If you hang out with chickens, you're going to cluck and if you hang out with eagles, you're going to fly.

This line circulates as a modern self-help maxim attributed to Steve Maraboli, a contemporary motivational author whose aphoristic style is widely shared online. The quote is typically used in the context of advice about personal development—especially choosing one’s friends, mentors, and professional circles carefully. It reflects a common theme in motivational speaking and social-media quotation culture: that environment and peer influence strongly shape habits, aspirations, and self-concept. While frequently credited to Maraboli in quote compilations, it is often presented without a verifiable occasion (speech, interview, or dated publication) attached, suggesting it spread primarily through secondary reposting rather than a clearly documented first utterance.

Maraboli’s line uses a simple barnyard contrast to express a social-psychological idea: people tend to absorb the habits, ambitions, and limits of the company they keep. “Chickens” symbolize low horizons, safety, and noisy but unproductive activity (“cluck”), while “eagles” symbolize vision, courage, and upward striving (“fly”). The quote functions as motivational counsel about curating one’s environment—friends, mentors, colleagues, and media—because norms and expectations are contagious. It also implies agency: changing outcomes may require changing one’s circle, not merely one’s intentions. As rhetoric, the vivid animal imagery makes an abstract point about influence and aspiration memorable and easily repeatable.