Quotes About Behavior

How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!

Here's a bit of advice... When a woman invites you into her home... and you don't seduce her... don't seduce another woman, darling, certainly not under the same roof. It's bad manners - ungallant to say the least,

Talents are your naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior.

Talent is any recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.

The reality of human behavior is that most people avoid those activities in which they perceive themselves to be failures.

I would like to be remembered as a person who accomplished something who was kind and loving. I would like to leave behind me the memory of a human being who behaved properly and tried to help others.

She had an understanding about people, and compassion—she didn't talk about it, but you heard how she spoke and saw how she behaved.

Invariably an organization takes on the personality of its top leader, providing that individual is in touch with the members of the organization. If the leader is petty, the subordinates will be petty. But if the leader is encouraging, optimistic, and courteous, then the vast majority of the workers in the organization will be as well.

Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.

So, what is a system? A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.

This ancient Sufi story was told to teach a simple lesson but one that we often ignore: The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made.

Model utility depends not on whether its driving scenarios are realistic (since no one can know that for sure), but on whether it responds with a realistic pattern of behavior.

The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior! An outside event may may unleash that behavior, but the same outside event applied to a different system is likely to produce a different result.

If information-based relationships are hard to see, functions or purposes are even harder. A system's function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system. The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.

Nonlinearities are important not only because they confound our expectations about the relationship between action and response. They are even more important because they change the relative strengths of feedback loops. They can flip a system from one mode of behavior to another.

A system is a set of things-people, cells, molecules, or whatever-interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.

A system is more than the sum of its parts. It may exhibit adaptive, dynamic, goal-seeking, self-preserving, and sometimes evolutionary behavior.

How to know whether you are looking at a system or just a bunch of stuff: A) Can you identify parts? … and B) Do the parts affect each other? … and C) Do the parts together produce an effect that is different from the effect of each part on its own? … and perhaps D) Does the effect, the behavior over time, persist in a variety of circumstances?

The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system's behavior.

In other words, if you see a behavior that persists over time, there is likely a mechanism creating that consistent behavior.

System: A set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its "function" or "purpose.

The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.

To ask whether elements, interconnections, or purposes are most important in a system is to ask an unsystemic question. All are essential. All interact. All have their roles. But the least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system's behavior.

It is the consistent behavior pattern over a long period of time that is the first hint of the existence of a feedback loop.