Top 100 Self Control Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.”

— Brian Tracy

52. “The great master key to riches is nothing more or less than the self-discipline necessary to help you take full and complete possession of your own mind.”

— Napoleon Hill

53. “Man conquers the world by conquering himself.”

— Zeno of Citium

54. “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

— Laozi

55. “When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.”

— Marcus Aurelius

56. “Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.”

— Steve Maraboli

57. “You need self-control in an out-of-control world.”

— James C. Collins

58. “Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.”

— Saint Francis de Sales

59. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

— Tony Robbins

60. “Big things are built one brick at a time. Victories are achieved one choice at a time. A life well lived is chosen one day at a time.”

— Lysa TerKeurst

61. “If you will be hard on yourself, life will be easy on you. But if you insist upon being easy on yourself, life is going to be very hard on you.”

— Zig Ziglar

62. “Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

63. “In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

64. “Self-control is solely a matter of thought-control!”

— Napoleon Hill

65. “When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions.”

— W. Clement Stone

66. “Self-control is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.”

— George Bernard Shaw

67. “If you neglect to exercise self-control, you are not only likely to injure others, but you are sure to injure yourself!”

— Napoleon Hill

68. “Don’t be curious of matters that don’t concern you; never speak of them, and don’t ask about them.”

— Teresa of Ávila

69. “As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom.”

— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

70. “He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.”

— Philip Massinger

71. “Waiting is one of the great arts.”

— Margery Allingham

72. “The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.”

— Seneca the Younger

73. “Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

74. “Self-control is only courage under another form.”

— Samuel Smiles

75. “Self-control is one of the most exhilarating of pleasures.”

— William F. Buckley Jr.

76. “When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone.”

— George O'Neil

77. “Self-control is the ability to restrain a laugh at the wrong place.”

— Elbert Hubbard

78. “Seek always for the answer within. Be not influenced by those around you, by their thoughts or their words.”

— Eileen Caddy

79. “There are many whose tongues might govern multitudes, if they could govern their tongues.”

— Jim Prentice

80. “The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.”

— Stephen R. Covey

81. “Always clamping down on excitement is not self-control but fear.”

— Mason Cooley

82. “Who is fit to govern others? He who governs himself. You might as well have said: nobody.”

— Augustus William Hare

83. “Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

84. “This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.”

— Phyllis McGinley

85. “Conscience whispers, but interest screams aloud.”

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

86. “An element of abstention, of restraint, must enter into all finer joys.”

— Vida Dutton Scudder

87. “No confict is so severe as his who labors to subdue himself.”

— Thomas à Kempis

88. “Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.”

— Zadie Smith

89. “The only people who would be in government are those who care more about people than they do about power.”

— Millicent Fenwick

90. “He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face. – Ben Franklin.”

— Benjamin Franklin

91. “Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.”

— Wilkie Collins

92. “There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.”

— Margaret Mead

93. “Leaders can be moral-and they should be moral-without imposing their morality on others.”

— Geraldine Ferraro

94. “Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong.”

— Vita Sackville-West

95. “Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.”

— Gertrude Stein

96. “I have a great objection to seeing anyone, particularly anyone whom I care about, lose his self-control.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

97. “I’m not looking for self-control.”

— Maggie Stiefvater