Habits quotes often come from successful individuals and thought leaders on productivity, time management and personal development. These powerful words and insights can help us see the incredible power that even small habits can have. With motivation and encouragement, we can all make changes for a stronger, more successful future. Use these quotes about habits to inspire a few changes today, or share them with a friend or co-worker that might need a boost.
The Power of Habits Is Real
In the very first chapter of his book, The Power of Focus, Jack Canfield writes, “Your habits will determine your future.” Like so many other authors, businesspeople and successful individuals, Canfield understands the power these small daily practices hold and how they can ultimately define who you are. Much of the advice in this space manifests just like this, in the form of insightful habits quotes. They often come from personal experience, but more importantly, they’re backed by science.
Research has found links between positive habits and higher academic performance. For example, The World Economic Forum asserts that healthy habit formation is key to improving public health. Brown University Health shares that positive habits make us more efficient, reduce stress, improve our health and help us achieve our long-term goals.
Perhaps the old adage “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” really does hold some truth. When we make smart choices like healthy eating again and again, it becomes second nature. It ultimately sets us up for future success. If you need some inspiration on your habit-forming journey, the following quotes will help you learn how to break down unhealthy patterns, build good ones in their place and keep you on the right track to achieve excellence in your own life.
Motivational Quotes About Building Good Habits
Generally, building a healthy habit also involves starting small, identifying a clear goal, tracking your progress and staying consistently motivated. The following good habits quotes are here to help you with the latter.
- “If you pick the right small behavior and sequence it right, then you won’t have to motivate yourself to have it grow. It will just happen naturally, like a good seed planted in a good spot.” —BJ Fogg
- “Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it everyday and soon it cannot be broken.” —Horace Mann
- “Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with; bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with. The habits you have and the habits that have you will determine almost everything you achieve or fail to achieve.” —Brian Tracy, Focal Point
- “Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.” —Norman Vincent Peale, Enthusiasm Makes the Difference
- “Once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom—and the responsibility—to remake them.” —Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
- “Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.” —William James, The Principles of Psychology
- “Commit to your habits to make them rituals. If it’s not important, never do it. If it’s important, do it every day.” —Derek Sivers, How to Live
- “Routines are a godsend when it comes to doing something hard.” —Angela Duckworth, Grit
Related: 40 Consistency Quotes to Help Kick-Start Your Future
Habits Quotes to Inspire You to Excellence
Historian and philosopher Will Durant once said that “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.” Hall of Fame athletes prove this every single day, as do innovative entrepreneurs, influential artists and successful businesspeople. They got to where they are because they stuck to their routines of hard work, grit and discipline. Habits—specifically good habits—are necessary for reaching your full potential.
But it’s not just about adding the right habits. It’s also about ditching the wrong ones. That’s where changing habits quotes can help inspire the shift from fruitless patterns to empowering ones. Similarly, habit quotes remind us that greatness comes from the small choices we make every day.
- “’T is easier to prevent bad habits than break them.” —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
- “You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‘I release the need for this in my life.’” —Wayne Dyer, Staying on the Path
- “The secret to permanently breaking any bad habit is to love something greater than the habit.” —Bryant McGill
- “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.” —Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
- “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” —Colin Powell, My American Journey
- “A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else. A routine is exceptionally powerful.” —Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect
- “Learned that champions aren’t just born; champions can be made when they embrace and commit to life-changing positive habits.” —Lewis Howes, The School of Greatness
- “Amateurs have a goal. Professionals have a process.” —Shane Parrish
Related: Perseverance Quotes for Determination and Endurance
10 Of The Best Quotes From Atomic Habits
These Atomic Habits quotes are pulled from the revolutionary self-help book by James Clear. The book emphasizes that tiny changes can lead to remarkable results. It famously labels habits as the “compound interest” of self-improvement. Clear gives us a framework for building more effective systems, and a few of his most profound tidbits of advice can be found below.
- “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
- “Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
- “The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”
- “Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to habit change. Maybe if you really wanted it, you’d actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient. And despite what the latest productivity best seller will tell you, this is a smart strategy, not a dumb one.”
- “All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger.”
- “Each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important: to trust yourself.”
- “Identity change is the North Star of habit change.”
- “Habit formation is incredibly useful because the conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain.”
- “The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response and reward.”
- “You get what you repeat.”
10 Top Quotes From 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
In his own prominent book, American educator, businessman and speaker Stephen Covey lays out a playbook for realizing success by adopting seven distinct habits. These include:
- Be proactive (or proactivity)
- Begin with the end in mind (or goal setting)
- Put first things first (or prioritization)
- Think win-win (or mutual benefit)
- Think first to understand, then to be understood (or communication)
- Synergize (or collaborative synergy)
- Sharpen the saw (or continuous learning and self-improvement)
Covey expands on these thoughts and further defines the significance of habits in the following 7 Habits of Highly Effective People quotes.
- “Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits.”
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
- “For our purposes, we will define a habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire… In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.”
- “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do.”
- “Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness or ineffectiveness.”
- “The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.”
- “Habits can be learned and unlearned. But I also know it isn’t a quick fix. It involves a process and a tremendous commitment.”
- “You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships.”
- “The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness.”
- “There’s no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.”
The Power of Habit Quotes
It should come as no surprise that where you choose to focus your time has a significant impact on your life. The activities and rituals you repeat day in and day out will ultimately rewire your brain. With good habits, this can be a powerful asset that helps you to be more efficient, healthier and concentrated on reaching your goals. Bad habits, on the other hand, can be a detriment to your development. Use the following quotes to remind you of the power of habit and to nudge you towards the routines that will help you rather than hurt you.
- “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” —Vince Lombardi
- “Your mind and your habits will create either barriers or bridges to a better future.” —Al Siebert, The Adult Student’s Guide to Survival & Success
- “Habit is a second nature, and what was at first pleasure is next necessity.” —Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality
- “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.” —Octavia Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories
- “Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE.” —Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect
- “What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.” —Gretchen Rubin
- “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” —Warren Buffett
Healthy Habits Quotes for Daily Inspiration From SUCCESS®
Sticking to anything takes both diligence and motivation—but that’s the only way to form a habit worth having. The following daily habits quotes, written by SUCCESS® contributors, give you that extra incentive you need to keep pushing forward. They’re perfect to use as everyday mantras or affirmations. They’ll help you to remember why you started, but also remind you to give yourself grace and to have patience along the way.
- “You don’t need to take a giant leap, just small, consistent steps in the right direction.”
- “Habits are the roots that will eventually turn into sturdy limbs of growth.”
- “Consistency is power.”
- “One skipped day won’t break you, just like one day of progress won’t make you.”
- “Building a habit means doing it when you’re tired. Doing it when you’re busy. Doing it when you don’t want to. That’s how you achieve greatness.”
- “The acts and behaviors you decide to repeat say a lot about you and where you’re going. Choose wisely.”
- “Be patient. Habits may breed slow results, but slow results are better than no results.”
Daily Habits Create Lifelong Results
The same way that continuing to pick up and put down heavy things in the gym helps you grow physically, continuing to go through the same routine every day will help you grow mentally. Each healthy habit—whether it’s eating well, communicating effectively or setting clear goals—makes you stronger, more resilient and more focused on long-term success.
Step one is simply to start. Replace the patterns that no longer serve you with positive ones that do. Live and breathe by these patterns and allow this list of habits quotes to lift you up when you’re in need of inspiration. They are a daily reminder to stay patient, stay consistent and to not give up. Small actions today create lasting results tomorrow.
Need more motivation and encouragement? Check out our powerful mindfulness e-book or our transformative goal-setting ebook!
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