Quotes on Discipline
It's easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you're a winner, when you're number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you're not a winner.
Vince Lombardi
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Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Mark Twain
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You only have to do something until you want to do it, then you won't have to do it any more.
Leland Val Vandewall
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The common denominator of success - the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful - lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.
Albert Gray
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What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.
Henry Parry Liddon
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The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable pre-requisite for success.
Brian Tracy
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Many people have the ambition to succeed; they may even have special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job, there is no need to master themselves.
John Stevenson
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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel
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To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action.
Michael Hanson
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It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.
James Gordon
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Do we need more time? Or do we need to be more disciplined with the time we have?
Kerry Johnson
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I find in life that most affairs that require serious handling are distasteful. For this reason, I have always believed that the successful man has the hardest battle with himself rather than with the other fellow. To bring one's self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy.
Thomas Buckner
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Men who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered when others gave up in despair, have practiced early in life the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy in later life the success so often erroneously attributed to good luck.
Grenville Kleiser
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Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set.
James Allen
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A man whose first thought is bestial indulgence could neither think clearly nor plan methodically. He could not find and develop his latent resources, and would fail in any undertaking. Not having commenced manfully to control his thoughts, he is not in a position to control affairs and to adopt serious responsibilities.
James Allen
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Strength of character means strong feelings, and strong command over them. This is where foresight, judgment, and will-power unite to form the most vital and important cement of a strong personality. To subordinate the lower nature to the higher, to be able to forego a present pleasure for a greater future good, is a distinguishing mark of the highest type of character. Self-denial is essential to manhood; for, to make one's life count, demands sacrifice.
Councillor
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Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do, and that often means living outside the limits of one's comfort zone.
Jeff Olson
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Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves.
Joseph Thompson
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He who gains victory over other men is strong, but he who gains a victory over himself is all-powerful.
Lao Tzu
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Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
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He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
Philip Massinger
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If you wish to succeed in managing and controlling others - learn to manage and control yourself.
William Boetcker
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Only the man who can impose discipline on himself is fit to discipline others or can impose discipline on others.
William Feather
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To rule self and subdue our passions is the more praiseworthy because so few know how to do it.
Francesco Guicciardini
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Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
Arnold Bennett
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The only lasting form of discipline is self-imposed discipline.
Dale Brown
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We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.
Jim Rohn
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He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.
John Milton
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Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.
Roy L. Smith
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All disciplines affect each other. Mistakenly the man says, "This is the only area where I let down." Not true. Every let down affects the rest. Not to think so is naive.
Jim Rohn
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No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Harry Fosdick
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Discipline to me is sacrifice; it's willingness to give up something you want to do, so you can better yourself.
Bobby Bowden
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Not doing the things we know we should do causes us to feel guilty and guilt leads to an erosion of self-confidence. As our self-confidence diminishes, so does the level of our activity. And as our activity diminishes, our results inevitably decline.
Jim Rohn
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When you have a number of disagreeable duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable first.
Josiah Quincy
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Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
Thomas Huxley
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Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
James Buckham
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The abundant life does not come to those who have had a lot of obstacles removed from their path by others. It develops from within and is rooted in strong mental and moral fiber.
William Mather Lewis
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There is a thin line between discipline and harassment. Discipline breeds success; harassment breeds contempt.
Lou Holtz
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Nothing so conclusively proves a man´s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Thomas Watson Jr.
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Before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself.
Napoleon Hill
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The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.
Roger Bannister
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The passions are the seeds of vices as well as of virtues, from which either may spring, accordingly as they are nurtured. Unhappy they who have never been taught the art to govern them!
Ann Radcliffe
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I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
Aristotle
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To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble.
Robyn Davidson
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Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing - too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person's capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart remains unfulfilled.
Stephen Covey
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If you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.
Stephen Covey
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Any resolution or decision you make is simply a promise to yourself, which isn't worth a tinker's dam unless you have formed the habit of making it and keeping it. And you won't form the habit of making it and keeping it unless right at the start you link it with a definite purpose that can be accomplished by keeping it. In other words, any resolution or decision you make today has to be made again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, and so on. And it not only has to be made each day, but it has to be kept each day, for if you miss one day in the making or keeping of it, you've got to go back and begin all over again. But if you continue the process of making it each morning and keeping it each day, you will finally wake up some morning a different man in a different world, and you will wonder what has happened to you and the world you used to live in.
Albert Gray
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You feel better about yourself whenever you push yourself to do your best. You increase your self-esteem whenever you go beyond the point where the average person would normally quit.
Brian Tracy
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The more you discipline yourself to persist on a major task, the more you like and respect yourself, and the higher is your self-esteem.
Brian Tracy
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The mature human being goes about doing what needs to be done regardless of whether that person feels great or terrible. Knowing that you are the kind of person with that kind of self-control brings all the satisfaction and confidence you will ever need. Even on days when the satisfaction and confidence just aren't there, you can get the job done anyway.
David Reynolds
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Today I will do what others won't so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can't.
Jerry Rice
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Discipline for sin, not for dirt. Don't mind dirt or a mess if your boys are busy and happy.
Sharon Bomgaars
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Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.
Marcus Aurelius
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Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself, causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance.
Charlie Munger
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Seek freedom and become captive of your desires; seek discipline and find your liberty.
Frank Herbert
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When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem.
Emil Zatopek
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Virtue only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice. We are born for it, but not with it. And even in the best of people, until you cultivate it there is only the material for virtue, not virtue itself.
Seneca
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People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can't bring themselves to do the things they need to do but don't like to do (or are unable to do).
Ray Dalio
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By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn't give a damn what you "like." So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things — which often are difficult but produce good results — so that you’ll then deserve to get what you want.
Ray Dalio
That's just the way it is, so you might as well accept it. Once you accept that playing the game will be uncomfortable, and you do it for a while, it will become much easier (like it does when getting fit). When you excel at it, you will find your ability to get what you want thrilling. You'll see that excuses like "That's not easy" are of no value and that it pays to "push through it" at a pace you can handle. Like getting physically fit, the most important thing is that you keep moving forward at whatever pace you choose, recognizing the consequences of your actions. When you think that it's too hard, remember that in the long run, doing the things that will make you successful is a lot easier than being unsuccessful.
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I believe that for the most part, achieving success — whatever that is for you — is mostly a matter of personal choice and that, initially, making the right choices can be difficult. However, because of the law of nature that pushing your boundaries will make you stronger, which will lead to improved results that will motivate you, the more you operate in your "stretch zone," the more you adapt and the less character it takes to operate at the higher level of performance. So, if you don't let up on yourself, i.e., if you operate with the same level of "pain," you will naturally evolve at an accelerating pace.
Ray Dalio
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You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
Pearl Buck
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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. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
William James
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Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but as they are by and by to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye. Aim, therefore, to diminish the amount of parental government as fast as you can substitute for it in your child’s mind that self-government arising from a foresight of results.
Herbert Spencer
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If you are ruled by your mind, you are a king; if by your body, a slave.
Cato
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A man is one whose body has been trained to be the ready servant of his mind; whose passions are trained to be the servants of his will; who enjoys the beautiful, loves truth, hates wrong, loves to do good, and respects others as himself.
John Ruskin
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When you decide to be successful in a big way, it means you acknowledge the price and you're willing to pay it. That price might be sacrificing your personal life to get good grades in school, pursuing a college major that is deadly boring but lucrative, putting off having kids, missing time with your family, or taking business risks that put you in jeopardy for embarrassment, divorce, or bankruptcy. Successful people don't wish for success; they decide to pursue it.
Scott Adams
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The discovery that gratification could be delayed was simultaneously the discovery of time and, with it, causality (at least the causal force of voluntary human action). Long ago, in the dim mists of time, we began to realize that reality was structured as if it could be bargained with. We learned that behaving properly now, in the present—regulating our impulses, considering the plight of others—could bring rewards in the future, in a time and place that did not yet exist. We began to inhibit, control and organize our immediate impulses, so that we could stop interfering with other people and our future selves.
Jordan Peterson
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If you are disciplined and privilege the future over the present you can change the structure of reality in your favour.
Jordan Peterson
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