Quotes About Discipline

Just as he was slowly bringing order to his own internal life, he would also bring order to his language.

most of us can only deny short-term pleasures because we see a realistic path between self-denial now and something better down the road.

Someone asked a concert violinist in New York's Carnegie Hall how she became so skilled. She said that it was by "planned neglect." She planned to neglect everything that was not related to her goal.

People must therefore get away from the idea that serious work is restricted to beating to death a well-defined problem in a narrow discipline, while broadly integrative thinking is relegated to cocktail parties. In academic life, in bureaucracies, and elsewhere, the task of integration is insufficiently respected.

Keep saying no to her, Since she was a baby. Keep saying no to her, Not even maybe. from "Why?" by the Byrds

If you don't know your purpose, discover it, now. The core of your life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours.

I'm turning into a stricter dad.

I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

The fifth secret may well be the most important: personal respect and affection. Visitors to Yale's Investments Office are invariably impressed by the open architecture and informal "happy ship" climate that is almost as obvious as the disciplined intensity with which the staff work at their tasks and responsibilities. Positive professionals perform at their peak productivity and teams get better with low turnover.

As Jonathan Edwards observed a long time ago, we act on our strongest motive. If our strongest motive, our deepest desire, is to know God, it will generate the discipline that we need to pursue this, because we will want to know God more than anything else. If this is not our strongest motive, we will find ourselves with multiple, alternative, and competing foci.

As Jonathan Edwards observed a long time ago, we act on our strongest motive. If our strongest motive, our deepest desire, is to know God, it will generate the discipline that we need to pursue this, because we will want to know God more than anything else. If this is not our strongest motive, we will find ourselves with multiple, alternative, and competing foci. These will inevitably distract us.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

Spiritual disciplines should always be means to spiritual ends, never ends in themselves. They are places of meeting God that do not have value in and of themselves. To treat them as if they did is to develop a spirituality that is external, self-energized and legalistic. Genuine Christian spirituality places the priority on inner transformation, not outward routines.

No matter how much workers may have been conditioned in time discipline by primary schooling, they will see the demand to work continually at a steady pace for eight hours a day regardless of what there is to do as defying all common sense—and the pretend make-work they are instructed to perform as absolutely infuriating.27

Smith's argument is worth laying out in detail because it is, as I say, the great founding myth of the discipline of economics.

you go to school every morning and sit there for

I'm tempted to kill the general first, then his staff officers. Sometimes you just want to eat pudding early. All the same, I make myself wait.

He understood that the key to success, the secret to it, was the mastery of the grunt work, all the little details.

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function.

On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'" ( One On 1 , interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1 , March 25, 2007.)

To excel in any walk of life, any stage of life, you need to have the two traits of focus and concentration to compliment

Artists, real artists, have to work. They can't be hedonists. Really good painters are always working. The world is such a marvelous place. You have to look and to work. That's exactly why Van Gogh was such a great artist: total commitment. That's what you need.

This recognition – that real statistics is about exploring the unknown, not about tedious arithmetic manipulation – is central to an appreciation of the modern discipline.