Quotes About Self-control

Restricting yourself in this way may seem both difficult and arbitrary, but actually, this is the kind of discipline we exercise in other aspects of life. You may have a rule of thumb never to have more than two glasses of wine at a sitting.

The best you can do is keep yourself from brooding about it.

AWAY OF EASING THE BURDEN THAT FREEDOM OF CHOICE IMPOSES IS to make decisions about when to make decisions. These are what Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit call second-order decisions. One kind of second-order decision is the decision to follow a rule.

The player is always trapped in his own play but he must never allow the spectators to suspect this, they must always think that he is free. Thus the great art of the player is not in showing but in concealing.

A man who can't stay a bit shouldn't approach in the first place. Good advice, I think, and not just for priests.

There are people who need people to need them. The reason you don't understand is because you're not one of those people. You'd use me and then toss me away like a paper bag if that's what it came down to. God fucked you, my friend. You're just smart enough so it would hurt you to do that, and just hard enough so you'd go ahead and do it anyway. You wouldn't be able to help yourself.

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. [It is] the dubious luxury of normal men and women.

The self is a friend for him who masters himself by the Self; but for him who is not self-mastered, the self is the cruelest foe.

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions

There is no effectiveness without discipline, and there is no discipline without character.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.

responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response.

Look at the word responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior.

if you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself

President N. Eldon Tanner has said, "Self-discipline is doing what you know you should do when you don't want to do it.

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.

They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options.

No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more

In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them.

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won't find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.