Quotes About Behavior

This cycle is bound to happen again and again, is part of human nature. The irrational simply, just changes it's look and fashions.

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. —Tacitus

Judge people by their actions.

Rising Pressure The people around you generally appear sane and in control of their lives. But put any of them in stressful circumstances, with the pressure rising, and you will see a different reality. The cool mask of self-control comes off. They suddenly lash out in anger, reveal a paranoid streak, and become hypersensitive and often petty.

Understand: once people know what pleases you and what angers you, they turn into trained poodles, working to charm you with apparent good behavior.

If we can make it look like we are not really responsible for our fate, for what happens to us in life, then our apparent powerlessness is more palatable. For this reason we become attracted to certain narratives: it is genetics that determines much of what we do; we are just products of our times; the individual is just a myth; human behavior can be reduced to statistical trends.

Los hombres son más prestos a devolver un agravio que un favor, porque la gratitud es una carga y la venganza un placer.

Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab, each other, if manners did not interpose.... LORD CHESTERFIELD, 1694-1773

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

The reason is simple—humans are extremely susceptible to the moods, emotions, and even the ways of thinking of those with whom they spend their time.

it is human nature that what starts as gratitude quickly becomes dependency and ends as entitlement.

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.

As much as I believe in tolerance and fairness, I have never lost a wink of sleep about being unapologetically intolerant of anyone who refuses to show respect for those around them.

two tests that I use for spotting whether a person is acting like an asshole: • Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself? • Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?

A huge body of research—hundreds of studies—shows that when people are put in positions of power, they start talking more, taking what they want for themselves, ignoring what other people say or want, ignoring how less powerful people react to their behavior, acting more rudely, and generally treating any situation or person as a means for satisfying their own needs—and that being put in positions of power blinds them to the fact that they are acting like jerks.

At the places where I want to work, even if people do other things well (even extraordinary well) but routinely demean others, they are seen as incompetent.

Bullies drive witnesses and bystanders out of their jobs, just as they do to "firsthand" victims. Research

Negative interactions (and the bad apples who provoke them) pack such a wallop in close relationships because they are so distracting, emotionally draining, and deflating. When a group does interdependent work, rotten apples drag down and infect everyone else. Unfortunately, grumpiness, nastiness, laziness, and stupidity are remarkably contagious.

We need to incorporate the contagion of narratives into economic theory. Otherwise, we remain blind to a very real, very palpable, very important mechanism for economic change, as well as a crucial element for economic forecasting. If we do not understand the epidemics of popular narratives, we do not fully understand changes in the economy and in economic behavior.

Transitions Needed • Learn to accept responsibility for your behaviors. • Learn appropriate ways to handle or release ager. • Learn how to communicate directly. • Learn alternative ways to handle stress.

We believe that it is an injustice to the integrity of our teachers and students to simply advocate that educators focus on the use of rewards to control behavior rather than grapple with the deeper issues of (a) why many students are not interested in learning within our educational system and (b) how intrinsic motivation and self-regulation can be promoted among these students. (p. 50)

narratives are major vectors of rapid change in culture, in zeitgeist, and in economic behavior.

Is the market high only because of some irrational exuberance — wishful thinking on the part of investors that blinds us to the truth of our situation?

I came to realize that having a critical grasp of cultist behavior is an important step toward undermining claims of owned reality, and that this was best done from observations on actual human behavior.