#Human Behavior Quotes

“Everyone in Life does Exactly what they Know How to Do Given the Conditions of their Lives”

“Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.”

“Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men.”

“We want to avoid pain and have pleasure, so if our early attempts to achieve our dreams fail, we want to avoid the pain of future failure and rejection, so we stop trying and write it off with a broadbrush, "I'm just not driven enough, not well educated enough, not attractive enough, not smart enough."”

“Whatever people do, they do for a reason and they think that it meets their needs....by their perception.”

“People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument.”

“For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.”

“When they get their ego involved, people do things they shouldn't do.”

“Effective leaders have the ability to consistently move themselves and others to action because they understand the “invisible forces” that shape us”

“Expectations send unconscious signals that people respond to.”

“The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.”

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”

“The principles applied in economic processes are general social principles.”

“Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery's dead?”

“If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

“Those women like to see their tongues dance.”

“We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.”

“The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.”

“I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.”

“Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.”

“You should often amuse yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or laugh or come to blows with one another... noting these down with rapid strokes, in a little pocket-book which you ought always to carry with you.”

“As you interact with others, remember this: anytime a person's response is larger than the issue at hand, the response is almost always about something else.”

“For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.”

“The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and lawsuits.”

“There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it, and I tell you it's tense.”

“Every action and feeling is preceded by a thought.”

“As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.”

“Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.”

“The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.”

“The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.”

“The highly motivated people in society are the ones causing all the trouble. It's not the lazy unmotivated folks sitting in front of a TV eating potato chips who bother anyone.”

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.”

“Female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage.”

“Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.”

“You cannot underestimate the sharpness of people’s BS radar. They can spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away.”

“VaynerMedia filters the world how humans interact. This is how people are going to make buying decisions.”

“IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I'm far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read 'Tech Crunch,' 'Ad Age.' I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.”

“When people are using their devices, it's probable that almost half are networking on social media.”

“The basis of all good human behavior is kindness.”

“The law is a powerful thing but the law doesn't always change what's in people's hearts. And so all of us have an obligation to think about how we're treating other people.”

“In my mind of course natural disaster like tsunami, and these things, also I think indirectly may relate to human behavior. But then major sort of problems actually they're due to a lack of moral principle.”

“A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually motivate by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either.”

“Many a standing ovation has been caused by someone jumping to his feet in an effort to beat the rest of the audience to the parking lot.”

“People tend to fear what they do not know, and what they fear they dislike.”

“I always thought what an interesting idea because almost everybody's fascinated by the perpetrator of a crime; very few people study what happens to people for the rest of their lives, and how it affects not only that particular character but other characters around him as well.”

“It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed.”

“They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.”