Robert Collier and the Art of Unlimited Possibility
Robert Collier was born in 1885 into relative wealth as the son of a prominent publisher, yet he squandered his inheritance through poor business decisions and personal struggles before his twenties were complete. This dramatic reversal of fortune became the crucible that forged his life’s philosophy. Rather than succumb to despair, Collier embarked on an intensive self-study journey during the early 1900s, absorbing everything from practical business manuals to esoteric philosophy and metaphysics. He spent years devouring the works of contemporary self-help pioneers, Eastern philosophy, and the emerging field of what would become known as New Thought—a spiritual and philosophical movement that emphasized the power of the mind to shape reality. This personal transformation from financial ruin to success became not merely his own redemption story, but the raw material he would mine for decades of influential writing that would help define the self-improvement genre.
The quote “You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be” emerged from Collier’s magnum opus, a comprehensive correspondence course called “The Secret of the Ages,” which he began publishing in 1926. Unlike many self-help authors who focused narrowly on financial success or positive thinking, Collier crafted a holistic philosophy that synthesized practical business strategy with deeper metaphysical principles. The course became extraordinarily successful, with hundreds of thousands of enrollees worldwide, making Collier one of the wealthiest and most influential self-improvement authors of the mid-twentieth century. His work appeared in numerous forms—serialized newspaper columns, magazine articles, books, and his famous correspondence course—giving his ideas unprecedented reach. The quote itself encapsulates the central thesis of his entire body of work: that human potential is essentially unlimited, constrained only by belief and imagination rather than by external circumstances or inherent limitations.
What many modern readers don’t know is that Collier was deeply influenced by the writings of Wallace D. Wattles, particularly “The Science of Getting Rich,” which he discovered during his period of financial recovery. Collier essentially built upon and expanded Wattles’s ideas, but with a crucial difference: while Wattles emphasized visualization and “gratitude,” Collier added layers of practical business wisdom, psychological insight, and what might be called proto-cognitive behavioral techniques. He was also profoundly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” and the transcendentalist movement, as well as Hindu and Buddhist philosophy texts. What’s striking is that Collier wasn’t merely recycling ideas—he was synthesizing diverse traditions into a uniquely American philosophy of unlimited potential. He lived modestly despite his wealth, maintained a disciplined writing practice throughout his life, and continued refining his ideas even as his books remained in continuous print throughout the twentieth century.
The context in which Collier developed and publicized this quote is crucial to understanding its power and reception. The 1920s and 1930s, when he was building his influence, were periods of both unbridled optimism and devastating economic collapse. After the prosperity of the roaring twenties came the Great Depression, a time when belief in unlimited possibility seemed almost delusional to many. Yet Collier’s message resonated precisely during these circumstances because it offered a psychological and philosophical lifeline to millions struggling with poverty and despair. His books and courses sold phenomenally during the Depression itself—a counter-intuitive phenomenon explained by the fact that people in desperate circumstances desperately need to believe that change is possible. Collier positioned his quote and broader philosophy not as empty platitude but as a practical science grounded in laws of thought, as immutable and reliable as physical laws. He repeatedly emphasized that understanding and applying these principles required study, practice, and persistent effort—this was no passive daydreaming but an active methodology.
The cultural impact of Collier’s work and this particular quote cannot be overstated. “The Secret of the Ages” went on to sell millions of copies and established a template for the entire self-help industry that emerged in the latter twentieth century. Later influential figures like Napoleon Hill (whose “Think and Grow Rich” was published a few years after Collier’s major works), Earl Nightingale, and eventually contemporary authors like Jack Canfield and Oprah Winfrey built directly upon foundations that Collier had laid. The specific formulation of the quote—emphasizing action (“do”), acquisition (“have”), and identity (“be”)—became a tripartite framework that countless authors would repeat and reinvent in different language. Interestingly, while Collier’s work was enormously popular, he never achieved the household name recognition of some of his successors, making him something of a godfather figure to the self-improvement movement whose contributions are less explicitly acknowledged than they should be. His books remained continuously in print throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, available in various editions, and his ideas permeate contemporary life coaching, motivational speaking, and business training worldwide.
Yet perhaps the most important aspect of understanding this quote’s enduring relevance is recognizing what Collier actually meant by it, which is subtly but significantly different from how it’s often interpreted. Collier was not claiming that reality bends to wishes or that mere wishing creates results. Rather, he understood that the human mind operates according to certain laws: we tend to create the external circumstances that match our internal beliefs, we gravitate toward opportunities that we believe are possible for us, and