“Watch your thoughts, they become words”: did Laozi say it?
Not in the Dao De Jing
No: “Watch your thoughts, they become words” is not in the Dao De Jing; a Texas newspaper printed it in 1977 as the words of Frank Outlaw, a supermarket president, and Laozi's name came later.
Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
The nearest lines in the Dao De Jing
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故失道而后德，失德而后仁，
So when the Way is lost, there is virtue; when virtue is lost, there is humaneness;
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失仁而后义，失义而后礼。
when humaneness is lost, there is justice; when justice is lost, there is ritual.
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夫礼者，忠信之薄而乱之首。
Ritual is the thinning of loyalty and trust, and the start of disorder.
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其安易持，其未兆易谋。
What is at rest is easy to hold; what has not yet appeared is easy to plan for.
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其脆易泮，其微易散。
What is brittle is easily broken; what is minute is easily scattered.
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为之于未有，
Deal with things before they exist;
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治之于未乱。
put them in order before disorder comes.
Where it comes from
The chain is in no chapter of the Dao De Jing. Quote Investigator traced it: a close match appeared in the San Antonio Light on 18 May 1977, in a column of sayings, credited to Frank Outlaw, the late president of the Bi-Lo supermarket chain. The idea is older. An English newspaper of 1856 reports a speaker telling students “You sow an act, you reap a habit”, and an Indiana paper of 1885 credits a Bishop Beckwaith with “Plant a thought and reap a word”, running through action, habit and character to destiny. The earliest link to Laozi that Quote Investigator found is a Goodreads page whose first comment is dated January 2010. Stefan Stenudd, who keeps a list of sayings wrongly credited to Laozi, found it in no version of the Dao De Jing.
What the Dao De Jing says instead
The book has chains, but they describe a fall, not a rise. Chapter 38: 失道而后德, “when the Way is lost, there is virtue; when virtue is lost, there is humaneness”, and so down to ritual, “the start of disorder”. The idea that what is small grows large is in chapter 64: “Deal with things before they exist; put them in order before disorder comes.” Neither speaks of thoughts, habits, character or destiny.