Quotes About Willpower

In the words of Libet, "The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act!

If you want something bad enough, you find a way to make it happen. - Seamus McKay

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts us to make roses stand before thorns. Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse— at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older, I to love and you to be loved, we have, no matter how, by our wills survived to keep the jeweled prize always at our finger tips. We will it so and so it is past all accident.

It's easy enough to be sensible for other people. But when it comes to myself, there I am! Especially, when I want to do what I oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing what I didn't want to do MUST be doing what I ought!

If we don't discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us.

Back of ninety-nine out of one-hundred assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing, but the unwillingness to do it.

Magicians are not made, they make themselves.

The power of self-control is one of the great qualities that differentiates man from the lower animals. He is the only animal capable of a moral struggle or a moral conquest.

One practical trick, says Sleep, is to "reward yourself in the short term" by relishing the prospect of all the wonderful benefits you will enjoy because you chose to override your desire for instant gratification. That way, deferral becomes associated with pleasure and "you're much more likely to embrace it." Indeed, says Sleep, "I quite like the overriding because you just know that it's going to make your life better.

The are of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.

The choices humans make should be active rather than passive. In making personal choices we affirm our autonomy.

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, but a thing to be achieved.

Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate.

[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp... that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!

They looked as if they were trying to threaten their own destination into appearing.

that your are the prime driver of your life. The world is malleable enough to be shaped by you. To lead a better life you just have to work harder, or use more willpower, or make better decisions.

Our destinies are our own, if we have the courage to take control of them.

The life Jesus came to bring is a life that does not depend on willpower. It flows out of the Spirit of God, energizing and transforming our spirit. It's a life based on transfusion- God's Spirit transfusing my spirit, God's deepest desires, longings and dreams becoming mine. This is the way and the only way to the freedom and fulfillment of preferring God's will to mine.

Life lived with resolve and determination is life lived apart from surrender.

The brain always quits before the body does. Once the mind knows you are not going to quit something, it's gonna try to find more, it's gonna try to give you more.

Spengler's Universal Law #8: Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. The

It's very nice to say 'And if you will it, it is no dream', But what if you stop willing? Or if there's no strength left in you to will anymore?