Practice quotes
4.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside practice — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized."
"We look at some people as if they were special, gifted, divine. Nobody is special and gifted and divine. No more than you are, no more than I am. The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practice it."
"Being unconditionally happy is a practice: "Come what may, today I'm going to smile. Anyway, everything is going to die! Everything is going to vanish and disappear-so what! Who cares! Let me at least be happy, smile this moment, enjoy my very breath.""
"You should not delay the good things in life. Just do them. Whenever you get a chance to do spiritual practice or seva, don’t miss it. Those are the real precious moments of your life."
"The source of your mind is love and whatever you do to go to that source, is spiritual practice."
"It is not that I do not get angry. I don't give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice."
"Does one scent appeal more than another? Do you prefer this flavor, or that feeling? Is your practice sacred and your work profane? Then your mind is separated: from itself, from oneness, from the Tao."
"Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place."
"As you move to the top, remember the story of the pump. If you start pumping casually or half -heartedly, you will pump forever before anything happens. Pump hard to begin with and keep it up until you get that water flowing. Then a great deal will happen."
"While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information."
"We live with many thoughts, emotions, and habits, but at the same time we have other eyes, another mind capable of watching all of these things. Those who practice self-cultivation find that mind; they live with it and they die with it."
"No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice."
"To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living things with the eyes of compassion."
"So if we love someone, we should train in being able to listen. By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person. [True Love. A Practice for Awakening the Heart.]"
"There are so many things that can provide us with peace. Next time you take a shower or a bath, I suggest you hold your big toes in mindfulness. We pay attention to everything except our toes. When we hold our toes in mindfulness and smile at them, we will find that our bodies have been very kind to us. We know that any cell in our toes can turn cancerous, but our toes have been behaving very well, avoiding that kind of problem. Yet, we have not been nice to them at all. These kinds of practices can bring us happiness."
"Meditation is offering your genuine presence to yourself in every moment."
"Let a man practice the profession which he best knows."
"We have been at war almost constantly since the last century. And it has not helped our institutions. Congress no longer represents the people. The courts do not practice justice any more. The armies never stop playing at being the policemen of the world and of oil."
"Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century."
"It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually."
