Quotes About Behavior

Luce put his hand on the small of my back. Men have an annoying way of doing that. They touch your back as though there's a handle there, and direct you where they want you to go.

Small children, by their very nature, are moral monsters.

When a patient's mind is invaded by obsessive thoughts, even brief periods of Refocusing help, for they demonstrate that it is not essential to squelch intrusive thoughts entirely in order to engage in healthier behaviors.

If you let your emotions cling to an OCD behavior, the behavior can easily get out of control.

The more often you act in these unhealthy ways, the more you teach your brain that what is simply a habit (a learned behavior) is essential to your survival.

Avoidance itself is a compulsion.

T]he cascade of discoveries in neuroscience and genetics has created an image of individuals as automata, slaves to their genes or neurotransmitters, with no more free will than a child's windup toy.

For quantum theory elegantly explains how our actions are shaped by our will, and our will by our attention, which is not strictly controlled by any known law of nature.

It turns out that the key predictor of whether the Four Steps will help an OCD patient is whether he learns to recognize that a pathological urge to perform a compulsive behavior reflects a faulty brain message—in other words, to Revalue it.

lying is then common, it becomes normative, in the sense that norms describe common behavioral patterns. Because lying becomes normative, it isn't sanctioned

Research by Cornell's Robert Frank and his colleagues showed that the percentage of students choosing unethical options on an honesty test increased dramatically among students taking microeconomics courses, but not among students in astronomy classes.

No one gives out Congratulations on Not Being a Douche-Canoe medals, because good behavior is part of the social contract.

When clans of yore went out for a meal in my day, there were no crayons, no sippy cups, no serving little Jennifer's unsauced spaghetti early. Generation X kids conducted themselves like tiny civilized sophisticates, because if we misbehaved, we'd enjoy a spanking for dessert instead of the triple-layer chocolate cake

You are responsible for what you say and do. You are not responsible for whether or not people freak out about it.

Even the best of children can be little tyrants, believing themselves absolutely entitled to every bit of the love and servitude bestowed upon them by the adults entrusted with their care

One semester, I was busted for reverse plagiarism, which basically meant I was too lazy to research a paper for my psychology class so cited false references to support my own theories on deviant behavior.

During one session, the therapist returned from a trip to the rest room to find that another dog had dug a hole in a potted plant and buried Mancha.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

Kid, I've only known you two days and I've seen you plastered three times. He shook his head. A bar would not be a good career move for you.

If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

Ultimately, we can never change someone else's behavior—we can only change our own.

Well, you can't control what they do, but you can control how you respond to it…whether you allow it to drive you crazy, or occupy all of your thoughts, or whether you note what they're doing, consider it, and make a conscious decision as to how much you'll let it affect you

mom about the fight, and he'd be grounded or worse. Maybe his mom wouldn't even give him his Christmas

It isn't important what you do, it is the attitude with which you proceed through the world that matters.