automatic actions Quotes

Now, there are a very large number of bodily movements, having their source in our nervous system, that do not possess the character of conscious actions.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

Almost everything we do is automatic, yet we're not aware of that. We feel like there's a circle of light. We're like the drunk who lost his keys and is looking under the streetlight, and the cop says, "Where'd you lose your keys?" You say, "Back in the alley, but the light's so much better over here." The divided self refers to the fact that we are basically animals with animal brains. These animal brains run our lives. They're very good at it.

We are all creatures of habit. We can do most things without even thinking about them; our bodies take charge and do them for us.

Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.

Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Innumerable actions are going on through us all the time. If we started counting them, we should never come to an end.

Every action is self-perpetuating, every thought is self-perpetuating. Once you cooperate with it, you are giving energy to it. Sooner or later it will become habitual. You will do it and you will not be the doer; you will do it just because of the force of habit.

Habit is a good thing for the human race. ... You have to spend so much energy just getting through the day when you have no habits that you don't have any left for productive labor.

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.

She sleepwalked from moment to moment, and whole months slipped by without memory, without bearing the faintest imprint of her conscious will.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits.