Behaviour Quotes - Page 16

• While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Opportunity, Brain

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.3, Ballantine Books

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• On consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end.

  David Lack

  Character, Science, Differences

  David Lack (1947). “Darwin's Finches”, p.54, CUP Archive

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• Religion is like a virus that affects the behaviour of its host in such a way as to propagate itself further.

  Jack Pritchard

  Religious, Atheist, Atheism

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• Controversial daily radio host. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence.

  Michael Savage

  Community, Hatred, Violence

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• Most people define learning too narrowly as mere 'problem-solving', so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. The need to reflect critically on their own behaviour, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organisation’s problems, and then change how they act.

  Chris Argyris

  Errors, People, Focus

  "Teaching Smart People How to Learn". hbr.org. June 1991.

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• Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Encouragement, Creativity, Self

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• There is, however, one feature that I would like to suggest should be incorporated in the machines, and that is a 'random element.' Each machine should be supplied with a tape bearing a random series of figures, e.g., 0 and 1 in equal quantities, and this series of figures should be used in the choices made by the machine. This would result in the behaviour of the machine not being by any means completely determined by the experiences to which it was subjected, and would have some valuable uses when one was experimenting with it.

  Alan Turing

  Art, Mean, Choices Made

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• Writing songs, that's what gets me going. Not the drugs or the sex or the rock'n'roll behaviour, it's the music.

  Noel Gallagher

  Song, Sex, Writing

  "Oasis from the archives: Noel in 1994". Interview with Caspar Llewellyn Smith, www.theguardian.com. September 4, 2009.

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• Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr Coates, who happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said: 'Gandhi, I have seen everything. I shall gladly be your witness in court if you proceed against the man. I am very sorry you have been so rudely assaulted.'

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Sorry, Men, Giving

  Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.16, A&C Black

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• It was stupid behaviour. And you take a look at the explosion, and it knocks you down and you wake up every morning and you're scared and you're depressed and sad, and you kind of got to let that knock you down and knock you down.

  David Letterman

  Morning, Stupid, Looks

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• It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

  Charles Ferguson

  Creating, Culture, Patterns

  "Heist of the century: Wall Street's role in the financial crisis". www.theguardian.com. May 20, 2012.

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• There is nothing inevitable about crime and there is nothing inevitable about anti-social behaviour.

  Theresa May

  Crime, Social, Inevitable

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Theatre is a concentrate of life as normal. Theatre is a purified version of real life, an extraction, an essence of human behaviour that is stranger and more tragic and more perfect than everything that is ordinary about me and you.

  Eleanor Catton

  Real, Essence, Perfect

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• To say that Romans 7 describes the Christian is to slight the grace of God and to foster wanton behaviour.

  Jacobus Arminius

  Christian, Grace, Wanton

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• I was told that I had very likely been clinically depressed for a long, long time, probably since I was 15, or even 14. It explained, to me at least, a lot of my behaviour over the years.

  Marianne Faithfull

  Years, Long, Long Time

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• Peace is not achievable as a direct object of purposeful behaviour.

  Colin S. Gray

  Peace, War, Objects

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• In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as in the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Glasses, Play

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• I've discovered most Christians don't know what to do with difficult situations because they have bought into the lie that God owes us (for our good behaviour). The reality of life is that if you live long enough you are going to bleed, cry and hurt. AND God is still God IN that.

  Matt Chandler

  Christian, Hurt, Lying

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• Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her was a liberal education.

  Richard Steele

  Love, Education, Checks

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• Nobody adopts antisocial behaviour unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life.

  Alfred Adler

  Sides, Failing, Antisocial

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• Bypass surgery, angioplasty,and even diagnostic angiograms are so over used that, in my opinion, it constitutes criminal behaviour by the cardiologists and surgeons involved. Well controlled scientific studies have shown bypass surgery simply doesn't work, except to relieve severe chest pain. Those who have the surgery didn't even have a trend of longevity benefit compared to those treated without it. Yet, each year hundreds of thousands cave into the obvious fear tactics used by agressive heart doctors and submit to the bypass operation

  Julian Whitaker

  Pain, Heart, Doctors

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• When I analyse myself and my reactions or behaviour, there is the act and the actor. There is a division between the two and that creates conflict between "what is" and "what should be".

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Two, Division, Actors

  First Question & Answer Meeting, Brockwood Park, UK, September 7, 1971.

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• A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Acting, Principles

  1906 BB. The Doctor's Dilemma, act 3.

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• If you can allow colour to breathe, to occupy its own space, to play its own game in its unstable way, it's wanton behaviour, so to speak. It is promiscuous like nothing.

  Bridget Riley

  Space, Games, Play

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• In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Men, Opinion, Study

  "The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p 34, 1957.

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