734 Behavior Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

We are to a large extent an imitative society.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

They only babble who practise not reflection.

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

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.

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

She behaves with all the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa constrictor.

Je savais que le bien comme le mal est affaire de routine, que le temporaire se prolonge, que l'exterieur s'infiltre au dedans, et que le masque, a la longue, devient visage.

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

And often took leave, but was loth to depart.

Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.

A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Oh God, I'm just like Karen, that's what they [tell me] at the office'. I'm like, 'You know what? The people in your office may not be giving you a compliment. You may be getting fired soon.'

Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder): 'Actors are not animals! They're human beings!' Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): 'They are? Have you ever eaten with one?'

Igor (Marty Feldman) (limping off): 'Walk this way' - and Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) limps off after him.

It's not their fault if, in the heat Of their transactions, I repeat It's not their fault if vampires meet And gurgle in their spats.

You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts.

The Americans' very conviction that their goals are good blinds them to the consequences of their acts. To focus on intentions is to prolong a futile clash of inflamed self-righteousness; to focus on behavior and results could get us somewhere. I detect in Professor Chomsky's approach, in his uncomplicated attribution of evil objectives to his foes, in his fondness for abstract principles, in his moral impatience, the mirror image of the very features that both he and I dislike in American foreign policy. To me sanity does not consist of replying to a crusade with an anti-crusade. As scholars and as citizens, we must require and provide discriminating and disciplined reasoning on behalf of our values. --Stanley Hoffmann, March 1969 [207]

I would not hesitate to say that nine out of ten of the critics of the peace movement get the argument turned upside down. 'You cannot change human nature' has become a sort of incantation with those critics. Perhaps you cannot 'change human nature' - I don't indeed know what the phrase means. But you can certainly change human behavior, which is what matters, as the whole panorama of history shows.

He had the decency to be appalled by his own brutality.

She's just being a martyr no I'm not I'm being practical. You're being a fool.

Either she was a perfect actress or she was oblivious.

I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female. Don't you ever tell me again that just because I don't act like a woman wants me to act, that makes me an animal.

I knew you could shed that folksy talk the minute you wanted to Yes, I can do that. Just as I can speak French to a Frenchman and Spanish to a Spaniard and four kinds of red talk depending on which tribe I'm with. But you, do you speak scorn and mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?

[Her] every movement betrayed the fact that she thought she was even uglier than in fact she was. Her shoulders slumped and she seemed to shrink as she walked, as if she hoped that if she became very unobtrusive enough she would entirely disappear. Of course her very ungainliness served only to call more attention to her, but I have learned that human adolescents never understand that the best way to avoid notice is to behave normally.

What kind of animal are you? Can't you make up a lie and believe it?

A strange people, at once cruel and kind, strong and weak, and so quick to change from one extreme to the other that I could not predict what they would do.

When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.

Zebras are reactionaries, Antelopes are missionaries, Pigeons plot in secrecy, And hamsters turn on frequently.

'Mustn't grumble' was the most English of expressions. English patience was mingled inertia and despair. What was the use? But Americans did nothing but grumble! Americans also boasted. 'I do some pretty incredible things' was not an English expression. 'I'm fairly keen' was not American. Americans were showoffs-it was part of our innocence-we often fell on our faces; the English seldom showed off, so they seldom looked like fools.

He had the satisfied countenance of a man who has never succeeded in boring himself.

If a dog starts biting you, you can't kick it up the throat like it deserves. People always say 'Oh dear, poor little dog, he was only trying to be friendly. That's the way he tries to be friendly, sniffing at your ankles and biting you, you cruel, wicked man.'

L'homme jouit du bonheur qu'il ressent, et la femme de celui qu'elle procure. Cette difference, si essentielle et si peu remarquee, influe pourtant, d'une maniere bien sensible, sur la totalite de leur conduite respective. Le plaisir de l'un est de satisfaire des desirs, celui de l'autre est surtout de les faire naitre.

I retaliated [against the calf worshippers] by visiting on them all manner of mischief, but I concluded, after some centuries of chronic relapsing on their part, that rage and punishment was not the best way to hold a clientele. It is only the most primitive of mortals who is swayed by that sort of thing.

'It's not necessary to flaunt your body or talk nasty'

You know, I'm sorry I've been acting weird lately. I just want you to know I'm a kind, loving, completely normal...[has a vision]...oh snap, you little nasty!

No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.

You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?

I don't want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something.... I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason.

I was na fou, but just had plenty.

Knowledge is meaningful only if it is reflected in action. The human race has found out the hard way that we are what we do, not just what we think. This is true for kids and adults - for schoolrooms and nations.

Made us nobly wild, not mad.

He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; And he owned with a grin That his favorite sin Is pride that apes humility.

Over here Tony Blair, who must address the House of Commons, which is like Congress with a two-drink minimum. They yell shit back! 'I believe my worthy opponent-' 'OH FUCK OFF! Shite! Bollocks, you bastards! Fuck you!' 'Will someone remove Mrs. Thatcher from the chamber please?'

Dubya doesn't speak while Cheney's drinking water - Check that shit out.

Is it me or are cats drag queens? With the way they just go (flaunts bottom), 'Who loves kitty? Ya love kitty? Are these your shoes? (retches) Who loves kitty? Who loves kitty?' Especially where they have that thing, male cats, where they go (takes a water bottle and pours some water on stage) 'That's mine. (pours) Mine! (pours) I like that, too!' Thank God men aren't like that. 'Hey, nice car, Bob. (pours) Mine now!' 'What are you doing?' 'Oh, just shopping!'

And I just want to say one other thing about Mayor Giuliani: As this began, and if you were like me, and in many respects, God, I hope you're not. But in this one small measure, if you're like me, and you're watching and you're confused and depressed and irritated and angry and full of grief, and you don't know how to behave and you're not sure what to do and you don't really... because we've never been through this before... all you had to do at any moment was watch the Mayor. Watch how this guy behaved. Watch how this guy conducted himself. Watch what this guy did. Listen to what this guy said. Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage.

They celebrate privately this attack in Spain.

I love hugging myself; I love human contact.

You know, if you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being elite, you'd almost be as wasted as Rush Limbaugh.

Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.

They say that dogs lick their own genitalia because they can. But I think it's at least partially because they don't have the Internet.

With a heap of ha-ha humour, he adds, 'My baby will be a pucca flirt. I think he even winked at the nurses at the Breach Candy hospital where he was born. I hope my child turns out to be a pucca badmaash. Just like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. But even if he turns out to be well-behaved, that's okay by me.

For Linnaeus, Homo sapiens was both special and not special. [:] Special and not special have come to mean nonbiological and biological, or nurture and nature. These later polarizations are nonsensical. Humans are animals and everything we do lies within our biological potential. [:] [T]he statement that humans are animals does not imply that our specific patterns of behavior and social arrangements are in any way directly determined by our genes. Potentiality and determination are different concepts.

But here I stop-short of any deterministic speculation that attributes specific behaviors to the possession of specific altruist or opportunist genes. Our genetic makeup permits a wide range of behaviors-from Ebenezer Scrooge before to Ebenezer Scrooge after. I do not believe that the miser hoards through opportunist genes or that the philanthropist gives because nature endowed him with more than the normal complement of altruist genes. Upbringing, culture, class, status, and all the intangibles that we call 'free will,' determine how we restrict our behaviors from the wide spectrum-extreme altruism to extreme selfishness-that our genes permit.

Bella Swan: Alice, don't you think this is just a bit controlling? Just a little bit psychotic, maybe?

Sally plays strip-poker. Every time she loses she has to put on a piece of clothing.

It's up to us to decide on the kind of conversations we have. The way we talk at the office or factory shapes the work we do; it's not just machines which force us to be obedient. I want to show how we could make our work a lot less boring and frustrating if we learned to talk differently.

Technology does not automatically improve conversation, communication or behaviour.

You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!

Never speak disrespectfully of anyone without a cause.

Let your conduct towards men have some uniformity.

Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?

My lunar sign is in Virgo. Every month when the moon is full, I'm driven to balance my checkbook and straighten up my apartment. I can't help myself. Instead of a werewolf I turn into an accountant.

They were old enough to know better. Some of them were old enough to remember when old Macdonald had a farm.

(Falls down in a drunken stupor): Let's sit down.

Don't take a leak on my shoes and tell me it's raining.