Quotes about habit
page 9

“Our creative habits are as mysterious to each other as our domestic habits.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Poetry Quotes

John Stuart Mill photo
Henry Miller photo
Herbert Marcuse photo

“Ascending modern rationalism, in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes' ego cogitans was to leave the “great public bodies” untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.” Kant agreed with Locke in justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and in preventing subversion. However, these accommodating concepts of Reason were always contradicted by the evident misery and injustice of the “great public bodies” and the effective, more or less conscious rebellion against them. Societal conditions existed which provoked and permitted real dissociation. from the established state of affairs; a private as well as political dimension was present in which dissociation could develop into effective opposition, testing its strength and the validity of its objectives. With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself "behind the back” of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The “cunning of Reason” works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives.”

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 15-16

Pramod Muthalik photo

“Some of the parents of beaten up girls personally called me and thanked for saving their daughters as none of them till then knew about their kids’ habits.”

Pramod Muthalik (1963) Indian politician

Defending the 2009 Mangalore pub attack, as quoted in " Sex & drugs led to pub attack: Mutalik http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/Sex-drugs-led-to-pub-attack-Mutalik/articleshow/22222486.cms", Bangalore Mirror (6 February 2009)

Ted Cruz photo

“Donald has a very unfortunate habit. When he gets scared, he lashes out… And he insults and attacks whoever is standing near him… Donald does seem to have an issue with women… Donald doesn't like strong women. Strong women scare Donald.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

As quoted in "Cruz calls Trump "sniveling coward" and says 'leave Heidi the hell alone'" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ted-cruz-bashes-sniveling-coward-donald-trump/ (24 March 2016), by Reena Flores, CBS News
2010s

Halldór Laxness photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
T. E. Lawrence photo
Zakir Hussain (politician) photo
George W. Bush photo
Glen Cook photo
Henry Adams photo
Tryon Edwards photo

“The emperor relied on his popularity, the obedient habits of his subjects, and chiefly on the prejudices of the people against anything that could be subjected, right or wrong, to the charge of unconstitutionality.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)

Ben Hecht photo
Antisthenes photo

“Antisthenes … was asked on one occasion what learning was the most necessary, and he replied, "To unlearn one's bad habits."”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Jerzy Vetulani photo
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon photo

“Though I know something about British birds I should have been lost and confused among American birds, of which unhappily I know little or nothing. Colonel Roosevelt not only knew more about American birds than I did about British birds, but he knew about British birds also. What he had lacked was an opportunity of hearing their songs, and you cannot get a knowledge of the songs of birds in any other way than by listening to them.
We began our walk, and when a song was heard I told him the name of the bird. I noticed that as soon as I mentioned the name it was unnecessary to tell him more. He knew what the bird was like. It was not necessary for him to see it. He knew the kind of bird it was, its habits and appearance. He just wanted to complete his knowledge by hearing the song. He had, too, a very trained ear for bird songs, which cannot be acquired without having spent much time in listening to them. How he had found time in that busy life to acquire this knowledge so thoroughly it is almost impossible to imagine, but there the knowledge and training undoubtedly were. He had one of the most perfectly trained ears for bird songs that I have ever known, so that if three or four birds were singing together he would pick out their songs, distinguish each, and ask to be told each separate name; and when farther on we heard any bird for a second time, he would remember the song from the first telling and be able to name the bird himself.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)

John Gray photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“The number one rule of today's marketing – the key secret of those who seek to control your beliefs and habits in order to take your money, your votes, your time or whatever else it is they desire from you – is to always keep in mind that nobody really believes they can be manipulated.”

Brian Vaszily (1970)

"The One Real Reason You Are Stressed Out, Overweight, Depressed or Angry" http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/04/05/the_one_real_reason_you_are_stressed_out_overweight_depressed_or_angry.htm, SixWise.com, undated (accessed 2006-06-23)

Bill Hybels photo
Charles Sanders Peirce photo
Louis Brandeis photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 305
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

William Croswell Doane photo
George Boardman the Younger photo
André Maurois photo

“Conquest brings no lasting happiness unless the person conquered was possessed of free will. Only then can there be doubt and anxiety and those continual victories over habit and boredom which produce the keenest pleasures of all. The comely inmates of the harem are rarely loved, for they are prisoners. Inversely, the far too accessible ladies of present-day seaside resorts almost never inspire love, because they are emancipated. Where is love's victory when there is neither veil, modesty, nor self-respect to check its progress? Excessive freedom raises up the transparent walls of an invisible seraglio to surround these easily acquired ladies. Romantic love requires women, not that they should be inaccessible, but that their lives should be lived within the rather narrow limits of religion and convention. These conditions, admirably observed in the Middle-Ages, produced the courtly love of that time. The honoured mistress of the chateau remained within its walls while the knight set out for the Crusades and thought about his lady. In those days a man scarcely ever tried to arouse love in the object of his passion. He resigned himself to loving in silence, or at least without hope. Such frustrated passions are considered by some to be naive and unreal, but to certain sensitive souls this kind of remote admiration is extremely pleasurable, because, being quite subjective, it is better protected against deception and disillusion.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Joseph Heller photo

“If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Obscurity of the Poet”, p. 4
Poetry and the Age (1953)

David Pogue photo

“People won’t start dumping Google en masse; Google is a habit.”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" State of the Art: Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/technology/personaltech/09pogue.html?emc=eta1," The New York Times, July 09, 2009.

Al-Biruni photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Nakayama Miki photo
William Harvey photo

“As art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect to things to be known.”

William Harvey (1578–1657) English physician

Introduction.
De Generatione Animalium (1651)

George Gissing photo

“Women, he held, had never been treated with elementary justice. To worship them was no less unfair than to hold them in contempt. The honest man, in our day, should regard a woman without the least bias of sexual prejudice; should view her simply as a fellow-being, who, according to circumstances, might or not be on his own plane. Away with all empty show and form, those relics of barbarism known as chivalry! He wished to discontinue even the habit of hat-doffing in female presence. Was not civility preserved between man and man without such idle form? Why not, then, between man and woman? Unable, as yet, to go the entire length of his principles in every-day life, he endeavoured, at all events, to cultivate in his intercourse with women a frankness of speech, a directness of bearing, beyond the usual. He shook hands as with one of his own sex, spine uncrooked; he greeted them with level voice, not as one who addresses a thing afraid of sound. To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere. It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked — and corrupted — by every form of disingenuousness. Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent.
But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor. She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

Source: Our Friend the Charlatan (1901), Ch. II

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Henry Van Dyke photo

“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

This may be misattributed. It appears to be a direct and original quote from "Individuality and encounter: a brief journey into loneliness and sensitivity groups" by Dr Clark E Moustakas (1971 p15, prev 1968)
Attributed

Bram van Velde photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Look at you people. Look at what's become of the mighty United Kingdom. This land used to be filled with kings and knights and noblemen. You used to rule half the planet, and now you're just as sad and pathetic as the Americans. You can pretend you're not, you can pretend you don't spend your days tucked away in some little pub downing your pints of ale; you can pretend you don't spend every single night filling your lungs and those around you with carcinogens and poisons from your fancy cigarettes and trendy cigars; you can pretend you don't knowingly stuff chewing tobacco in your mouth in one of the most disgusting habits I've ever seen in my life—something that will give you cancer inside of two years. You people are weak-minded. You have no heart, your spirit is broken. You're practically decomposing right before my very eyes as I talk to you, and the only thing you can do is boo or wave a crooked little finger at me and accuse me of being preachy. You people need somebody as righteous as myself to preach to you the proper way to live. You should all aspire to be as great as I am. Do I think I'm better than you? Absolutely, and it's not that hard because my mind is clear; my body, free of poison. Look at me—I am perfect in every way. My strength comes from within, and I don't need a crutch to get through my everyday life like you people, and I certainly don't need a crooked official like Scott Armstrong to fight my battles for me. I filed a formal complaint with the Board of Directors; and as far as tonight goes, I will beat R-Truth just like I'll beat him at Survivor Series, and just like I can easily beat up everybody here in this arena today. Because I am the Choice of a New Generation, and R-Truth's gonna come out here and ask you people, "What's Up?"”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

I'll answer that little riddle for you right now. I tell you "what's up" Straight-edge—that is what's up. No narcotics, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no prescription medication, and that, you sad, sad people, can save your entire pathetic country and the entire world.
November 13, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The invention of printing did away with anonymity, fostering ideas of literary fame and the habit of considering intellectual effort as private property.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 122

“…habits are happiness of a sort…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book”, p. 39
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Everett Dean Martin photo
Murasaki Shikibu photo
Martin Amis photo
T. E. Hulme photo

“A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Speculations (Essays, 1924)

Arthur Ponsonby photo
Aldo Leopold photo
Giovanni della Casa photo
Ayumi Hamasaki photo
Augustine Birrell photo

“There are no habits of man more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the collector”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

"Gossip in a Library"
In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays

George W. Bush photo

“The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Distinctly American Internationalism (November 1999)

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Kenneth Minogue photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“As we survey the various stages of evolution, from the simplest one-cell creatures up to man. we see a steady improvement in the methods of learning and adaptation to a hostile world. Each step in learning ability gives better adaptation and greater chance of survival. We are carried a long way up the scale by innate reflexes and rudimentary muscular learning faculties. Habits indeed, not rational thought, assist us to surmount most of life's obstacles. Most, but by no means all; for learning in the high mammals exhibits the unexplained phenomenon of "insight," which shows itself by sudden changes in behavior in learning situations -- in sudden departures from one method of organizing a task, or solving a problem, to another. Insight, expectancy, set, are the essentially "mind-like" attributes of communication, and it is these, together with the representation of concepts, which require physiological explanation. At the higher end of the scale of evolution, this quality we call "mind" appears more and more prominently, but it is at our own level that learning of a radically new type has developed -- through our powers of organizing thoughts, comparing and setting them into relationship, especially with the use of language. We have a remarkable faculty of forming generalizations, of recognizing universals, of associating and developing them. It is our multitude of general concepts, and our powers of organizing them with the aid of language in varied ways, which forms the backbone of human communication, and which distinguises us from the animals.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behavior, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1949.
Source: On Human Communication (1957), On Cognition and Recognition, p. 304

Carl von Clausewitz photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Mitt Romney photo
Jack Vance photo

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.””

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)

John Gray photo
H. G. Wells photo
Bernard Mandeville photo
George Long photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Jane Roberts photo
Cyril Connolly photo
James Hamilton photo
Jean Dubuffet photo
Pu Songling photo

“My talents are not those of Kan Pao, elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-P'o, who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing, and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story; thus in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile.”

Pu Songling (1640–1715) Chinese writer

"Author's Own Record", trans. Herbert Allen Giles in Gems of Chinese Literature (1922), p. 235 Variant translation: With time And my love of hoarding, The matter sent me by friends From the four corners Has grown into a pile. "Author's Preface", lines 28–32, trans. John Minford in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin, 2006), pp. 30–31
/ Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740)

Colin Wilson photo
William Winwood Reade photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, 'But are ye sure he's not a dunce?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“Arcesilaus had a peculiar habit while conversing of using the expression, "My opinion is," and "So and so will not agree to this."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Arcesilaus, 12.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 4: The Academy

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet photo
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Samuel Vince photo

“The rapid establishment of Christianity must therefore have been from the conviction which those who embraced it, had of its "Truth and power unto salvation." Christianity at first spread itself amongst the most enlightened nations of the earth - in those places where human learning was in its greatest perfection; and, by the force of the evidence which attended it, amongst such men it gained an establishment. It has been justly observed, that "it happened very providentially to the honour of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were t their height, and when there were men who made it the business of their lives to search after truth and lift the several opinions of the philosophers and wise men, concerning the duty, the end, and chief happiness of reasonable creatures." Both the learned and the ignorant alike embraced its doctrines; the learned were not likely to be deceived in the proofs which were offered; and the same cause undoubtedly operated to produce the effect upon each. But an immediate conversion of the bulk of mankind, can arise only from some proofs of a ddivine authority offering themselves immediately to the senses; the preaching of any new doctrine, if lest to operate only by its own force, would go but a very little way towards the immediate conversion of the gnorant, who have no principle of action but what arises from habit, and whose powers of reasoning are insufficient to correct their errors. When Mahomet was required by his followers to work a miracle for their conviction, he always declined it; he was too cautious to trust to an experiment, the success of which was scarcely whithin the bounds of probablity; he amused his followers with prtended visions, which with the aid afterwards of the civil and military powr; and as the accomplishment of that event was by a few obscure persons, who founded their pretentions upon authority from heaven, we are next to consider, what kind of proofs of their divine commission they offered to the world; and whether they themselves could have been deceived, or mankind could have been deludded by them.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 20; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA261," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 261-262

Margaret Thatcher photo

“No-one in their senses wants nuclear weapons for their own sake, but equally, no responsible prime minister could take the colossal gamble of giving up our nuclear defences while our greatest potential enemy kept their's. Policies which would throw out all American nuclear bases…would wreck NATO and leave us totally isolated from our friends in the United States, and friends they are. No nation in history has ever shouldered a greater burden nor shouldered it more willingly nor more generously than the United States. This Party is pro-American. And we must constantly remind people what the defence policy of the [Labour] Party would mean. Their idea that by giving up our nuclear deterrent, we could somehow escape the result of a nuclear war elsewhere is nonsense, and it is a delusion to assume that conventional weapons are sufficient defence against nuclear attack. And do not let anyone slip into the habit of thinking that conventional war in Europe is some kind of comfortable option. With a huge array of modern weapons held by the Soviet Union, including chemical weapons in large quantities, it would be a cruel and terrible conflict. The truth is that possession of the nuclear deterrent has prevented not only nuclear war but also conventional war and to us, peace is precious beyond price. We are the true peace party.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105763
Second term as Prime Minister

Gore Vidal photo
Edith Wharton photo

“Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"A First Word"
A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934)

Francis de Sales photo
H. G. Wells photo
Pierre-Simon Laplace photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.”

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/55/mode/1up p. 55

Charles Lyell photo