55 Quotes About Self Control

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, mastering the art of self-control has become more crucial than ever. Whether it's resisting the allure of a tempting distraction, maintaining composure under stress, or simply staying committed to our personal goals, self-control is the key to unlocking a disciplined and fulfilled life. To inspire your journey toward greater self-discipline, we've curated a collection of the most insightful quotes on self-control. These selected words of wisdom capture the essence of restraint, focus, and inner strength, encouraging you to harness your potential and achieve a balanced, purposeful existence. Dive into our collection and let these quotes guide you toward the mastery of yourself.

1. “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” - William Blake

2. “Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.” - Benjamin Franklin

3. “One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.” - Gustave Flaubert

4. “Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.” - Warren Bennis

5. “The best fighter is never angry.” - Lao Tzu

6. “Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.” - Thucydides

7. “How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.” - Joseph Campbell

8. “Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion...” - William Somerset Maugham

9. “I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.” - Peggy Noonan

10. “The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

11. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.” - Robert E. Lee

12. “The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.” - Stephen R. Covey

13. “I tell you what when I see chocolate chip cookies I can’t just eat one. I’ve got to eat a dozen. I don’t have any self control. Well, come on! You’re just talking yourself right into the pit! You do have self control, and you need to start looking at those cookies and saying, “If I want you I’ll eat you, and if I don’t I won’t!” Come on! Talk to that plateful of food! I am born again and baptized in the Holy Ghost! I have the power of the universe on the inside of me, and if I do not want to eat you I will not eat you! I mean how do you expect to defeat the devil if you can’t even defeat a chocolate chip cookie!?!?” - Joyce Meyer

14. “You can control yourself if you really want to. I'll tell you how I know you can control yourself. If you were in a full fledged emotional temper tantrum in your house and I knocked on your front door..... Come on! Let me tell you what, you would get control of yourself, and it would only take a few seconds.” - Joyce Meyer

15. “But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)” - Sheldon B. Kopp

16. “Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.” - Hazrat Inayat Khan

17. “This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel.” - Mark Gevisser

18. “If I still need someone to calm my anger down,then I surely need a scapegoat who enrages me.” - Toba Beta

19. “To live with tremendous and proud composure; always beyond —. To have and not to have one's affects, one's pro and con, at will; to condescend to them, for a few hours; to seat oneself on them as on a horse, often as on an ass — for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as much as of their fire. To reserve one's three hundred foregrounds; also the dark glasses; for there are cases when nobody may look into our eyes, still less into our "grounds." And to choose for company that impish and cheerful vice, courtesy. And to remain master of one's four virtues: of courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

20. “The basic idea here is that for most people will power is a limited resource: if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, will power is like a muscle: overuse temporarily exhausts it.” - James Surowiecki

21. “Our work activities are perhaps most interesting when the element of competition is present.” - Ralph Alfred Habas

22. “I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.” - Jane Austen

23. “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius

24. “Sometimes, you must refrain from doing things you want so bad.” - Toba Beta

25. “A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.” - Henry Hazlitt

26. “Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it...Don't allow his anger to become your anger.” - Bohdi Sanders

27. “Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn’t keep a hard eye on herself.” - Kevin Brockmeier

28. “Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.” - George Eliot

29. “Blood doesn't satisfy cravings. It magnifies them.” - Matt Haig

30. “Emotional content without self control burns the soul.Self control without emotional content is yet untested.” - Toba Beta

31. “If you conquer yourself, then you conquer the world” - Paulo Coelho

32. “Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.” - Criss Jami

33. “If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.” - Criss Jami

34. “Showing a lack of self-control is in the same vein granting authority to others: 'Perhaps I need someone else to control me.” - Criss Jami

35. “Anger's like a battery that leaks acid right out of meAnd it starts from the heart until it reaches my outer me” - Criss Jami

36. “One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.” - Jack Henry Abbott

37. “I would have done anything for him. But these days, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to get drunk or go to a wild party or make out with random boys-not that I've ever wanted to. I don't want to watch chick flicks or eat ice cream or get a haircut or buy out half of the mall. I don't want cold, cruel revenge. I don't want to see him suffer when karma catches up with him and kick his ass. I don't even want to talk to him right now, simply because it would be awkward and pathetic and I wouldn't know what to say to him. Yes, there is self-control, preventing me from being stupid and acting like a desperate doofus in the manner most heartbroken people do. But there is also a weary numbness threatening to consume every inch of me: Isn't there a way for me to skip straight to the part where I'm fine again?” - Marla Miniano

38. “A life without regret can be attained by full awareness of one's actions in their present moment.” - Michelle D. Rosado

39. “Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.” - Joseph Ellis

40. “All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.” - Sheri S. Tepper

41. “Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.” - Dale Carnegie

42. “I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.” - Criss Jami

43. “The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.” - Rumi

44. “I lead a life of severe self-control mitigated by moments of impulse.” - Elise Valmorbida

45. “The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (...) these three skills —self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most— are the foundation for self-control.” - Kelly McGonigal

46. “Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious - obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth - is what makes it so alluring. But it's misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it's hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years. It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world - while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat - but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn't be further from the truth.” - Gary Taubes

47. “Be nice. And if you can't do that, just don't be mean.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

48. “The trouble with bookshops is that they are as bad as pubs. You start at one and then you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge. My brief case was full to bursting and I had bundles of books under both arms. I was bowed down by the weight of them.” - R.T. Campbell

49. “Self-control is a key factor in achieving success. We can't control everything in life, but we can definitely control ourselves.” - Jan Mckingley Hilado

50. “Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.” - Anthon St. Maarten

51. “Love only serves and does not calculate. Love gives without expectation, while hate carries an endless tally of debts. Hate controls everything it touches, but love sets everything it touches free.” - Bryant McGill

52. “When we try to control, we become controlled; when we release, we become free.” - Bryant McGill

53. “Control thought-forms are the basis of our deepest moral crisis.” - Bryant McGill

54. “Excuses fall silent behind self-control, focus, and direction.” - Lorii Myers

55. “Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.” - Philip Roth