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Behavior Quotes



"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!"


"Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity."


"It is always easier - and usually far more effective - to focus on changing your behavior than on changing the behavior of others."


"As for me, even though I have been accused of anti-Semitism countless times, no one has ever heard me make anti-Semitic statements or engage in anti-Semitic behavior."


"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."



"Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation."


"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."



"Looking away is submissive. Looking [..] in the eye is a challenge."


"Welfare distorts behavior, makes one less personally responsible and reduces the role of private charity. This principle applies to corporate welfare."


"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."


"I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going."


"I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking."


"He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more."


"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."


"The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject."


"Most people have this tendency to make judgments on others based on preconceptions, especially when they are dealing with them for the first time."


"As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree."


"Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge."


"You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent."


"I should have known that if any girl was going to disobey an order, it would be you."


"Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image."


"Desperate? That can be a justification for all kinds of behavior."


"Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes."


"Behavior speaks. If you're chasing them, it means they're running from you. Save your energy."


"I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes."


"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."


"Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting."


"Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose."


"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."


"Men and swords. My father said that if you put any able-bodied man, no matter how peaceful, into a room with a sword and a practice dummy and leave him alone, eventually the man would pick up the sword and try to stab the dummy. It is human nature."



"Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits."


"The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior."



"I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior."


"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."


"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."


"All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied."


"Others behavior towards us is a reflection of our own behavior, it's a MIRROR."
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