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Behavior Quotes
"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!"
51
"Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity."
47
"Which, the first meeting with anybody is, you know, everybody is on their best behavior. It's only after you get to know them for a while that you figure out."
22
"I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist."
20
"Welfare distorts behavior, makes one less personally responsible and reduces the role of private charity. This principle applies to corporate welfare."
20
"It is always easier - and usually far more effective - to focus on changing your behavior than on changing the behavior of others."
20
"As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree."
18
"I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking."
17
"I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going."
16
"Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image."
15
"The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject."
15
"You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent."
15
"Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge."
15
"No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool."
13
"Desperate? That can be a justification for all kinds of behavior."
13
"Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it."
13
"Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort."
13
"Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?"
13
"There is 'Soul' even in other living beings. 'Lion', or 'deer', is the ego, but within them is the Soul. Therefore, if you take into consideration the type of ego of every living being and interact accordingly, your work will get done. A lion cannot be provoked but if you provoke a dog, it will run away."
13
"Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless."
13
"I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes."
13
"I still drink vodka; I'm not an advocate of drinking, but I'm no angel. I don't like grass, because it just makes me hungry."
12
"Good people won't do bad to you if you hurt them. They'll just be neutral and walk away, with experience and a lesson; and you'll be left with well-wishers less one."
12
"Looking away is submissive. Looking [..] in the eye is a challenge."
12
"Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective."
12
"One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical."
12
"Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong."
12
"The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior."
12
"Kindness is the supreme intelligence."
11
"Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed."
11
"Generally, cars were not built to sit on dealer lots. It encourages the wrong kind of behavior in the whole system."
11
"Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting."
11
"The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet."
11
"The delicate and intricate pattern of competition and cooperation in the economic behavior of the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Stockholm offers a challenge to the economist that is perhaps as complex as the challenges of the physicist and the chemist."
11
"Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits."
11
"A lot of the interesting issues and dynamics within a city occur over things such as socio-economic issues or ethnic issues. But they require a much more elaborate model of human behavior."
10
"No one is more insufferable than he who lacks basic courtesy."
10
"If Baltimore's view, that scientists who do not take the words of authorities are far removed from the ordinary behavior of scientists, prevails in the scientific community, then something fundamental, very serious, and very disturbing is happening to the scientific community."
10
"Behavior speaks. If you're chasing them, it means they're running from you. Save your energy."
10
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