"willpower without self-awareness is as useless as a cannon commanded by a blind man"

--- Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Penguin 2011, p. 114

In context:

Our ancestors lived in groups that rewarded members for living up to the common values, norms, and ideals. Therefore, people could adjust their actions to meet those standards fared better than the ones who were oblivious to their own social faux pas. Changing personal behavior to meet standards requires willpower, but willpower without self-awareness is as useless as a cannon commanded by a blind man. That’s why self-awareness evolved as an innate trait among our early ancestors on the savanna – and why it has kept developing recently in more treacherous social environs.

"One advantage afforded by a long life [is] the opportunity to change one’s mind"

--- Ernst Gombrich, art historian, quoted in an obituary by Elizabeth McGrath, cited by Richard Gombrich in What the Buddha Taught (2009) p. 110

McGrath's obituary in The Burlington Magazine, February 2002, p. 113 is quoted as follows by Gombri

While he habitually expressed his views with great firmness, Gombrich liked to remark that one advantage afforded by a long life was the opportunity to change one’s mind.

"Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny"

--- Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction p. 40, quoted by Richard Gombrich in What the Buddha Thought (2009) p. 13

"The Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness. . . . fairness as karma"

--- Jonathan Haidt, in an interview with Alison George in New Scientist, "What righteousness really means" (pay wall) 8 March 2012, issue 2854, on the occasion of his new book The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion.

Excerpt:

Liberals have difficulty understanding the Tea Party because they think it is a bunch of selfish racists. But I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness. It's not fairness as equality of outcomes, it's fairness as karma - the idea that good deeds will lead to good outcomes and bad deeds will lead to suffering.