Behaviour famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
"Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual- and after all, wha is an individual? ". . . ." We can make a new one with the greatest of ease- as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself."
-- Aldous Huxley -
Nobody adopts antisocial behaviour unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life.
-- Alfred Adler -
I'd love to be a diva. But I'd then have to send so many apology notes for my abhorrent behaviour.
-- Amy Adams -
If you expect the worst from a person, you can't ever be disappointed... The pessimist takes a sort of gloomy pleasure in observing the depths to which human behaviour can sink. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed; that is one of the most abiding of human satisfaction.
-- Anthony Burgess -
Venus herself, if she were bold, would not be Venus.
-- Apuleius -
It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.
-- B. F. Skinner -
All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me.
-- Barry Levinson -
All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
-- Ben Kingsley -
In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.
-- Bertrand Russell -
The wolf changes his coat, but not his disposition.
-- Bill Vaughan -
Behavior is the theory of manners practically applied.
-- Bill Vaughan -
People who have little to do are excessive talkers.
-- Bill Vaughan -
Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.
-- Bill Vaughan -
Play is a subset of voluntary behaviour involving a selective mechanism which reverses the usual contingencies of power so as to permit the subject a controllable and dialectical simulation of the moderately unmastered arousals and regulations of everyday life, in a way that is alternatively vivifying and euphoric.
-- Brian Sutton-Smith -
We have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
-- C. S. Lewis -
At the World Food Programme we have recognized what a valuable tool food aid can be in changing behaviour. In so many poorer countries food is money, food is power.....
-- Catherine Bertini -
Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.
-- Cesare Pavese -
Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
-- Cesare Pavese -
It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.
-- Charles Ferguson -
I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be killed, boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behaviour.
-- Charles Handy -
With the nervous system intact the reactions of the various parts of that system, the 'simple reflexes', are ever combined into great unitary harmonies, actions which in their sequence one upon another constitute in their continuity what may be termed the 'behaviour'.
-- Charles Scott Sherrington -
Once we understand how they think, we can predict their behaviour. And once we predict it well, we can manipulate it. That is diplomacy.
-- Charlie Huston -
We couldn't be making as much money, if we had to deal with stranger behaviour. And right now, anybody who slows down our economic productivity, off they go. We have a place for them, the psychiatric institution. That's the main thing, they slow things down.
-- Chester Brown -
Young Michael Brown is still somewhat of a wild-child, with the ill behaviour, with the ill behaviour!!
-- Clive Tyldesley -
Peace is not achievable as a direct object of purposeful behaviour.
-- Colin S. Gray -
I'm always amazed at the way some actors' behaviour is truly disgusting. That's one thing that will never happen on one of my sets if I ever direct.
-- Daniel Radcliffe -
It's the behaviour of your company and its people that form your reputation, and your reputation is your brand
-- Dave Allen -
I am a believer in Adam Smith, who says that if you look at something that really contributes value to society, and you can deliver it at a reasonable price, then society will recognise that at some point because rational behaviour will come into play.
-- David Cheriton -
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
-- Emile Durkheim -
When there are no women on the tour it can get awful and ugly - constant horrible jokes and gross behaviour. It needs to be leavened with a feminine presence.
-- Evan Dando -
We are more likely to cheat if we see others doing so. We tend to conform to accepted norms of reasonable behaviour, rather than adhere to strict rules.
-- Evan Davis -
I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling
-- Fanny Burney -
I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour
-- Gary Becker -
Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.
-- Gary Oldman -
Anything that changes your values changes your behaviour.
-- George A. Sheehan -
A foreign observer is struck by our gentleness: by the orderly behaviour of the English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling, the willingness to form queues.
-- George Mikes -
Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.
-- George Orwell -
Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.
-- George Orwell -
For you teach very clearly by your behaviour how slowly and how meagerly our senses proceed in the investigation of ever inexhaustible nature.
-- Giovanni Battista Beccaria -
Men love women because they are the loveliest things on God's earth. Women love men because chocolate can't mow the lawn. Some men prefer to love other men. Equally, some women prefer to love other women. There is a word to describe this kind of behaviour. Love.
-- Guy Browning -
We were in a great, seething moment in the 1970s. There was a new Labour government and everything seemed full of hope... But, as we got older and we saw how much women's behaviour contributed to what was wrong, we stopped being able to see ourselves purely as.
-- Helen Garner -
The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behaviour it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.
-- Herman E. Daly -
The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natural behaviour of our hearing, as used to be generally maintained hitherto.
-- Hermann von Helmholtz -
All too often, government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching' - a case of handing money out, containing problems and limiting the damage but, in doing so, supporting - even reinforcing - dysfunctional behaviour.
-- Iain Duncan Smith -
The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of the young.
-- Immanuel Kant -
It's only now that I realize that behaviour always has a context and precedents, it's what you do rather than what you are, although we often never recognise that context or understand what these precedents are.
-- Irvine Welsh -
Religion is like a virus that affects the behaviour of its host in such a way as to propagate itself further.
-- Jack Pritchard -
To say that Romans 7 describes the Christian is to slight the grace of God and to foster wanton behaviour.
-- Jacobus Arminius -
I still find that a kind of stricture of the heart happens when I see any form of bigoted or racist behaviour. I get an actual pain in my heart.
-- Janet Suzman -
Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob setting. The problem with a lot of software designs is that they switch us to that setting.
-- Jaron Lanier -
But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.
-- Joan Robinson -
Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.
-- Joe Eszterhas -
Selling your life to sit in a box and work for a machine. An uncaring machine that demands productivity that doesn't understand you and doesn't want to understand you... There's no natural behaviour. Everyone is wearing clothes they don't want to wear. Everybody is showing up and doing something they don't want to do. They have no connection to it. That's the problem with our society...
-- Joe Rogan -
What worries me is that we are increasingly enmeshed in incompetent systems, that is, systems that exhibit pathological behaviour but cant fix themselves.
-- John Naughton -
People are disappearing from movies, and normal human behaviour is disappearing from movies... You are not always fighting a creature in life. That's part of life, it's a pretty big part of life, but it's not all of life.
-- Judd Apatow -
Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.
-- Julie Burchill -
There are always reasons for people's behaviour, and it's easy just to dismiss them and assume that we already know their story, especially if they're no good at showing their emotions. Life gives you all these knocks, it's so easy to form a shell to protect yourself. I've done it myself.
-- Kate Dickie -
There are the those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.
-- Katherine Dunn -
The great thing about celebrity culture is that they can't seem to stop themselves from displaying their ridiculous behaviour. I feel it's my job as a serious investigative journalist to witness all kinds of behaviour and then report back to the audience through the prism of my own anger and bitterness.
-- Kathy Griffin -
Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors.
-- Keith Henson -
The reason the way of the transgressor is hard is because it's so crowded.
-- Kin Hubbard -
I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen.
-- Kingsley Amis -
The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour
-- Laura Dern -
As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.
-- Lew Wallace -
At times unpopular measures are needed in order to change behaviour.
-- Lucy Powell -
I was told that I had very likely been clinically depressed for a long, long time, probably since I was 15, or even 14. It explained, to me at least, a lot of my behaviour over the years.
-- Marianne Faithfull -
Bad behaviour makes men more glamorous. Women get destroyed, thrown out of society and locked up in institutions.
-- Marianne Faithfull -
Don't even ask me why. I do not know, I have no answer to this insane behaviour.
-- Marina Abramovic -
I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.
-- Mary-Louise Parker -
The interaction of genetic and external influences makes my behaviour unpredictable, but not undetermined. In the gap between those words lies freedom.
-- Matt Ridley -
Changing behaviours begins with evolving beliefs.
-- Monica Lewinsky -
Variable behaviour of the sun is an obvious explanation, and there is increasing evidence that Earth's climate responds to changing patterns of solarmagnetic activity. ... If you look back into the sun's past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity. ... It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon. ... Having a crash would certainly allow us to pin down the sun's true level of influence on the Earth's climate. Then we will be able to act on fact, rather than from fear.
-- Nigel Weiss -
You can’t change someone’s behaviour, all you can do is remind them, and hope that Allah will change their heart.
-- Nouman Ali Khan -
Opportunism is self interest seeking with guile often involving subtle forms of deceit, especially calculated efforts to mislead, distort, disguise, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse. This vastly complicates the problems of economic organisation. Plainly if it were not for opportunism all behaviour could be rule governed
-- Oliver E. Williamson -
Humans remain entirely atmosphere dependent, so there is no choice but to respond to extreme climatic behaviour and its many effects.
-- Peter Garrett -
When fish experience something that would cause other animals physical pain, they behave in ways suggestive of pain, and the change in behaviour may last several hours.
-- Peter Singer -
Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr -
If we ever do end up acting just like rats or Pavlov's dogs, it will be largely because behaviorism has conditioned us to do so.
-- Richard Rosen -
Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her was a liberal education.
-- Richard Steele -
God has implanted a natural tendency to the monarchial form of government not only in the hearts of men but in practically all things.
-- Robert Bellarmine -
The morphic fields include all kinds of organizing fields...: The organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory.
-- Rupert Sheldrake -
I get tested for HIV twice a year.... One has to be socially aware. It's part of being a decent human to be tested for STDs. It's just disgusting behaviour when people don't. It's so irresponsible.
-- Scarlett Johansson -
Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.
-- Seamus Heaney -
I can't wait to be seen as a woman. But I know I probably have to contribute to that with behaviour.
-- Sienna Miller -
When you are stressed on mind...to pour it out, is the behaviour, most kind!
-- Sujit Lalwani -
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
-- Terence McKenna -
There is nothing inevitable about crime and there is nothing inevitable about anti-social behaviour.
-- Theresa May -
Anti-social behaviour still blights lives, wrecks communities and provides a pathway to criminality.
-- Theresa May -
Architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour.
-- Thom Mayne -
A theory of motivation is defective if it renders intelligible behaviour which is not intelligible.
-- Thomas Nagel -
Most organisations have a serial bully. It never ceases to amaze me how one person's divisive dysfunctional behaviour can permeate the entire organisation like a cancer.
-- Tim Field -
The vehemence with which a person denies the existence of the serial bully is directly proportional to the congruence of the person's behaviour with that of the serial bully
-- Tim Field -
I am all for cracking down on inappropriate digital behaviour. Too often the connected world is an excuse for some coward hiding behind a keyboard to bully someone else.
-- Tony Parsons -
We must look after football and to do what it is necessary to bring to the game the best ethical values and personal behaviour.
-- Vicente del Bosque