Ingrained Habits Quotes

Where a bad custom has been in existence for any length of time, most people grow to regard it as part of the order of nature.

Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

Worries are the most stubborn habits in the world. Even after a poor man has won a huge lottery prize, he will still for months wake up in the night with a start, worrying about food and rent.

We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.

What's bred in the bone will stick to the flesh.

Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of.

Old, deeply engrained systems take time to change, but we can't leave it to time.

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

Habit is formed out of memory... We often shape our present situation according to those habitual memories. Instead of starting fresh, we go back to what we've done in the past... easier for us than fighting our way through foreign territory.

Once you've grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you've inherited, you don't even notice it any longer.

We kind of have an ingrained, parasitic society. We kind of think it's okay to eat your neighbor.

Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?

Custom is second nature.

Unless it's really an emergency, I'm not going to bother you. And you can see people chafe at that. 'You're in the same office and instant-message each other? Why don't you just walk over?' That's the perfect example of how ingrained the status quo is. To certain people, it may seem lazy, but I would argue it's much more efficient and considerate.

Prejudices are not easily got rid of as an old coat which is no longer thought of.

It is futile to go against human nature.

I'm old-school, and that's just how I am. It's in my DNA.

Habit is something you can do without thinking, which is why most of us have so many of them.

The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patterns of fear & jealousy.

Some people are genetically programmed to be difficult.

This inclination to hoard is deeply ingrained in me because in the past, in times of scarcity, you took what you could get.

Behavior runs in deep channels that were cut during early childhood, and it is very difficult to alter them. In order to change a deeply ingrained pattern, you have to build a sturdy dam, dig another canal and reroute the river in the new direction. That effort is rarely successful over the long haul.