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.

Men are apt to offend ('tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.

O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.

To Englishmen, life is a topic, not an activity.

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.

I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk - and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.

What has gotten into you lately? Save a little craziness for menopause!

Oh, when I was in love with you Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again.

I've been reckless but I'm not a rebel without a cause.

And why is it 'homophobic' for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.

The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors.

We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not.

I judge a man by his actions with men, much more than by his declarations Godwards - When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness.

They drink with impunity, or anybody who invites them.

Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none.

Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks.

When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, Nor take her tea without a strategem.

I don't want to get the same looks I give people when they get on a plane holding a baby: 'That's a cute baby, just keep walking, keep walking, keep going, keep going....'

Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.

When the wine goes in, strange things come out.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

Men are moved most by their religion; especially when it is irreligion.

'Whoa... don't go all Kramer on me!'

'At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,' was his mildly cadaverous reply.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Righteousness is good morality, and wrongdoing is that which wavers in your soul and which you dislike people finding out about.

I made the mistake of watching 'A.I.' on cable the week they showed it about 792 times, and I ended up watching it every time it was on.

Children and fools cannot lie.

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.

Timidity is the root of prudence in the majority of men.

I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, No, I won't do it, I won't behave his way anymore. I'm lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving and then you do it.

Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.

On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit [:] Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.

The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behavior...lacks the peculiarity that characterizes events in the field of the natural sciences, viz., regularity.

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often.

All I want now is to be a nice, clean gentleman. I've proved my point. Now I'm going to set an example for all the nice boys and girls. I'm through talking.

If only we could stand outside our lives and look at what we do, we might repair so many injuries before they're done.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

The insolence of wealth will creep out.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

I am not [:] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. [:] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

[G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of chemical processes. Genes do not make 'novelty seeking' or any other complex and overt behavior. Predisposition via a long chain of complex chemical reactions, mediated through a more complex series of life's circumstances, does not equal identification or even causation.

The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.

Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.

Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.

Abuse, if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated you will be thought to have deserved it.

'When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality.'

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only.