Rajneesh Quotes

I must always, always have a box of Extra chewing gum in my bag because I have developed a terrible cheek-chewing compulsion. It's not only uncomfortable, but I look really weird when I'm doing it, and chewing gum is the only way I can stop myself.

Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I'm always smoking another cigarette.

I still bite my nails.

You pass a program and get people dependent on it, making it brutal to get rid of. The key is not letting it get started.

I suppose if you've never bitten your nails, there isn't any way to explain the habit. It's not enjoyable, really, but there is a certain satisfaction - pride in a job well done.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

You may have decided again and again, and again and again you have failed - not because smoking is such a great phenomenon that you cannot get out of it, but because you are trying from the wrong end. Rather than becoming aware of the whole situation - why you smoke in the first place - rather than becoming aware of the process of smoking, you are simply trying to drop it. It is like pruning the leaves of a tree without cutting the roots.

[Smoking] was a comfort, an occupation, a drug, a casual habit, a distraction, a way to not eat, a way to not pay attention, a way to not feel.

One thing leads to another? Not always. Sometimes one thing leads to the same thing. Ask an addict.

I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold onto.

Addictive behavior is kind of the inverse of procrastination: procrastination is about not being able to do what you want to do, addiction about not being able to not do what you don't want to do (drink, use drugs, etc.)

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

It's a very bad habit, but one I find hard to break.

Showing the addiction and unusual sexual practices are ways of just outlining a much bigger character trait.

What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.

...smoking is just a habit. 'Tolstoy', she said, mentioning someone I hadn't met, 'says that just as much pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers'. My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I choked down the heated words. For all I know, the man might be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him, however justified.

My problem is I'm an addictive personality. I can't have one coffee. I can't eat one piece of chocolate. I can't have a little bit of drugs.

Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.

People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.

You start doing the addictive behavior to feel good and then your receptors get overloaded with dopamine, then you stop doing the addictive thing and some of the receptors have shut down and you don't have enough dopamine to feel good. So then you feel bad and go back to the addictive behavior to get more dopamine. The strange thing is that it works with what we think of as uppers and downers and whatever you call gambling - sidewaysers.

Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. What he at first chooses, at last compels.

Like most people who smoked umpteen cigarettes a day, I tasted only the first one. The succeeding umpteen minus one were a compulsive ritual which had no greater savour than the fumes of burning money.

They say the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. The chains you put around yourself now have enormous consequences as you go through life.

I can't avoid writing. It's a sort of nervous tic I have developed since I gave up needlepoint.