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Behavior Quotes
"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!"
70
"Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity."
56
"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."
30
"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."
28
"Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation."
28
"It is always easier - and usually far more effective - to focus on changing your behavior than on changing the behavior of others."
26
"As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree."
25
"Welfare distorts behavior, makes one less personally responsible and reduces the role of private charity. This principle applies to corporate welfare."
25
"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."
25
"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."
25
"I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going."
24
"Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image."
24
"I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes."
24
"Looking away is submissive. Looking [..] in the eye is a challenge."
23
"Desperate? That can be a justification for all kinds of behavior."
22
"I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking."
22
"Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting."
21
"The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject."
21
"Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge."
21
"Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits."
21
"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."
20
"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."
20
"You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent."
19
"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."
19
"A country should be defended not by arms, but by ethical behavior."
18
"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."
18
"Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it."
18
"Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort."
18
"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."
18
"Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?"
18
"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."
18
"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."
17
"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."
17
"The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet."
17
"Most people have this tendency to make judgments on others based on preconceptions, especially when they are dealing with them for the first time."
17
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