“What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?”

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.

WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones?

People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them.

Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.

With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.

When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.

Perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.

Motivation is overrated, environment often matters more.

You get what you repeat.

The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?

In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption

Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.

Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.

The inspired and expired air may be sometimes very useful, by condensing and cooling the blood that passeth through the lungs; I hold that the depuration of the blood in that passage, is not only one of the ordinary, but one of the principal uses of respiration.

For one person who is blessed with the power of invention, many will always be found who have the capacity of applying principles.

Perhaps the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour amongst the persons who perform the work.

I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.

Never, absolutely never, compromise your principles.

The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.