137 Social dynamics Quotes

No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.

Whenever I go out with other married couples, I like to bring along a single crackhead. Just to spice things up.

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour: he will always use it in evidence against you.

All the lessons of psychiatry, psychology, social work, indeed culture, have taught us over the last hundred years that it is the acceptance of differences, not the search for similarities which enables people to relate to each other in their personal or family lives.

I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.

Getting talked about is one of the penalties for being pretty, while being above suspicion is about the only compensation for being homely.

If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.

Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.

Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.

There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are..These occasions are rare, but they happen - despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths...

You are about to have your first experience with a Greek lunch. I will kill you if you pretend to like it.

They hate you if you're clever, and they despise a fool.

When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about-more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.

You just don't expect posh girls to grab your tits, call your trousers 'too clitty' and use words like 'pussy pelmet' but they do. You are so shocked by what they are saying that by the time you have recovered and thought of something to say they have whipped you out of your jeans and eased you into a Lycra cat suit.

Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward.

'Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.'

'Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists in conscious deviations.'

Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys, Unfriendly to society's chief joys, Thy worst effect is banishing for hours The sex whose presence civilizes ours.

A man's own dinner is to himself so important that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent to every one else.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Authority is not a quality one person 'has,' in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him. But there is a fundamental difference between a kind of superiority-inferiority relation which can be called rational authority and one which may be described as inhibiting, or irrational authority.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.[1]

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.

There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice.

Every one that flatters thee Is no friends in misery. Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. Every man will be thy friend Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend; But if store of crowns be scant, No man will supply thy want.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. A man when he gets into a higher sphere, into other habits of life, cannot keep up all his former connections. Then, Sir, those who knew him formerly upon a level with themselves, may think that they ought still to be treated as on a level, which cannot be; and an acquaintance in a former situation may bring out things which it would be very disagreeable to have mentioned before higher company, though, perhaps, everybody knows of them.

Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

Gossip is mischievous, light and easy to raise, but grievous to bear and hard to get rid of. No gossip ever dies away entirely, if many people voice it: it too is a kind of divinity.

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.

It is usually not wise to discuss matters of costume with people like this,- politics or religion being far safer topicks.

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you.

Peu d'amities subsisteraient, si chacun savait ce que son ami dit de lui lorsqu'il n'y est pas. (100)

Relationships: 'In the company of the accomplished, people hope it will rub off on themselves, in the company of the misfortunate, they fear it!'

Jealously: 'There are few surer ways to become disliked by men than to perform well where they have performed poorly.'

It's all your fear. You look for something to project it on, and you pick out a little old scroungy nobody that eats out of a garbage can, and that nobody wants, that was kicked out of the penitentiary, that has been dragged through every hellhole that you can think of, and you drag him and put him in a courtroom.

God will send you a double date with the perfect couple. Have you ever made the mistake of going on a double date with the perfect couple? You're in the middle of your bullshit relationship and you actually sit down with two people that are actually in love. You can't even eat your food cause you can't believe what the fuck you are witnessing. You got a fork in your hand like, 'Oh shit! He's really listening to what she's got to say! Wow! They really like being around each other! Man, we can't hang with them no more, they gonna break us up. Can't let these happy motherfuckers fuck up my life!'

'It's great to be alone for a minute in the confession room (laughs)...NIGGAZ IS WILIN'!'

None of you would help me when I baked my bread / Now all of you would help me eat it / I can see that you are very well fed / This indicates that you don't need it.

He was one of those men who comes in a door and make any woman with them look guilty.

The clerk assured her warmly that idealistic natures were rarely understood.

Flirting is vertical foreplay.

La bonte n'est pas sans ecueils: on l'attribue au caractere, on veut rarement y reconnaitre les efforts secrets d'une belle ame, tandis qu'on recompense les gens mechants du mal qu'ils ne font pas.

What can he mean by coming among us? He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.

Growing up I was always the blonde that everybody made fun of, and I just played into that, because that was how I got the guys. That's how I charmed people.

I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing - the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.

I don't like goody-goodies.

So I was on the ship, with 800 lesbians. We can't get off. So much drama. 'Were you looking at her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her or her? WELL, WERE YOU?!' We all got on the same cycle.

He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.

The two young men turned and they didn't smile because they were Woody Ballinger's two boys, Carl and Sammy, and for one brief instant, there was something in their faces that didn't belong in that atmosphere of joviality and the little move they instinctively made that shielded them behind the others in back of them was involuntary enough to stretch a tight-lipped grin across my face that told them I could know. Could. From away back out of the years I got that feeling across my shoulders and up my spine that said things were starting to smell right and if you kept pushing the walls would go down and you could charge in and take them all apart until there was nothing left but the dirt they were made of.

Most men were like this - relatively unconnected, unbound, alone. But these men were particularly untrusting and ungiving, and so the bonds that held them to each other was fragile indeed. It was not love at all, really, but rather a yearning for the honor and respect of the other men that held them. Pride, then... Indeed, all their connection with each other at this moment was tied up with the respect they felt they were earning by their actions.

He doesn't care about making a good impression. He doesn't hurry to ingratiate himself with people. He takes his time sizing up a situation and then finds the least troublesome way to his goal.

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.

Goodman: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Kael: I hate it. It is very creepy being imitated.

Ou vous avez un rival ou vous n'en n'avez pas. Si vous en avez un, il faut plaire pour lui etre prefere; si vous n'en n'avez pas, il faut encore plaire pour eviter d'en avoir.

I love three girls at once...if I fall asleep, they got each other to talk to.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.

How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

When everybody thinks you are nuts you finally just give into their pressure and go nuts.

Come as you are, as you were As I want you to be As a Trend, as a friend, as a known enemy Take your time, hurry up The choice is yours, don't be late.

I like Dan Hanrahan's taste in women and so does he.

In Aberdeen, I hated my best friends with a passion, because they were idiots. (1989)

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

The embarrassment on all their faces. How inconvenient of her, to lay it on the line like this. To demand they face up to whatever was obvious to all of them. Oh, is this making you uncomfortable? You poor dears

That was the way communication was among women, most of the time; few women realized it, but they all depended on it. 'Women's intuition' wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues

She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it

Now everytime I see you cats is rollin in packs/For the life of me I cannot see why you don't know how to act

Keep your head up, legs closed, eyes open/either a nigga wear a rubber or he die smokin'/I'm hearin' rumors so you need to switch/and niggas wouldn't call you bitch

It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.

Getting up and criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time. Especially as you know in your heart that you would be doing more or less the same thing if you were in his place.

Phil, I have a private jet. He's standing there telling this girl he flies first class... I'm Ted Bell. I have a private jet. He's not impressing anybody.

You know what you look like to me with your good bag and your bad shoes? You look like a ruuube.

You tell the lesbians Bob Green is coming and hell follows!

You know what you look like with your good bag and your bad shoes? You look like a rube.

Like will to like.

Every woman is infallibly to be gained by every sort of flattery, and every man by one sort or other.

She's got a cheap cell phone and the host left and now I'm all alone. sigh

Achte dich selbst, wenn du willst, dass andere dich achten sollen!

Gar zu leicht missbrauchen oder vernachlassigen uns die Menschen, sobald wir mit ihnen vertraulich werden. Um angenehm zu leben, muss man fast immer ein Fremder unter den Leuten bleiben.

Wir sehen die klugsten, verstandigsten Menschen im Leben Schritte tun, uber die wir den Kopf schutteln mussen.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

'I accepted the face that as much as I want to lead others, and love to be around other people, in some essential way, I am something of a loner.'