries a 1919 copyright line and comes from a University of Michigan library copy. Wording can differ slightly between editions, and the quotes keep Haanel's spellings, such as "sub-conscious." A quote is not an endorsement. Haanel states his beliefs as scientific law, and the notes say where a line is a claim rather than a fact.

Parts One to Six: The Foundations

Part One

Mind is creative, and conditions, environment and all experiences in life are the result of our habitual or predominant mental attitude.

The thesis of the whole course in one sentence. Haanel means habitual thinking, the attitude a person returns to most of the time, not a passing mood.

Part Two

The sub-conscious mind never sleeps, never rests, any more than does your heart, or your blood.

Haanel compares the subconscious mind to the body's automatic functions. Because it never stops, he wants the conscious mind to guard what reaches it.

Part Three

It is our attitude of mind toward life which determines the experiences with which we are to meet; if we expect nothing, we shall have nothing; if we demand much, we shall receive the greater portion.

Expectation shapes outcome. It is the practical point of a part mostly about the solar plexus and fear, and it is a belief, not a tested finding.

Part Four

If you do not intend to do a thing, do not start; if you do start, see it through even if the heavens fall...

Broken resolutions, Haanel warns, build "the habit of failure." Make fewer commitments and keep the ones you make.

Part Five

This, then, is the way we are constantly creating and recreating ourselves; we are today the result of our past thinking, and we shall be what we are thinking today...

Present character is the product of earlier thinking, so today's thinking sets the pattern for later. Part Five calls this building a "Mental Home."

Part Six

What effect can be produced by thought? The reply is that thought is mind in motion (just as wind is air in motion), and its effect will depend entirely on the "mechanism to which it is attached."

Haanel borrows the language of electrical engineering. Thought is the energy, and the brain and nerves are the machinery it runs through.

Parts Seven to Twelve: Imagination, Truth and Law

Part Seven

Work is necessary, labor, hard mental labor, the kind of effort which so few are willing to put forth.

Concentrate on the things you want, not on the things you do not want.

Two guards against misreading the main lesson on visualization. Reading about mental pictures achieves nothing by itself, and attention belongs on the goal, not the worry.

Part Eight

You can not entertain weak, harmful, negative thoughts ten hours a day and expect to bring about beautiful, strong and harmonious conditions by ten minutes of strong, positive, creative thought.

A corrective to quick-fix readings of the law of attraction. What counts is the attitude that dominates the day.

Part Nine

Visualization is a very different process from seeing; seeing is physical, and is therefore related to the objective world, the "world without," but visualization is a product of the imagination, and is therefore a product of the subjective mind, the "world within."

Seeing uses the eyes; picturing belongs to the inner world. That is why Haanel treats it as a skill, trained through his visualization exercises.

Part Ten

Knowledge will not apply itself. You must make the application. Abundance will not come to you out of the sky, neither will it drop into your lap...

Part Ten calls abundance a natural law, then balances the promise with a demand for intention, will and action.

Part Eleven

All truth is the same, whether stated in modern scientific terms or in the language of apostolic times.

This explains why Haanel mixes Bible verses, Plato and the science of his day: he believed they described one truth in different words.

Part Twelve

The only way to keep from going backward is to keep going forward. Eternal vigilance is the price of success.

Fear and discouragement, Haanel says, leave people taking one step forward and two back. His remedy is consistency.

Parts Thirteen to Eighteen: Applying the Law

Part Thirteen

Thought is a spiritual activity and is therefore creative, but make no mistake, thought will create nothing unless it is consciously, systematically and constructively directed...

Idle thinking wastes effort, in Haanel's view. The exercises exist to train the directed kind.

Part Fourteen

Remember, we learn by doing. Reading these lessons will get you nowhere. It is in the practical application that the value consists.

Haanel expected daily practice, not just reading. That is the reasoning behind any study plan that takes one part per week.

Part Fifteen

Words may become mental palaces that will live forever, or they may become shacks which the first breeze will carry away.

Words are the first form thought takes, so Haanel urges choosing them with care.

Part Sixteen

Wealth is a product of labor. Capital is an effect, not a cause; a servant, not a master; a means, not an end.

The part often read as the money lesson opens by putting wealth in second place.

Part Seventeen

There is always the cry "to have" but never the cry "to be"; they fail to understand that they cannot have one without the other...

From the main lesson on concentration. In Haanel's order, having follows being.

Part Eighteen

The only belief which is of any value to any one is a belief that has been put to a test and demonstrated to be a fact; it is then no longer a belief, but has become a living Faith or the Truth.

A fair standard to apply to the course itself. Its claims about health and fortune have not been demonstrated in the way Haanel suggests.

Parts Nineteen to Twenty-Four: Truth and Spirit

Part Nineteen

You take the necessary time to eat in order that the body may be nourished, why not take the time to assimilate your mental food?

From the weekly exercise. Mental practice deserves a fixed place in the day, just as meals do.

Part Twenty

...those who know that unless we are willing to think we shall have to work, and the less we think the more we shall have to work, and the less we shall get for our work.

People who ignore the power of thought, Haanel writes, become "a beast of burden for those who think." A blunt view of work from a man who ran companies.

Part Twenty-One

We do a thing, then do it again, and again, and again, until it becomes easy and perhaps almost automatic; and the same rule applies in breaking any and all bad habits...

Habits are built and broken by repetition, and Haanel adds that an occasional failure is no reason to lose hope.

Part Twenty-Two

They are like an army of workmen, ready to start an important piece of work, but every time they get fairly started on the undertaking a strike is called, or plans changed, until they finally get discouraged and give up.

Haanel means the body's repair cells, disrupted by fear and doubt. This part's health claims are not supported by medicine and are no substitute for medical care.

Part Twenty-Three

...our problem is to keep an open mind, to constantly reach out for the new, to recognize opportunity, to be interested in the race rather than the goal, for the pleasure is in the pursuit rather than the possession.

In the part about money, Haanel values the process over the prize.

Part Twenty-Four

...only those who are wise enough to understand, broad enough to weigh the evidence, firm enough to follow their own judgment, and strong enough to make the sacrifice exacted, may enter and partake.

The course ends by naming who can use the Master-Key. "Broad enough to weigh the evidence" is a fair test for Haanel's own claims.

Reading the Quotes in Context

Short lines travel well, which is one reason Haanel was quoted in Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. Out of context, though, they lose the weekly practice that surrounds them, starting with the sitting exercise in Part One, and the picture of a Universal Mind that gives them their meaning.

All the quotes here come from the original 24 parts. The Parts 25 to 28 in some modern editions are reported to come from Haanel's later A Book About You, and are not quoted. Readers comparing Haanel with Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich will find these lines a useful baseline.