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About the Habits of Mind

A Habit of Mind means having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known: dichotomies, dilemmas, enigmas and uncertainties. It means getting into the habit of behaving intelligently when you DON'T know the answer.

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
Horace Mann
The sum of one’s intelligence is the sum of one’s habits of mind.
Lauren Resnick
Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.
Publicus Syrus, 42 BC
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
Maxine Hong Kingston
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Ryuh
Learning to explain phenomena such that one continues to be fascinated by the failure of one’s explanations creates a continuing cycle of thinking, that is the crux of intelligence. It isn’t that one person knows more than another, then. In as sense, it is important to know less than the next person, or at least to be certain of less, thus enabling more curiosity and less explaining away because one has again encountered a well-known phenomenon. The less you know the more you can find out about, and finding out for oneself is what intelligence is all about.
Roger Schank
How much do students really love to learn, to persist, to passionately attack a problem or a task?.....to watch some of their prized ideas explode and to start anew?.....to go beyond being merely dutiful or long-winded?Let us assess such things.
Grant Wiggins
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.
Gail Sheehy
Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein
A great pleasure in Life is doing What people say you Cannot do.
Tommy John
Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.
Francis Bacon
I believe everybody is creative, and everybody is talented. I just don’t think that everybody is disciplined. I think that’s a rare commodity.
Al Hirschfield
There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli
What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.
Thaddeus Golas
Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
Kahlil Gabran
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude
Thomas Jefferson
Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition - such as lifting weights - we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.
Stephen Covey
When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.
Lord Kelvin
Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances.
Martha Washington
Anyone can have a good day. The question is what do you do on a bad day. That's when you're being tested. In a very tangible sense, a bad day shows your innermost essence more than a good day.
Arthur Golden
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
Hugh Downs
To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Henri Fredric Amiel
Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.
Harvey Mackay
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