Selected behavior quotes

1. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.

2. Let's stop somebody from doing something! Everybody does too much.

3. Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.

4. Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.

5. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

6. Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

7. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

8. It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.

9. It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.

10. Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

11. The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

12. Bad men are full of repentance.

13. Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

14. It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me.

15. Some people can find all the peace of mind they need in a good, satisfying conflict.

16. Beware! I'm acting under the influence of human nature.

17. We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

18. I hope it won't come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys.

19. When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable.

20. Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.

21. If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you.

22. When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

23. I'm probably one of the most dangerous men in the world if I want to be. But I never wanted to be anything but me.

24. You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.

25. We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

26. Those who are offended by something are most often those who deserve to be offended by it.

27. From my observations, it would seem that the core message of most major religions is right, just and pure. For this reason I can not help but conclude that evil acts committed by religious people are committed not because of their religion, but in spite of it.

28. Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.

29. Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

30. The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.

31. Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.

32. I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself.

33. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

34. Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

35. We are to a large extent an imitative society.

36. The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

37. They only babble who practise not reflection.

38. We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

39. Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.

40. Man, I was tame compared to what they do now. Are you kidding? I didn't do anything but just jiggle.

41. Wine makes a man more pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

42. When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving.

43. There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

44. A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger. In this case, the destruction or killing of the object is the biologically purposeful goal. The original motive is not pleasure in destruction. Rather the destruction serves the 'life instinct'...and is an attempt to avoid anxiety and to preserve the ego in its totality. I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live...

45. Let us be very strange and well-bred: Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; And as well-bred as if we were not married at all.

46. No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol-cross or crescent or whatever-that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.

47. His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stairs.

48. Turn over a new leaf.

49. Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

50. It's like a child who is used to having ice cream whenever he wants. When it doesn't come when he asks he tends to get confused and nervous

51. Example is leadership.

52. Those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink.

53. 'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

54. 'Jelly-bean' is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular-I am idling, I have idled, I will idle.

55. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.[1]

56. Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!

57. I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls' basketball. Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

58. She did not understand all of human nature, but [he] had taught her this: to stop a human being from doing something, you must find a way to make this person stop wanting to do it.

59. Beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potentia.[2]

60. I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.

61. Done because we are too menny.

62. I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines - the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by. (Shadow of the Hegemon) Spoken by Sister Carlotta

63. Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. -Ender's Game

64. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

65. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

66. 'As athletes, we understand the importance of being a positive role model.'

67. What in the blue hell is wrong with you?! 'Wat up, G!' That's how you say your prayers? You get out of here you sick... freak! You don't say your prayers like that. Get his candy ass out of here.

68. There's something wrong with that boy. He frowns for no good reason.

69. Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of 'eccentricity' it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences. ~ Ch. 9

70. Man such as we know him, is a machine.

71. His father was a Butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's Trade, but when he kill'd a Calfe he would doe it in high style, and make a Speech.

72. When someone behaves like a beast, he says: 'After all, one is only human.' But when he is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, one is human.'

73. I see people who are always saying, 'I'm a lover, I'm a lover, I'm a lover. I really believe in love. I act the part.' And then they will shout at the waitress, Where's the water?!' I will believe your love when you show it to me in action. When you can understand that everybody is teaching everybody to love at every moment.

74. I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't care

75. He is innocent of wrong-doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and [she] was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out

76. Admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological.

77. I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.

78. 'Lady Cannon's gone to a matinee at the St. James's. We had tickets for the first night, but of course she wouldn't use them then. She preferred to go alone in the afternoon, because she detests the theatre, anyhow, and afternoon performances give her a headache. If she does a thing that's disagreeable to her, she likes to do it in the most painful possible way. She has a beautiful nature.'

79. Er ist eine Skala der Proportionen, die das Schlechte schwierig und das Gute leicht macht.

80. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organisation which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

81. The main thesis of this non-Aristotelian system is that as yet we all (with extremely few exceptions) copy animals in our nervous processes, and that practically all human difficulties, mental ills ... have this ... component.

82. Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi.

83. I just feel that there's a little bit of lack of respect and class just to kind of leave a tournament like that and then come out and practice here, especially being the hostess. You know, I don't know the situation, if it's injury or whatever it is. It's just -- it just seemed really weird.

84. Be kind to unkind people; they probably need it the most.

85. He had never disagreed with anyone in his life, no matter how unfairly they may have treated him. He preferred to swallow his tears, suppress his anger and bitterness; he would bear anything rather than oppose a person directly. Nor did it ever occur to him to wonder whether this forbearance might not be harmful to others.

86. The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away, and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society.

87. There's reason good, that you good laws should make: Men's manners ne'er were viler, for your sake.

88. Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin, Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.

89. Les hommes se gouvernent plus par caprice que par raison.

90. It doesn't pay to be petty like they are.

91. The thing was not discussable, even with a near acquaintance like Calvin because : because of the nature of the thing : because one had to behave like a normal, unworried human being. That at least was sound and clear and gave him comfort: behave like a normal human being.

92. Emotions: 'Comfort in expressing your emotions will allow you to share the best of yourself with others, but not being able to control your emotions will reveal your worst.'

93. Manners: 'Good manners are appreciated as much as bad manners are abhorred.'

94. Manners: 'No one is more insufferable than he who lacks basic courtesy.'

95. 'Lawsuit mania'...a continual craving to go to law against others, while considering themselves the injured party.

96. On n'est jamais excusable d'etre mechant, mais il y a quelque merite a savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irreparable des vices est de faire le mal par betise.

97. I see a lot of you fuckers crowd-surfing and moshing out there, we love that. Just show each other some respect. And there are some strong women here tonight. When they crowd-surf, that is not an invitation to grab their [breasts].

98. Susan was really busy with one of her bands, and there was about a month when I never left the house. I didn't go out in public; I didn't talk to anyone on the phone -- I went a little psycho. If I hadn't been alone so long, I would not have gone as far as I actually went. But one day I went from wondering what I would look like with a shaved head to 'That's pretty cool.' Then I put my hair in a big envelope and mailed it off to my wife. The funny thing was, I did this really silly, personal thing for no reason, and then all of a sudden it was on MTV News and in Newsweek, and I still hadn't left the house. I thought it was strange, because I don't know how anyone found out about my hair, and I don't know why they cared.

99. Who gives a fuck what they was watching? Whatever happened to crazy?

100. That tiger ain't go crazy; that tiger went tiger! You know when he was really crazy? When he was riding around on a unicycle with a Hitler helmet on!