For eleven months and maybe about twenty days each year, we concentrate upon the shortcomings of others, but for a few days at the turn of the New Year we look at our own. It is a good habit.

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

Free nations with different histories, economies and a vast amount of stubborn pride will never achieve complete agreement, even when they desire the same objectives.

Any coalition has its troubles, as every married man knows.

Between 1939 and 1945 you produced weapons and war equipment valued at thirteen billion dollars, 70 per cent of which you shipped to your allies. The same process is going on today in Canada's much larger and growing industry.

For eleven months and maybe about twenty days each year, we concentrate upon the shortcomings of others, but for a few days at the turn of the New Year we look at our own. It is a good habit.

For if the Germans do not help defend the West, American and Canadian troops must cross the seas to do the job, and I venture to believe that the troops - if not the statesmen - regard this as an interference at least in their own domestic affairs.

News is so often a report of conflict, an account of problems, a thing of the day and even of the minute, that sometimes I think we make the background darker and the shadows deeper than they actually are.

Speakers are not supposed to waste time on platitudes, but the capacity of this generation for ignoring the obvious and concentrating on the negative and the obscure is immense.

The statesmen still say that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and yet it is not possible any longer not to interfere, even when we do not mean to do so.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

I'm a creature of habit. I go to restaurants all the time and stuff.

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

Men even contract the dirty, filthy habit of chewing tobacco, and when the habit gets a good hold upon them they are never satisfied except when they have a wad of the stuff in their mouth. So with drinking. It is largely a habit.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don't know how to eliminate them effectively.

Habit is a great deadener.

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.

Professors simply can't discuss a thing. Habit compels them to deliver a lecture.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

I applaud the American Cancer Society for all they do to eradicate smoking. Their local, state and national efforts help to discourage young people from taking up this deadly habit and the resources they provide have helped numerous smokers quit.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

My habit of glorifying things far away in space and time, also contributed to my social isolation.

Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.

Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.

Winning is a habit.

Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

Yet otters have not been hunters in water long enough for the habit to become an instinct.

If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.

It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive.

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.

It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.

We have seen from experience that, if we are in the habit of walking regularly on the same road, we are able to think about other things while walking, without paying attention to our steps.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.