Self-control is a vital skill that helps us navigate challenges, make better decisions, and achieve personal growth. Whether you're seeking motivation to stay focused or inspiration to overcome temptations, powerful quotes can offer valuable insight and encouragement. In this collection, we've gathered 73 of the most impactful self-control quotes to help you strengthen your willpower and stay on the path to success.
1. “I am very happyBecause I have conquered myselfAnd not the world.I am very happyBecause I have loved the worldAnd not myself.” - Sri Chinmoy
2. “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” - William Blake
3. “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
4. “What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.” - Anais Nin
5. “He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” - Lao Tzu
6. “One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.” - Gustave Flaubert
7. “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
8. “The best fighter is never angry.” - Lao Tzu
9. “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” - Elie Wiesel
10. “Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.” - Thucydides
11. “Sam: “You—you greatly overestimate my self-control.”Grace: “I’m not looking for self-control.” - Maggie Stiefvater
12. “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
13. “Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion...” - William Somerset Maugham
14. “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
15. “He wanted to take Homer Wells in his arms, and hug him, and kiss him, but he could only hope that Homer understood how much Dr. Larch's self-esteem was dependent on his self-control.” - John Irving
16. “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
17. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.” - Robert E. Lee
18. “The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.” - Stephen R. Covey
19. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
20. “I want to kiss you.” Jace’s whisper pulled me from my thoughts and I glanced up to find his eyes blazing with raw need. “Just because Marc won’t touch you doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Right? I don’t have that kind of self-control, and honestly, I don’t see the point in it. Are you supposed to be impressed by how long we can go without touching you? ’Cause if that’s the game we’re playing, I think I’d rather lose.” - Rachel Vincent
21. “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
22. “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
23. “Here’s one of my favorite statements: We are never going to enjoy stability, we are never going to enjoy spiritual maturity until we learn how to do what’s right when it feels wrong, and every time you do what’s right by a decision of your will using discipline and self control to go beyond how you feel, the more painful it is in your flesh, the more you’re growing spiritually at that particular moment.” - Joyce Meyer
24. “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
25. “Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.” - Wilkie Collins
26. “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
27. “Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind... The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up.” - Marcel Proust
28. “If I still need someone to calm my anger down,then I surely need a scapegoat who enrages me.” - Toba Beta
29. “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
30. “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
31. “Our work activities are perhaps most interesting when the element of competition is present.” - Ralph Alfred Habas
32. “I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.” - Jane Austen
33. “In the endeavor to establish a difficult habit, for example, mere wishing will never carry it to a successful conclusion; our wishing must rise to the level of WANTING if this goal is to be achieved.” - Ralph Alfred Habas
34. “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius
35. “Sometimes, you must refrain from doing things you want so bad.” - Toba Beta
36. “A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.” - Henry Hazlitt
37. “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
38. “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
39. “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
40. “Blood doesn't satisfy cravings. It magnifies them.” - Matt Haig
41. “Emotional content without self control burns the soul.Self control without emotional content is yet untested.” - Toba Beta
42. “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
43. “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
44. “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
45. “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
46. “One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.” - Jack Henry Abbott
47. “We should set our goals; then learn to control our appetites. Otherwise, we will lose ourselves in the confusion of the world.” - Hark Herald Sarmiento
48. “Refrain to-night;And that shall lend a kind of easinessTo the next abstinence, the next more easy;For use almost can change the stamp of nature,And either master the devil or throw him outWith wondrous potency.” - William Shakespeare
49. “A life without regret can be attained by full awareness of one's actions in their present moment.” - Michelle D. Rosado
50. “Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.” - Joseph Ellis
51. “All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.” - Sheri S. Tepper
52. “Not being able to govern events, I govern myself” - Michel de Montaigne
53. “I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.” - Criss Jami
54. “The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.” - Rumi
55. “I lead a life of severe self-control mitigated by moments of impulse.” - Elise Valmorbida
56. “Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.” - Mahatma Gandhi
57. “Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.” - Criss Jami
58. “The is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.” - Kelly McGonigal
59. “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
60. “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
61. “Be nice. And if you can't do that, just don't be mean.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
62. “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
63. “You must learn to control your dreams or your dreams will forever control you.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman
64. “Its not all the hands capable for the reins of life” - Marios Theodoratos
65. “The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.” - N.T. Wright
66. “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
67. “Thoughts, like water, will stay on course if we make a place for them to go. As you learn to control your thoughts, you can gain courage, conquer fear and have a happy life.” - Boyd K. Packer
68. “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
69. “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
70. “When we try to control, we become controlled; when we release, we become free.” - Bryant McGill
71. “Control thought-forms are the basis of our deepest moral crisis.” - Bryant McGill
72. “Excuses fall silent behind self-control, focus, and direction.” - Lorii Myers
73. “Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.” - Philip Roth
