A Quote by Thomas Lickona

One's character is one's habitual way of behaving. We all have patterns of behavior or habits, and often we are quite unaware of them. When Socrates urged us to Know thyself, he clearly was directing us to come to know our habitual ways of responding to the world around us.

Thomas Lickona

Quote Topics

Around Behaving Behavior Character Clearly Come Directing Habits Habitual Know Know Thyself Often Our Patterns Quite Responding Them Thyself Unaware Us Way Ways World

Quote Author

Thomas Lickona
Author
Born: 1943

Dialogue is a space where we may see the assumptions which lay beneath the surface of our thoughts, assumptions which drive us, assumptions around which we build organizations, create economies, form nations and religions. These assumptions become habitual, mental habits that drive us, confuse us and prevent our responding intelligently to the challenges we face every day.

David Bohm

All of us have many habits of whose import we are quite unaware, since they were formed without our knowing what we were about. Consequently they possess us, rather than we them. They move us; they control us. Unless we become aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the worth of the result, we do not control them.

John Dewey

It's very dangerous to mix up the words natural and habitual. We have been trained to be quite habitual at communicating in ways that are quite unnatural.

Mahatma Gandhi

As we live our human lives, let us be like the water. Let us be conscious of the flow. Let us not forget the great ground of being that draws us on through life. Let us live in a knowing hope, aware that all being is in transition, that all movement is back to the source. Let us treat those around us as reminders of our illusionary individuality. We know that they are us and we are them connected in ways we cannot fathom. Let us grow in compassion for all beings, for they share our journey.

Tom Barrett

The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of habits and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.

Chogyam Trungpa

Character is the sum of one's good habits (virtues) and bad habits (vices). These habits mark us and affect the ways in which we respond to life's events and challenges. Our character is our profile of habits and dispositions to act in certain ways.

Thomas Lickona

When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don’t magically disappear. Over the years, I’ve come to call resting with the discomfort “the detox period,” because when you don’t act on your habitual patterns, it’s like giving up an addiction. You’re left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that

Pema Chodron

The key to creating the mental space before responding is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of being present: paying attention to and accepting what is happening in our lives. It helps us to be aware of and step away from our automatic and habitual reactions to our everyday experiences.

Elizabeth Thornton

Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?

Pema Chodron

The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there except that my mind hadn't seen them.

Merce Cunningham

Difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into your lousy habitual patterns, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you.

Pema Chodron

The mind is a magnet and we attract that with which we identify the self. In order to get the most out of life we must learn consciously to change many of our habitual thought patterns. This is not easy, for our old thought patterns cling to us with great tenacity, but, being thought patterns, they can be reversed. If you are filled with fear, refill yourself with faith, for faith always overcomes fear.

Ernest Holmes

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them.

Edith Wharton

Life hands us a lot of hard choices, and other people can help us more than we might realize. We often think we should make important decisions using just our own internal resources. What are the pros and cons? What does my gut tell me? But often we have friends and family who know us in ways we don't know ourselves.

Sheena Iyengar

And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.