Discipline Quotes

My inspiration for this page was given to me by my new aquired friend, a fellow Truth Seeker – Joris and to whom I dedicate this page…

Wish you… as well as to all my readers, to find a sparkle of wisdom in these quotes, that shall illuminate your path/s….

Always in my heart and thoughts, to my dearest copacel Emily, my sweet bumblebee, may you always seak greatness and never ask for permission and always guided by the light of Papi’s simple way of life-called by giants upon shoulders we walkon… simply :

▪︎ ☆ ▪︎ Sapere Aude ▪︎ ☆ ▪︎



“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself…

the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery;

the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. …

And this law is the expression of eternal justice.

He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”

Leonardo da Vinci

“Freedom is not attained through the satisfaction of desires, but through the suppression of desires.”

Epictetus

“The day you realise what small, incremental progress can achieve over a period of time, you would agree that SMALL is actually BIG, very BIG !!

If you increase your daily productivity by just 1%, you end up doing 37.7 times more work by the end of the year – yes 37.7 times.

1 x 1 x 1…..365 times = 1
1.01 x 1.01 x 1.01 …… 365 times = 37.7

Same way, Financial Freedom Planning is just the beginning.

But only those who continue to go through the grind, track their financial freedom journey month on month – for years together, manifest the true power of SMALL !”

Manoj Arora, “Dream On”

“More men are beaten than fail.

It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or “pull,” but just plain gristle and bone.

This rude, simple, primitive power which we call “stick-to-it-iveness” is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour.

People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things.

They see the successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy.

But that is a world away from the facts.

It is failure that is easy.

Success is always hard.

A man can fail in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is.”

Henry Ford, “My Life and Work”

“Where the way is hardest, there go thou; Follow your own path and let people talk.”

Dante Alighieri

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

Plato

“Whether our action is wholesome or unwholesome depends on whether that action or deed arises from a disciplined or undisciplined state of mind.

It is felt that a disciplined mind leads to happiness and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering, and in fact it is said that bringing about discipline within one’s mind is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching.”

Dalai Lama XIV, “The Art of Happiness”

“If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.”

Lao-Tsze

“If soldiers are punished before they have grown attached to you, they will not prove submissive;
and, unless submissive, then will be practically useless. If, when the soldiers have become attached
to you, punishments are not enforced, they will still be unless.”

Sun Tzu, “The Art of War, Sun Tzu”

“The overman…

Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative.

Aware of life’s terrors, he affirms life without resentment. ”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality?

Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”

Michel Foucault

“When I was a boy of seven or eight I read a novel untitled “Abafi” — The Son of Aba — a Servian translation from the Hungarian of Josika, a writer of renown.

The lessons it teaches are much like those of “Ben Hur,” and in this respect it might be viewed as anticipatory of the work of Wallace.

The possibilities of will-power and self-control appealed tremendously to my vivid imagination, and I began to discipline myself.

Had I a sweet cake or a juicy apple which I was dying to eat I would give it to another boy and go through the tortures of Tantalus, pained but satisfied.

Had I some difficult task before me which was exhausting I would attack it again and again until it was done.

So I practiced day by day from morning till night.

At first it called for a vigorous mental effort directed against disposition and desire, but as years went by the conflict lessened and finally my will and wish became identical.”

Nikola Tesla

“It is not more vacation we need — it is more vocation.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

“Words, words, words.

Whereas one needs deeds!”

Dostoyevsky

“If I feel like it and if I can be bothered to, I will talk to you about the notion of “repression,” which has, I think, the twofold disadvantage, in the use that is made of it, of making obscure reference to a certain theory of sovereignty—the theory of the sovereign rights of the individual—and of bringing into
play, when it is used, a whole set of psychological references borrowed from the human sciences, or in other words from discourses and practices that relate to the disciplinary domain.

I think that the notion of “repression” is still, whatever critical use we try to make of it, a juridico-disciplinary notion; and to that extent the critical use of the notion of “repression” is tainted, spoiled, and rotten from the outset because it implies both a juridical reference to sovereignty and a disciplinary reference to normalization.”

Michel Foucault,
“Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France”
(1975-1976)

“More men are beaten than fail.

It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or “pull,” but just plain gristle and bone.

This rude, simple, primitive power which we call “stick-to-it-iveness” is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour.

People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things.

They see the successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy.

But that is a world away from the facts.

It is failure that is easy.

Success is always hard.

A man can fail in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is.”

Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“Student – “It is not that I do not delight in your Way, Master, it is simply that my strength is insufficient.”

Confucius – “Someone whose strength is genuinely insufficient collapses somewhere along the Way. As for you, you deliberately draw the line.”

Confucius

“You put a hard question on the virtue of discipline.

What you say is true: I do value it—and I think that you do too—more than for its earthly fruit, proficiency.

I think that one can give only a metaphysical ground for this evaluation; but the variety of metaphysics which gave an answer to your question has been very great, the metaphysics themselves very disparate: the bhagavad gita, Ecclesiastes, the Stoa, the beginning of the Laws, Hugo of St Victor, St Thomas, John of the Cross, Spinoza.

This very great disparity suggests that the fact that discipline is good for the soul is more fundamental than any of the grounds given for its goodness.

I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces.

I believe that through discipline we can learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances, and to abandon with simplicity what would else have seemed to us indispensable; that we come a little to see the world without the gross distortion of personal desire, and in seeing it so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror—But because I believe that the reward of discipline is greater than its immediate objective, I would not have you think that discipline without objective is possible: in its nature discipline involves the subjection of the soul to some perhaps minor end; and that end must be real, if the discipline is not to be factitious.

Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment;

and only so can we know peace.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer

“Because I have no natural gifts, shall I on that account give up my discipline?

Far be it from me!

Epictetus will not be better than Socrates, but if only I am not worse, that suffices me.

For I shall not be a Milo, either, and yet I do not neglect my body, nor a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my property, nor, in a word, is there any other field in which we give up the appropriate discipline merely from despair of attaining the highest.”

Epictetus, Epictetus
The Discourses as Reported
By Arrian. Vol. I. Books 1 and 2
With an English Translation By W. A. Oldfather

“We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about.

No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.”

Carl Sagan, “Cosmos”

“Take students today

They are in some ways freer than they were 60 years ago in their attitudes and commitments and so on.

On the other hand they are more disciplined.

They are disciplined by debt.

Part of the reasoning for arranging education so you come out with heavy debt is so you are disciplined.

Take the last 20 years—the neo-liberal years roughly—a very striking part of what is called “globalization” is just aimed at discipline.

It wants to eliminate freedom of choice and impose discipline.

How do you do that?

Well, if you’re a couple in the U.S. now, each working 50 hours a week to put food on the table, you don’t have time to think about how to become a libertarian socialist.

When what you are worried about is “how can I get food on the table?” or “I’ve got kids to take care of, and when they are sick I’ve got to go to work and what’s going to happen to them?”

Those are very well-designed techniques of imposing discipline.”

Noam Chomsky, “Chomsky On Anarchism”

“Each day you must choose, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”

Eric Mangini

“Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness – on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square.”

George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia”

“What is generally known as discipline in traditional schools is not activity, but immobility and silence.

It is not discipline, but something that festers inside a child, arousing his rebellious feelings.”

Maria Montessori,
“Creative Development in the Child: The Montessori Approach, Volume One”

“As you grow in true spiritual power and understanding you will actually find that many outer rules and regulations will become unnecessary; but this will be because you have really risen above them; never, never, because you have fallen below them.

This point in your development, where your understanding of Truth enables you to dispense with certain outer props and regulations, is the Spiritual Coming of Age.

When you really are no longer spiritually a minor, you will cease to need some of the outer observances that formerly seemed indispensable; but your resulting life will be purer, truer, freer, and less selfish than it was before; and that is the test.”

Emmet Fox,
“The Sermon on the Mount:
The Key to Success in Life”

“Discipline is choosing between what you want now, and what you want most.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.”

Jim Rohn

“Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built.

Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.”

Jim Rohn

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.

Seek discipline and find your liberty.”

Frank Herbert

“Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.”

Marie Chapian

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind.

If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Gautama Buddha

“Genius is the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline.”

George Eliot




With 🧡

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