quotes, passages and quotations on discipline

Discipline is necessary to curb the mind,
otherwise there is no peace.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Discipline brings us effort, sacrifice and suffering. Later it brings us something of an inestimable value: something of which those who live only for pleasure, profit or amusement will always be deprived. This peculiar indefinable joy which one must have felt oneself to understand is the sign with which life marks its moment of triumph. Alexis Carrel

Discipline is the duty and the hope of all who would enjoy the benefits of society and of instruction. John H. A. Bomberger If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us. Control from without flourishes when discipline from within grows weak. William Feather

Discipline is important simply because we live in an organized society where, if you have not learned life's requirements at early age, you will be taught later, not by those whose love tempers the lesson but by strangers who could not care less about the harm they do to your personality. William E. Homan

Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly. Julie Andrews

If you are willing to discipline yourself, the
physical universe won't need to discipline you.

Leonard Orr

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There will be less external discipline the more internal discipline there is.

Simone Weil

The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But
freedom leads to infinity and infinity is terrifying.

Henry Miller

Exactitude in some small matters is the very soul of discipline.

Joseph Conrad

Discipline must come through liberty. We do not consider an individual
disciplined only when he or she has been rendered as artificially silent
as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. That person is an
individual annihilated, not disciplined.

Maria Montessori

Discipline in its highest notion is not punishment or self-punishment. It is
rather something seminal to the self. It is our foundation. It is our architecture.
It gives us structure. It allows us to steer our energies and pull our wagon.

Noah Benshea

Children expect discipline. Even though discipline can be unpleasant,
everyone who has experienced good discipline knows not only that they
needed it, but also appreciates, and loves those who had the courage to
give it to them! To attempt to raise a child without discipline is like
trying to build a complex building without a blueprint, or like leaving
the rebar out of concrete when it is poured, or deciding not to install
the steel beams and girders into a skyscraper--you steal
its spine--you create a disaster.

Zester Hatfield
Daddy's Little Girl & Mommy's Little Boy

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use
of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or
less rational. A free discipline controls the individual by appealing to his or
her reason and conscience, and therefore to his or her self-respect; while an
unfree control works upon some lower phase of the mind, and so tends to
degrade the person. It is freedom to be disciplined in
as rational a manner as you are fit for.

Charles Horton Cooley
Human Nature and the Social Order

I like to swim, but there are some days I just don't feel much
like doing it--but I do it anyway! I know it's good for me and
I promised myself I'd do it every day, and I like to keep my
promises. That's one of my disciplines. And it's a good feeling
after you've tried and done something well. Inside you think,
"I've kept at this and I've really learned it--not by magic,
but by my own work."

Fred Rogers
The World According to Mr. Rogers

How would I have turned out, I sometimes wonder, had I grown up
in a house that stifled enterprise by imposing harsh and senseless
discipline? Or in an atmosphere of overindulgence, in a household
where there were no rules, no boundaries drawn? My mother
certainly understood the importance of discipline, but she always
explained why some things were not allowed.
Above all, she tried to be fair and consistent.

Jane Goodall

Discipline is like moonlight to cool the wild mind that is burning with anger, attachment, ignorance, jealousy and so forth. One becomes calm, concentrated, and magnificent, towering over ordinary beings like Mount Meru rising above the world. Others will be drawn to one's strength and will find great inspiration and confidence in it. It pacifies our own being, and it brings peace into the way other people and sentient beings relate to us. Thus wise practitioners protect their discipline as they would their eyes.

Bstan-Dzin-Rgya-Mtsho

Life without discipline is like a ship without a rudder.

Ronie Mathew Thomas

Discipline is not the restraint but the use of energy. . . . When
I forbid myself what I may have, no person is going to tempt me
with what is truly forbidden.

Guy Davenport

The great end of education is to discipline rather than to
furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers,
rather than fill it with the accumulation of others.

Tryon Edwards

That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions,
which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens
the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of
enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity
than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune.

Robert Bridges

Discipline strengthens the mind so that it becomes
impervious to the corroding influence of fear.

Bernard Law Montgomery

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but
sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it,
afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Hebrews 12:11

I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity. . . . I believe that through discipline we 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. . . . 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 people 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.

Robert Oppenheimer

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Here is the greatest value of discipline: self-worth, also known as
self-esteem. Many people who are teaching self-esteem these days
don't connect it to discipline. But once we sense the least lack of
discipline within ourselves, it starts to erode our psyche. One of the
greatest temptations is to just ease up a little bit. Instead of doing
your best, you allow yourself to do just a little less than your best.
Sure enough, you've started in the slightest way
to decrease your sense of self-worth.

Jim Rohn

Discipline is a quality. You start with a little bit of it, you submit yourself
to authority and a job and a goal, and you learn a bit more about discipline.

Charles E. Jones

Discipline is the process by which energy is directed along certain
lines to the exclusion of others. Instead of being expended in many
ways in unreflecting response to every stimulant applied, it is
concentrated and made to focus itself upon a single point, or
rather is confined within certain narrow limits. Discipline is often
spoken of as acquired power. A more exact statement would seem
to be that discipline is ability to make energy effective
by confining it in a certain channel.

George P. Brown

Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and
desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of people bear fruit.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Discipline doesn't have to be about restriction; it can be about
freedom, it can be about openness, it can be about more rather than less.

Batya Zamir

Discipline is necessary and good. You can't raise successful children
without it, but discipline should not repress or tyrannize. Discipline
should lead to powerful habits of direction, work, and good judgment.
Good discipline produces strength, not weakness; creativity,
not banality; responsibility, not self-indulgence.

Zig Ziglar
Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World

Discipline is like sandpaper. It feels rough and abrasive when it's in
motion, but the final result is a smooth and polished surface.

Jerry L. Parks
Dragons, Grasshoppers & Frogs

A sense of discipline is like the earth itself. It is the
ground from which all good qualities can grow forth.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche
Fearless Simplicity

Always remember that discipline is like a two-edged sword;
it is not only to correct children when they are wrong,
but to direct them to a way that is right.

James Merritt
Friends, Foes & Fool

No one can feel competent to cope with the challenges of life
who has not acquired a capacity for self-discipline.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day

A mind that is disciplined, controlled, is free within its own pattern;
but that is not freedom. The end of discipline is conformity; its path
leads to the known, and the known is never the free.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
Commentaries on Living

Discipline is something we despise for the moment. . . . We all look for a
place to run, an excuse with which to stall. No one enjoys it. Yet those
of us who have endured it know that the fruit it produces and the pain
from which it ultimately spares us makes it worth the agony.

Charles F. Stanley
How to Handle Adversity

Discipline is like an addiction. Once you get disciplined then it is
difficult to get rid of that. But that addiction we have to develop.
Each pleasure of life can be experienced with discipline. It is
totally wrong concept that discipline induces restriction and
hampers joy. Truth is that it helps to experience joy in more proper way.

Parikshit Deshmukh
Applied Strengths of Mind

Discipline is teaching a child the way he or she should go. Discipline, therefore,
includes everything you do to help your child learn. Unfortunately, it's
one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. Most people
generally think of it as punishment or as something unpleasant. We need
to understand that discipline is something you do for a child. Punishment
is something you do to a child when discipline fails. Both Greek and Hebrew
words denoting discipline include the meaning of chastening, correction,
rebuke, upbringing, training, instruction, education, and reproof. The
purpose of discipline is positive--to produce a whole person, free from the
faults and handicaps that hinder maximum development.

Zig Ziglar
Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World

Good discipline is more than just punishing or laying down the law. It is
liking children and letting them see that they are liked. It is caring enough
about them to provide good, clear rules for their protection.

Stanley Greenspan
A Guide to Discipline

Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can
solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

M. Scott Peck
The Road Less Traveled

The tools of discipline are techniques by which we experience the pain of
problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them successfully,
learning and growing in the process. When we teach ourselves discipline,
we are teaching ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the
meaningless following of customs, which is a disguise for ignorance.

Rabindranath Tagore

People who have learned to control themselves, who do not live on
the surface of their being, but who reach down into the depths, where,
in the stillness, the voice of God is heard. . . are not affected
by the thousand and one storms and tempests.

Orison Swett Marden

What we do on some great occasions will probably depend upon
what we already are, and what we are will be the
result of previous years of self-discipline.

H.P. Liddon

Discipline is a teaching-learning kind of relationship as the similarity
of the word disciple suggests. By helping our children learn to be
self-disciplined, we are also helping them learn how to become
independent of us as, sooner or later, they must. And we are helping
them learn how to be loving parents to children of their own.

Fred Rogers
The World According to Mr. Rogers