Habits Of Mind Quotes

Orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that outrage them. ~ Gertrude Atherton

Tocqueville saw that the life of constant action and decision which was entailed by the democratic and businesslike character of American life put a premium upon rough and ready habits of mind, quick decision, and the prompt seizure of opportunities - and that all this activity was not propitious for deliberation, elaboration, or precision in thought. ~ Richard Hofstadter

No one can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so ... [Y]ou cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and in Baton Rouge. ~ Mark Lilla

Diversity… is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind, have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do. ~ William Chase

Mathematics may, like poetry or music, "promote and sustain a lofty habit of mind." ~ G.H. Hardy

To put it simply, we need to keep the arts in education because they instill in students the habits of mind that last a lifetime: critical analysis skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity and to solve problems, perseverance and a drive for excellence. Moreover, the creative skills children develop through the arts carry them toward new ideas, new experiences, and new challenges, not to mention personal satisfaction. This is the intrinsic value of the arts, and it cannot be overestimated. ~ Rod Paige

When it comes to assessment, the traditional model of assessment is assessment for learning. What people like to talk about now is that the twenty-first-century model is assessment of learning. But if assessment is merely the way we are able to determine how much learning has occurred, then the ultimate goal is assessment as learning, where assessment occurs in real time and is the process by which people reflect on their own thinking and diagnose how they've changed. There are schools that do this. There's a remarkable school in New Hampshire that, for them, the thing that matters the most is that people who graduate from their school have seventeen specific habits of mind and work - everything from collaboration and leadership to curiosity and wonder. They've developed these really thoughtful behavioral rubrics that break down each of those habits by subskills. ~ Ken Robinson

A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. ~ John Dewey

The habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas. ~ James Webb Young

Habits, not ideas, are the programming language of human beings ~ Danny Dover

I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow ... I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. ~ Jack Kornfield

In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Inventiveness depends upon two habits of mind, which we can adopt and develop: attention and
curiosity.
Attention means paying attention.....
Curiosity means just that. Endlessly curious. Endlessly asking questions. Endlessly wanting to know
how, and why? ~ Richard N. Bolles

Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise. ~ George Orwell

The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The music of Beethoven's Fidelio always rises up in my mind when I think of that meeting in the forest, and my throat constricts with an emotion that is, I'm afraid, purely factitious--unless feelings are more a part of our physical inheritance than is commonly believed, in which case it is Mary Edie's joy, unquenchable, passed on, and then passed on again, generation after generation, along with the color of eyes and the shape of hands and characteristic habits of mind and temperament. ~ William Maxwell

The arts develop skills and habits of mind that are important for workers in the new economy of ideas. ~ Alan Greenspan

Diversity ... is not casual liberal tolerance of anything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do ... And I urge you, amid all the differences present to the eye and mind, to reach out to create the bond that ... will protect us all. We are all meant to be here together. ~ William Merritt Chase

In order to create something new, to invent a new product or idea, you need to anticipate where things are headed. That requires a mixture of certain habits of mind. You need to foster imagination, thoroughly understand the origins of past ideas, learn from others' mistakes, talk to lots of people about ideas and test your hypotheses against people both alive and dead. ~ Joshua Rogers

Democracy is a difficult art of government, demanding of its citizens high ratios of courage and literacy, and at the moment we lack both the necessary habits of mind and a sphere of common reference. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

Moral stimulation is good but moral complacency is the most dangerous habit of mind we can develop, and that danger is serious and ever-present. ~ Joseph Grew

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. ~ Joseph Addison

As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits. ~ Baruch Spinoza

Addiction is to the habits of mind that technology allows us to practice. ~ Sherry Turkle

Highly competitive athletes like Ginny Gilder have a gift for tolerating pain and ignoring adversity. They accept these things as the price they pay for greatness. These habits of mind and body serve us well in many aspects of our lives, but not in all aspects of our lives. Course Correction is about taking time to heal and exploring the joy that lies beyond adversity. ~ Tori Murden

Letting go of the conventional wisdoms that torment us. Letting go of the artificial limits that hold us back - and of the fear of admitting what we don't know. Letting go of the habits of mind that tell us to kick into the corner of the goal even though we stand a better chance by going up the middle. ~ Steven D. Levitt

...it was born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice... ~ Peter Carey

Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn to do this. It's not rocket science; it's habits of mind and habits of work. ~ Alexander Chee

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities. ~ Bertrand Russell

You can teach almost anyone determined to learn them the basics required to write sentences and paragraphs that say what you want them to say clearly and concisely. It's far more difficult to get people to think like a writer, to give up conventional habits of mind and emotion. You must be able to step inside your character's skin, and at the same time to remain outside the dicey circumstances you have maneuvered her into. ~ Anne Bernays

The book, I think, like the map before it, like the clock, created or help create a revolution in the human mind in the way our habits of mind and ultimately the way we use our brains. ~ Nicholas G. Carr

All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts. ~ John Stuart Mill

It is the political task of the social scientist - as of any liberal educator - continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work - and, as an educator, in his life as well - this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society. ~ C. Wright Mills

you see it." Gurdjieff, a great spiritual teacher who taught in Europe and America in the early decades of the twentieth century, noted that if you think you're free and you don't know you are in prison, you can't escape. Gurdjieff saw us as being in a prison of our own habits of mind. Unless we understand how we are conditioned by our desires, we remain stuck in the reality they create, like a television program with an ad that keeps repeating over and over, implanting a subliminal message while we watch the show. BEYOND THOUGHT In the West we get rewarded for rational knowledge and learning. But only when you see that the assumptions you've been working under are not valid, ~ Ram Dass

Communication of science as subject-matter has so far outrun in education the construction of a scientific habit of mind that to some extent the natural common sense of mankind has been interfered with to its detriment. ~ John Dewey

The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

I think we acquire habits of mind when we're little, and I lived in the future because I was always imagining being a grown-up, when I could get out. ~ Gloria Steinem

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures, or at least who are thought so, mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind propitious offerings to that Deity whose works are all light and lustre and harmony and loveliness. ~ Sydney, Lady Morgan

How long shall we blunder along without the aid of unpartisan and authoritative scientific assistance in the administration of justice, no one knows; but all fair persons not conventionalized by provincial legal habits of mind ought, I should think, unite to effect some change. ~ Learned Hand

Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen. ~ Marina Abramovic

A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition. ~ Joseph Joubert

You should never employ your intellect but only that it is not essential to exercise it in order to live a humane life. Language permeates all of life, of course, and one's mind is essential to it, but that does not mean intellectuality should transcend all of life. ~ Talal Asad

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end. ~ George F. Kennan

I think it is quite wrong to photograph, for example, Garbo, if she doesn't want to be photographed. Now I would have loved to photograph her, but she obviously didn't want to be photographed so I didn't follow it up. Then somebody will photograph her walking down the street because she has to walk down the street, and I mind that sort of intrusion. I think this is horrible. ~ Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl Of Snowdon

Riches bring anxiety; wisdom gives peace of mind. ~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that's terrorism, too. ~ Alice Walker

And then, with all her might, she focused her attention on the back of Po's head and screamed his name, inside her mind. He pulled on his reins so hard that his horse screeched and staggered and almost sat down. her own horse nearly collided with his. And he looked so startled and flabbergasted
and irritated
that she couldn't help it: She exploded with laughter. ~ Kristin Cashore

I have also come to understand that although some people are naturally happier than others, their happiness is still vulnerable and incomplete, and that achieving durable happiness as a way of being is a skill. It requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing a set of human qualities, such as inner peace, mindfulness, and altruistic love. ~ Matthieu Ricard

Just as the waves can subside to reveal the stillness of the ocean's depths, so too is it possible to calm the turbulence of our mind to reveal its natural pristine clarity. ~ Kathleen McDonald

Imagine holding on to a hot burning coal. You would not fear letting go of it. In fact, once you noticed that you were holding on, you would probably drop it quickly. But we often do not recognize how we hold on to suffering. It seems to hold on to us. This is our practice: becoming aware of how suffering arises in our mind and of how we become identified with it, and learning to let it go. We learn through simple and direct observation, seeing the process over and over again until we understand. ~ Joseph Goldstein

To deserve this fate what have I ever done? ... All I want is just a little piece of mind but the angels won't have it. ~ Melissa Etheridge

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher. And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty ... ~ Rajneesh

You will find the worst horse is the most valuable one. In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind ... But those who find great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it. So I think that sometimes the best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying attention to what it is actually like to be what we are. The moment we do pay attention, we begin to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our subjectivity is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and actions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion. ~ Sam Harris

When our minds really catch hold of the significance of Jesus' atonement, the world's hold on us loosens. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem, is finished enough to write down. I can hold several lines in my head for quite some time, but as soon as they are written down, the register clears, as it were, and I have to work with what is on the paper. ~ John Burnside

School is where children spend most of their time, and it is where we lay the foundation for healthy habits. That's why New Jersey is the first state to adopt a comprehensive school nutrition policy that bans candy, soda, and other junk food. ~ Richard J. Codey

Lillian is humming to herself, stretched out on top of my bookcase like she doesn't mind the heat, and of course she doesn't. Even when she was alive, she could never seem to get warm. The tune she's humming is thin and tight with anxiety. It's the opposite of carefree. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive - yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk - the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable. ~ John Wyndham

There are three kinds of minds: first those that attain insight and understanding of things by their own means, then those that recognize what is right when others explain it to them, and finally those that are capable of neither one nor the other. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

God has provided us with a mind and logical thinking, but He also has placed into each of us a spirit. With the help of the human spirit we can perceive the Spirit of God and learn to know our Creator. ~ Eve Juurik

There isn't a wife in the world who has not taken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him in her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him after designs and specifications of her own. ~ Charles Dudley Warner

The clarification of visual forms and their organization in integrated patterns as well as the attribution of such forms to suitable objects is one of the most effective training grounds of the young mind. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

Edilio lay on the steps of town hall feeling as weak as a kitten. He had barely heard Caine's big speech. He couldn't have cared less. There was nothing he could do, not with delirium spinning his head.
He coughed hard, too hard. It wracked his body each time he did it so that he dreaded the next cough. His stomach was clenched in knots. Every muscle in his body ached.
He was vaguely aware that he was saying something in between coughs.
"Mamá. Mamá. Sálvame."
Save me, mother.
"Santa María, sálvame," he begged, and coughed so hard he smashed his head against the steps.
Death was near, he felt it. Death reached through his swimming, disordered mind and he felt its cold hand clutching his heart.
Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. ~ Michael Grant

I'm not claiming that Stanley wasn't self-absorbed, but I don't think that just because he was obsessive-retentive he was a monomaniac, or even any more egocentric than anybody else in the movies. And I suppose that he was selfish, which doesn't exactly make him a freak in the Director's Guild (or the Writer's Guild either), nor was his particular selfishness uncharacteristic of artists in general, especially when they've acquired the reputation for genius. A powerful vision can be very fragile while it's still only in the mind, and people have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect it. He didn't think he was the only person in the world, or the only director, or even the only great director. I just think that he thought he was the greatest director, although he never said so in so many words. ~ Michael Herr

While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn't just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don't have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don't even have the machinery to know we're signaling. And maybe they've been trying to think to us, and they can't understand why we don't respond. ~ Orson Scott Card

True confession time: I never know where a book is going. I get a gut feeling the story is there, then pursue it with the enthusiasm of a hunting tiger on a trail. If I knew where I was going, I'd get bored out of my mind and stop writing. ~ Jane Lindskold

God certainly knows of some happiness for us which He is going to bring out of the trouble, only we must have patience and not run away. And then all at once something happens and we see clearly ourselves that God has had some good thought in His mind all along; but because we cannot see things beforehand, and only know how dreadfully miserable we are, we think it is always going to be so. ~ Johanna Spyri

the fact is, our relationships to these corporations are not unambiguous. some memebers of negativland genuinely liked pepsi products. mca grew up loving star wars and didn't mind having his work sent all over the united states to all the "cool, underground magazines" they were marketing to--why would he? sam gould had a spiritual moment in the shower listening to a cd created, according to sophie wong, so that he would talk about tylenol with his independent artist friends--and he did. many of my friends' daughters will be getting american girl dolls and books as gifts well into the foreseeable future. some skateboarders in washington, dc, were asked to create an ad campaign for the east coast summer tour, and they all love minor threat--why not use its famous album cover? how about shilling for converse? i would have been happy to ten years ago. so what's really changed?
the answer is that two important things have changed: who is ultimately accountable for veiled corporate campaigns that occasionally strive to obsfucate their sponsorship and who is requesting our participation in such campaigns. behind converse and nike sb is nike, a company that uses shit-poor labor policies and predatory marketing that effectively glosses over their shit-poor labor policies, even to an audience that used to know better. behind team ouch! was an underground-savvy brainreservist on the payroll of big pharma; behind the recent wave of street art in hip urban areas near you was omd worl ~ Anne Elizabeth Moore

A brainstorm about the difference between rain and brain: a b, although both are juicy like water... but if it rained in the brain would that mean that ocurred a brainwash? and if so what would be the cure for that?? That's rough for sure. But if the rain plays mainly in the land would it land instead of fail to fall?? What's the meaning of it all? i'm a brainiac with some brainy thoughts.. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Everything is support in our awakening. We've been conditioned to kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Blame, blame, blame. One of the major ways that we don't stay present is blaming. We blame ourselves; we blame other people. I often see students blaming the outer circumstances or blaming their own bodies and minds for why they can't be present. Consider that what needs your attention and consideration is your own mind, and how you view these outer circumstances. You can befriend your circumstances; you can have compassion for your circumstances and for yourself. What happens when you do that? I recently ~ Pema Chodron

Eragon! I never want to hear you use that excuse again, that because someone else has done
or would do
something means that you should too. It's lazy, repugnant, and indicative of an inferior mind. Am I clear? ~ Christopher Paolini

'Confusion is the last stop on the way to clarity,' he told me. 'The part of your mind that thinks it knows it all is butting up against a bigger idea. It's only a matter of time until the smaller thought gives way to the greater. Don't fight it. Just try to enjoy the ride.' ~ Alan Cohen

It must be a shock to see us so old," Hannah said. "I'm afraid I couldn't climb a tree or shoot a marble if my life depended on it. Neither could Andrew, but I doubt he'll admit it."
"If I put my mind to it," Andrew said, "I could beat Drew with one hand tied behind my back. He was never any match for me."
Hannah raised her eyebrows. "It seems to me he outplayed you once."
"Pshaw. What's one game?"
If Aunt Blythe hadn't come back just then, I'd have argued, maybe even challenged Andrew to a rematch, but instead, I smiled and leaned my head against Hannah's shoulder, happy to feel her arm around me. This close, she still smelled like rose water.
Turning the pages of the album, Hannah showed us pictures of Mama and Papa, Theo, herself--and Andrew.
"These are my favorites." She pointed to the photographs John had taken of us in the Model T. We were all smiling except Theo. He sat beside me, scowling into the camera, still angry about Mrs. Armiger and the music lessons.
"We wanted Theo to come with us today," Hannah said, "but he's living down in Florida with his third wife--a lady half his age, I might add."
Andrew nudged me. "He sends his best, said he hopes to see you again someday."
I glanced at Aunt Blythe but she was staring at the photograph. "The resemblance is incredible. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was Drew."
Andrew chuckled. "Take a good look at me now. This is how the poor boy will look when he's ninety-six." ~ Mary Downing Hahn

She imagined what it must be like to have Charlie's mind - to believe that red shoes are faster then other shoes; to believe, as he did, that ducks could drive fire engines and that pigs built houses out of bricks and straw. There were plenty of people who weren't three-and-three-quarters who believed equally implausible things ... and when to war over them. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

On the one hand, it is in and through creative minds that the community fulfils itself at its best and reaches its highest forms; and on the other, it is from them that the community recovers the social substance with which it had nourished them, transfigured by their creative alchemy into a still higher social substance. The creative evolution of his community and his own creative evolution must always be the two earnest purposes of the individual. Its own creative evolution and that of the individuals in its midst must always be the two earnest purposes of the community. ~ Salvador De Madariaga

Great minds have always seen it. That is why man has survived his journey this long. When we fail to wish any longer to be otherwise than what we are, we will have ceased to evolve. Evolution has to be lived forward. I say this as one who has stood above the bones of much that has vanished, and at midnight has examined his own face. ~ Loren Eiseley

The computer model will be replaced by an organic model, in which the brain-mind is embodied - part of a whole, dynamic, living organism: one driven by emotional forces, not only cognitive ones. ~ Siri Hustvedt