Ellen Key Quotes

Our learning ought to be our lives' amendment, and the fruits of our private study ought to appear in our public behavior.

I don't think evil people or negative people are inherently interesting all the time. People who are good people getting better at being themselves - to me, that's something that's really interesting to watch.

An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.

I'm a good man, and I'm gonna become a better man.

How in the end can one possibly hold anyone responsible for our own underdeveloped visions, or undeveloped strength of character?

Not to alter one's faults is to be faulty indeed.

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

I try to be a good person. I know what my downfalls are, so that's a good thing.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

Personality is less a finished product than a transitive process. While it has some stable features, it is at the same time continually undergoing change.

It means that through knowledge have come responsibility and hope, and through both, action.

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

I'm human, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes all the time, but I guess my job is to keep those mistakes to myself, which I'm already fine doing and just try to be the best I can be for those kids.

There's no doubt West Point impacted who I am... It has an enormous emphasis, not only on military aspects, but character development. Whether it's the honor code, or the interactions you have, both with the cadet leadership and the academy leadership, every place you are is a character test.

One of the things you learn in rehab is that you're responsible for your own actions.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that are not just ones for immediate short-term comfort. You need to make an investment, and the investment is in health and education.

Personal responsibility is not only recognizing the errors of our ways. Personal responsibility lies in our willingness and ability to correct those errors individually and collectively.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

I know I haven't always done things the right way. I'm just trying to reflect on how to make myself better, how to become a better man, a better father, a better person, a better artist.

Heart and head are the constituent parts of character; temperament has almost nothing to do with it, and, therefore, character is dependent upon education, and is susceptible of being corrected and improved.

If the history of the Day of Atonement has anything to say to us now it is: never relieve individuals of moral responsibility. The more we have, the more we grow.

You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.