Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

I take responsibility for myself and what I do now.

It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.

You can never control other people. You can only control yourself. I have definitely learned that.

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.

I have to stay on top of myself with honesty and be very forthcoming, quickly admit when I'm wrong, you know? I have a whole system that works for me, and that's part of my worldview now.

You have to take responsibility for how you act. You can't fix everyone.

We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.

Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.

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

At the end of the day, you're responsible for yourself and your actions and that's all you can control. So rather than be frustrated with what you can't control, try to fix the things you can.

Preach in your own house and to your own company

What, pray, does it profit a man to teach others, and to be prating always about virtue, in high-sounding words, if he fails to give heed to his own instructions?

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people.

I'm super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I'm critical of other people, too - I try not to be, though.

The first step in making better choices is to simply be brutally honest about your own behavior to yourself. What are the choices you are making? How are you spending your time? What are you neglecting that you shouldn't?

I can only control myself, my actions, my work ethic, and my attitude.

In retrospect, I had a lot of shortcomings and didn't take care of the things that needed to be taken care of, and that's all my fault.

For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.

I made my share of mistakes. People can look at that as what not to do, and if they choose to make fun of it, that's fine. I can't control that. All I know is that I can control myself. And at that point in my life, I wasn't even able to do that.

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience.

I think I've learned the difference between the things I can control and the things I can't control. And hopefully, by doing the things I can control well, I'll have more favor in the other category.

In the matter of learning, the difference between the earnest and the careless student stands out clearly. The same holds true in the mastering of passion and the weaknesses to which our nature is subject, as in the acquiring of virtue.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.

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