Quotation I found in a book of my Dad's

“One must first learn to proceed firmly before one can begin to make oneself over again. He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken advance there is no such thing as accumulation of positive forces.”

 

(on how to break a habit or start a new one):

 

FOUR GREAT MAXIMS FOR ACHIEVING YOUR GOAL 

1. We must take care to launch ourselves with as strong an initiative as possible. 
2. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. 
3. Seize the first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make 
4. Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by little gratuitous exercise of it every day.

 William James – 1842-1910

 

From the Condensed Principles of Psychology -, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy – published 1948

 (My Dad, Francis Howard Riggs - age 5)

Just thought this was good...

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to applaud this quotation she heard from John Palmer Gavit. She went on to talk about how many of us teach prejudice with pride in things we have no control over at all - like the place of our birth or our parents.

She came upon it in 1938 and I think it is pretty good too.

“Once, many years ago, to an old Scotch born carpenter, I boasted with scant tact of at least ten identifiable ancestors that arrived on the Mayflower and that every drop of my blood had been on American soil for more than two centuries.

He replied, chuckling, “Tell me this—how many nights sat ye up deciden' ye'd no' be born Chinese?”

TRANSLATION: Since my husband could not figure it out.

"Tell me this - how many nights did you sit up deciding that you would not be born Chinese?"

(ancestor Cyril Call; above right - yep; that's my gene pool;  descendant of the Mayflower, so am I!)