Quotes About Tendencies

Benson Henderson is a guy that I fought before. He has two arms and two legs. He has certain patterns, mannerisms and tendencies that I know I can go out there and exploit.

We are not blank slates, as some behaviorists once imagined. We are organisms whose more egregious tendencies can be greatly, if arduously, subdued. And a primary reason for this tenuous optimism is the abject flexibility with which status is sought. We will do almost anything for respect, including not act like animals.

successful people, like Morgan and Rockefeller, just had a better grasp of social tendencies than unsuccessful people

Ruso's working space contained three shelves, a collection of unmatched stools and chairs, an examination table by the window, and a desk whose migratory tendencies had been curbed by a previous incumbent with a hammer and several large nails.

We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us. Cancer is perfectly natural, and yet its eradication is a primary goal of modern medicine. Evolution may have selected for territorial violence, rape, and other patently unethical behaviors as strategies to propagate one's genes—but our collective well-being clearly depends on our opposing such natural tendencies.

In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; the one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other inclined to prohibit him from thinking at all.

the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

It is curious that, with my somewhat antinomian tendencies, I should have gone to Trinity Hall - which was, and is, before all a Law College - and should thus have been thrown into close touch with the legal element in life.

Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.

Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraordinarily specific.

Why are we so squeamish? Why is the fact that each of us comes from a culture with its own distinctive mix of strengths and weaknesses, tendencies and predispositions, so difficult to acknowledge?

Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.

I do not say that he always discovers it for himself; but I do say that when he is following someone else's example, then it is because he wishes to follow it and because that example has fostered his secret inclinations.

Having exceptional children exaggerates parental tendencies; those who would be bad parents become awful parents, but those who would be good parents often become extraordinary.

We have to hesitate, to temper the strength of our tendencies with doubt; to waver when we are sure, or even because we are sure.

When we come into the world, we have the innate tendencies, motivations, and goals that make up nature's effect, anticipating to some extent the general conditions of our life, but then nurture's effect takes over to adapt us to the actual conditions on the ground.

It is [the teacher's] business to be on the alert to see what attitudes and habitual tendencies are being created. In this direction he[sic] must, if he is an educator, be able to judge what attitudes are actually conducive to continued growth and what are detrimental. He must, in addition, have that sympathetic understanding of individuals as individuals which gives him an idea of what is actually going on in the minds of those who are learning.

Every time he spoke, in fact, he had the appearance of thinly addressing an audience, raising and lowering his head as though from notes, and speaking in a penetrating singsong towards a point over his listeners' heads. You would have diagnosed a Physics B.Sc. with Socialist platform tendencies, and you would have been right.

Habits are the shorthand of behavior.

That which intoxicates, the sensually ecstatic, the sudden surprise, the urge to be profoundly stirred at any price -- dreadful tendencies!

In all ages one has wanted to 'improve' men: this above all is what morality has meant. But one word can conceal the most divergent tendencies. Both the taming of the beast man and the breeding of a certain species of man has been called 'improvement':

I wouldn't tell anyone to study werewolves - I studied wolves, how they moved, their tendencies and sensibilities.

I love the BBC, it's a gorgeous organisation and it's just 'cos it's got vaguely socialist state-run tendencies that people like bloody old Rupert Murdoch coat it off in the Sun, and it's gotta stop!

Whatever happens naturally is always right, there is no question about it. It is just that your short-term goals and objectives may not be in tune with what is happening, so you struggle with it. But in the real sense, it cannot be wrong. It always moves in the right direction because Nature does not decide things with thoughts and emotion. It just decides things as per your tendencies. This is not a thought. With thought, you can always make a mistake