Behaviour Quotes

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“To be of good quality, you have to excuse yourself from the presence of shallow and callow minded individuals.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner." (Elizabeth Bennett)”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

“What I've learnt - to my cost - on several occasions in my life, is that people will put up with all manner of bad behaviour so long as you're giving them what they want. They'll laugh and get into it and enjoy the anecdotes and the craziness and the mayhem as long as you're going your job well, but the minute you're not, you're fucked. They'll wipe their hands of you without a second glance.”
― Russell Brand, My Booky Wook

“Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development , compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.”
― Simon Baron-Cohen, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty

“Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.”
― Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

“My father was incredibly indecisive. As an example, take his wedding day. He couldn't decide where to sit in the getaway car, decide the fact he was supposed to be driving.”
― John Bennardo, Just a Typo: The Cancellation of Celebrity Mo Riverlake

“But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. As soon as you get a problem in any one of them, the solution it gives is always to go deeper into the same system. They're all in rather uneasy truce with one another in what's actually a mortal battle. Like all self-reinforcing systems. At best, each is trying to encompass the other two and define them as sub-groups. You know: religion and art are both forms of madness and madness is the realm of psychiatry. Or, art is the study and praise of man and man's ideals, so therefore a religious experience just becomes a brutalized aesthetic response and psychiatry is just another tool for the artist to observe man and render his portraits more accurately. And the religious attitude I guess is that the other two are only useful as long as they promote the good life. At worst, they all try to destroy one another. Which is what my psychiatrist, whether he knew it or not, was trying, quite effectively, to do to my painting. I gave up psychiatry too, pretty soon. I just didn't want to get all wound up in any systems at all.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Awkward silences rule the world. People are so terrified of awkward silences that they will literally go to war rather than face an awkward silence.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Capitalist ideology in general, Zizek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Zizek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads.”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.”
― Josh Billings

“Self-leaders are still true leaders even if they have no known followers. True leaders inspire by the influence of their characters and general self-made brands. Leadership is defined by the virtues of one's behaviour.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“The nature of man is such that people consider themselves put under an obligation as much by the benefits they confer as by those they receive.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... but, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women.”
― Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

“Self-leaders do not look for followers because they are busily pursuing their influencial dreams that followers will trace and ask for. Followers look for influence and that can be obtained from self-leaders.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“When an accusation is thrown at you that does not fit you, when it doesn’t capture what you know to be true about yourself or your behavior, mentally flip it back on your partner. He is likely accusing you of what he is doing or feeling. Accusations can be about the narcissist’s own vulnerabilities and weaknesses (accusing you of being overly ambitious when he is ambitious, criticizing you for being unsuccessful or not making enough money when he is not feeling successful in that space)”
― Ramani Durvasula, Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist

“We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.”
― GaryLFrancione

“How often you impress people when you have nothing and how often you oppress them when you have everything is what defines your real character!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365

“Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.”
― George Crane

“In a village where everyone has only one leg, the biped will hop about more lamely than anyone else, if he knows what is good for him.”
― Idries Shah, Knowing How to Know : A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition

“You can be in your room and lead people. Just develop your potentials and publicize them and you will see people looking for your product. That is influence; self-made leaders do not look for followers. Followers look for them.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
A fool:
A man trying to be honest with the dishonest.”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so much more about it than she did—unprepared though we were—that made Osric Dane so furious. I should have thought that was plain enough to everybody!”
― Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome & Selected Stories

“At the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.”
― E.J. Dionne Jr., Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right

“It’s the moral fabric that lends to behavioural pattern”
― BS Murthy

“It’s the moral fabric that lends to behavioural pattern.”
― BS Murthy