William James on Habit

HABIT William James "It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit." "Habit is second nature, or rather, ten times nature." "Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night." "We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves." "The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists." "We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can." "In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible." "Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life." "Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain." "A character is a completely fashioned will." (J. S. Mill) "Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do." "Every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort." "Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty." "New habits can be launched." "Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state." "We are mere bundles of habits."

"The essence of habit is an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of response, not to particular acts except as, under special conditions, these express a way of behaving. Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will . . ." John Dewey

Back to William James   Courtesy: http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/habit.html