“Once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it . . . others have done so . . . That, in some ways, is the point of this book. Perhaps a sleep-walking murderer can plausibly argue that he wasn’t aware of his habit, and so he doesn’t bear responsibility for his crime, but almost all of the other patterns that exist in most people’s lives — how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spend our time, attention and money — those are habits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.”
“Once a response becomes a habit, you stop learning. Theoretically, you could act differently, but in practice you do not. Habits are extremely useful, they streamline the parts of our lives we do not want to think about...But there is an art to deciding what parts of your life you want to turn over to habit, and what parts of your life you want to continue to learn from and have choice about. This is a key question of balance.”
“The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.”
“Be careful who you choose as your friends because their bad habits can become your bad habits. Choose wisely...we all have a choice in life.”
“knowing the determinants of health habits is important because once bad habits are ingrained, they are very difficult to change.”
“You cannot change your FUTURE, you can change your HABITS. And surely your HABITS will change your FUTURE”