Quotes about self-discipline

You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.

The prisons are full of people with poor impulse control and a lack of foresight.

You don't always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response.

Keeping to an unnecessary programme requires resolution.

[...] live hard not soft; eat hard not soft; seek fiber in foods and in life.

A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.

They had numbers, but the Night's Watch had discipline, and in battle discipline beats numbers nine times out of ten, his father had once said.

In formal battle, discipline is more important than courage.

A warrior has only one true friend: himself. So he feeds his body well; he trains it; works on it. Where he lacks skill, he practises. Where he lacks knowledge, he studies. But above all he must believe. He must believe in the strength of will, of purpose, of heart and soul.

To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline — training — is about.

I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time.

One must reflect deeply on the nature of the adversity, and on how it may be converted into an instrument for growth. The routine Gandhiji set for himself was always so much stricter and so much more demanding than anything that a jailer would have thought of imposing on anyone. Similarly, picture Vinoba in solitary confinement in that cell, 8 feet by 9 feet in dimension: how he converts imprisonment into ashram life; how in that tiny space, in forced and complete isolation, he retains his mental discipline by meditating for two to three hours every day; how he disciplines himself physically by walking every day for eight hours inside that suffocating cell, and thereby covering ten miles—covering ten miles in a cell 8 feet by 9 feet every single day! In both cases, control remained in the hands of the prisoner, not the jailer—a very important factor in dealing with adversity.