Editors Reads Verdict
Schwartz's 1959 classic has sold millions across generations because its core insight — that self-imposed thinking limits are more binding than external circumstances — remains both counterintuitive and verifiable in everyday experience.
What We Loved
- The core insight about self-imposed thinking limits is robust and generative
- Concrete behavioral techniques for expanding belief are specific and actionable
- The longevity of the book is itself evidence for the universality of the principles
- Schwartz writes with the clarity of someone who has taught these concepts for decades
Minor Drawbacks
- Published in 1959, some cultural examples and language are dated
- The optimism framework doesn't account for structural barriers that individuals cannot think their way through
- Some advice reflects the gender and racial assumptions of its era
Key Takeaways
- → Belief in success is the prerequisite for achieving it — not the reward
- → Excusitis — the habit of making excuses — is the most common success disease
- → Think big and you'll act big — thinking habits determine action habits
- → Surround yourself with people who think and act bigger than you currently do
- → Action cures fear — most fear dissolves when you begin moving toward its source
| Author | David J. Schwartz |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Pages | 320 |
| Published | January 1, 1959 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Self-Help, Business |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Readers who sense that their thinking is the primary limit on their achievement, and anyone seeking practical techniques for expanding what they believe is possible. |
A Classic for Good Reason
David Schwartz published The Magic of Thinking Big in 1959, and it has never been out of print. Over sixty years of continuous readership across generations of different cultural contexts is not an accident. The book’s core premise — that the size of your success is determined not by your talent or your circumstances but by the size of your thinking — has remained counterintuitively useful across social upheavals that should have dated it.
The reason it endures is not that it’s always right but that it’s pointing at something real: the thinking patterns we adopt, whether through upbringing, experience, or the accumulated small choices of daily life, create effective ceilings on what we pursue, attempt, and achieve. Changing the thinking patterns changes the ceiling.
Excusitis and Its Cures
Schwartz’s most memorable concept is “excusitis” — the habit of explaining inaction and failure through external circumstances. Health excusitis (I’d do more if I felt better). Intelligence excusitis (I’m not smart enough for that). Age excusitis (I’m too old/young). Luck excusitis (other people get the breaks).
Excusitis is, Schwartz argues, the most common and most debilitating success disease. It’s not that the circumstances it invokes are always false — illness, youth, age, and bad luck are real — but that focusing on them as explanations for inaction keeps people from developing the capacity that would let them act despite those circumstances.
Thinking as Behavior
The book’s practical wisdom is that thinking big is not an attitude adjustment but a behavioral practice. Schwartz provides specific techniques: the way you describe yourself in conversation, the scale of goals you write down, the people you choose to spend time with, the way you interpret setbacks. Each of these behaviors shapes what you believe is possible, and belief shapes behavior in a self-reinforcing loop.
The Dated Dimensions
Published in 1959, the book’s gender assumptions and some of its cultural examples reflect that era. Thoughtful readers will filter these elements. What doesn’t date is the underlying psychology — that human beings consistently underestimate what they’re capable of and that the underestimation is not a fixed trait but a habit that can be changed.
Our rating: 4.3/5 — A genuine classic that points at real and enduring limits in human thinking, with practical behavioral techniques that have helped millions expand what they believe possible.
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