Quotes about behaviour
page 2

“The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

Marriage, War, Peace, Problem

“All knowledge, not only that of the natural world, can be used for evil as well as good: and in all ages there continue to be people who think that its fruit should be forbidden. Does the future wlfare, therefore, of mankind depend of a refusal of science and a more intensive study of the Sermon on the Mount? There are others who hold the contray opinion, that more and more of science and its applications alone can bring prosperity and happiness to men. Both of these extremes views seem to me entirely wrong - though the second is the more perilous as more likely to be commonly accepted. The so-called conflict between science and religion is usually about words, too often the words of their unbalanced advocates: the reality lies somewhere in between. "Completeness and dignity", to use Tyndall's phrase, are brought to man by three main channels, first by the religiouos sentiment and its embodiment of ethical principles, secondly by the influence of what is beautiful in nature, human personality, or art, and thirdly, by the pursuit of scientific truth and its resolute use in improving human life. Some suppose that religion and beauty are incompatible: others, that the aesthetic has no relation to the scientific sense: both seem to me just as mistaken as those who hold that the scientific and the religious spirit are necessarily opposed. Co-operation is required, not conflict: for science can be used to express and apply the principles of ethics, and those principles themselves can guide the behaviour of scientific men: while the appreciation of what is good and beautiful can provide to both a vision of encouragement. Is there really then any special ethical dilemma which we scientific men, as distinct from other people, have to meet? I think not: unless it be to convince ourselves humbly that we are just like others in having moral issues to face. It is true that integrity of thought is the absolute condition of oour work, and that judgments of value must never be allowed to deflect our judgements of fact. But in this we are not unique. It is true that scientific research has opened up the possibility of unprecedented good, or unlimited harm, for manking: but the use is made of it depends in the end on the moral judgments of the whole community of men. It is totally impossible noew to reverse the process of discovery: it will certainly go on. To help to guide its use aright is not a scientific dilemma, but the honourable and compelling duty of a good citizen.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma Of Science, Hill, 1960. The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Rockefeller Univ. Press, pp. 88-89

Life, Men, Happiness, People

“Consideration of a further possibility, namely that of constructing physical systems that are analogues of the economic system, and of observing and recording their behaviour.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. vi

“Cellular automata are discrete dynamical systems with simple construction but complex self-organizing behaviour. Evidence is presented that all one-dimensional cellular automata fall into four distinct universality classes. Characterizations of the structures generated in these classes are discussed. Three classes exhibit behaviour analogous to limit points, limit cycles and chaotic attractors. The fourth class is probably capable of universal computation, so that properties of its infinite time behaviour are undecidable.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

[10, 1–2, January 1984, 1–35, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, Universality and complexity in cellular automata, 10.1016/0167-2789(84)90245-8]

Universe, Time

“Prison officers do not have a 'duty of care' to protect prisoners who harm themselves while taking part in illegal behaviour. With regard to needles in prisons, provision of bleach could also be harmful. Bleach is by nature a corrosive agent and could cause serious injury if thrown into the eyes of a prison officer or fellow prisoner, There is evidence that even the highly caustic phenol used to sterilise dental instruments does not eliminate all HIV viruses - only autoclaving in super-heated steam is fully effective. If government provided bleach fails to sterilise prisoners’ illegal needles adequately, does the government become liable for breach of duty of care?”

Stewart Leggett (1944) Australian politician

HIV/AIDS - Hepatitis B Inquiry (Part II): Dissenting Statement by Mr Stewart Leggett MP (1997)

Nature, Parting

“There are lots of things I do feel strongly about, but if I speak about them I will be on my best behaviour.”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

During a tour at BBC radio <br class="br"> Charles and Camilla tour bbc radio MSN 2 February 2014 http://news.uk.msn.com/charles-and-camilla-tour-bbc-radio

Feeling

“She had impressed him as capable of behaviour even more meaningless than most human beings. He had watched her kill her own people with a ferocity that betrayed real grief. But she was someone, he had decided early, who struggled harder with life than she needed to: this he respected, even admired.”

M. John Harrison book Light

Source: Light (2002), Chapter 29 “Surgery” (p. 361)

Life, People

“This was the behaviour pattern of hoodlums who got extremely annoyed with the donkey which had carried them so far but which did not have the strength left to carry the load any farther. This was the behaviour pattern of gangsters who felt frustrated because the victims of their deep-laid designs had seen through their wiles and refused to be duped any longer. But, at the same time, these Mullahs were in the forefront of Muslim society. Leading politicians like the Ali Brothers had bowed before them in reverence. The behaviour pattern of the exponents and custodians of Islam, therefore, cannot but lead us to the inescapable conclusion that Islam itself has always been, and remains, a thinly veiled theorisation of gangsterism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Time

“We must not forget that it is not our [computing scientists'] business to make programs, it is our business to design classes of computations that will display a desired behaviour.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Business, Forgetting

“There is always trouble if meat is not divided by lot. Someone immediately says that he has been given more than his share, and tries to hand a piece to someone else. Then there is much arguing and swearing by God, with everyone insisting that he has been given too much, and finally a deadlock ensues which can only be settled by casting lots for the meat – as should have been done in the first place. I have never heard a man grumble that he has received less than his share. Such behaviour would be inconceivable to the Bedu, for they are careful never to appear greedy, and quick to notice anyone who is.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 71.

God, Appearance

“The official style is at once humble, polite, curt and disagreeable: it derives partly from that used in Byzantine times by the eunuch slave-secretariat, writing stiffly in the name of His Sacred Majesty, whose confidence they enjoyed, to their fellow-slaves outside the palace precincts — for the Emperor had summary power over everyone; and partly from the style used by the cleric-bureaucracy of the Middle Ages, writing stiffly in the name of the feudal lords to their serfs and, though cautious of offending their employers, protected from injury by being servants of the Church, not of the Crown, and so subject to canon, not feudal, law. The official style of civil servants, so far as it recalls its Byzantine derivation, is written by slaves to fellow-slaves of a fictitious tyrant; and, so far as it recalls its mediaeval derivation, is written by members of a quasi-ecclesiastical body, on behalf of quasi-feudal ministers (who, being politicians, come under a different code of behaviour from theirs) to a serflike public.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943), Ch. 4: "The Use and Abuse of Official English".

Age, Law, Confidence, Time

“The Indian community in Fiji have been here over 120 to 130 years and would be the largest potential field of harvest to proselytize in, but we have not a show because of our examples and behaviours towards them. We need to show them the love of Christ first … before they can respond to Him.”

James Ah Koy (1936) Fijian politician

Maiden speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=165&viewtype=full, 8 December 2003 (excerpts), Speech in the Senate http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID=245&viewtype=full, 26 August 2004 (excerpts)

Love, Communication, Christ

“You must remember, Father,’ said Mavis, in a voice which would have had an Eskimo slapping his ribs and calling for the steam-heat, ‘that this girl was probably very pretty. So many of these New York girls are. That would, of course, explain Frederick's behaviour.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Young Men in Spats

Young Men in Spats (1936)

Girl

“The ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness represent attempts to interpret the process of development as a group of tendencies permanently directed towards certain permanent and universal ends. But human behaviour is not directed towards unchanging ends, not even towards those temporary ideals which each community sets up for itself. The formative tendency is displayed, not in any steady process of definite orientation, but in a rhythmic sequence of transformation which cannot be represented as tending towards any particular final condition.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 261-262

Truth, Beauty, Communication, Universe

“When I was young, I was very energetic and strong – just too hyperactive. So when I went to the boxing club, everything seemed normal to me. I enjoyed it, I liked punching things, hitting the boxing bag, fighting people in the boxing ring and in school I was naughty as well; but when I started boxing, I totally changed everything – you know, my whole life changed, I was good, I didn’t misbehave, I was always behaving in school. The teacher was happy with my behaviour.”

Amir Khan (boxer) (1986) British boxer

Boxing as a schoolkid during childhood, Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVM9mW7gglI&feature=channel (Aik Din Geo Kay Sath), GEO News. (September 2009)

Life, Happiness, People, School

“The last decade has seen a steady increase in the application of concepts from the theory of games to the study of evolution. Fields as diverse as sex ratio theory, animal distribution, contest behaviour and reciprocal altruism have contributed to what is now emerging as a universal way of thinking about phenotypic evolution.”

John Maynard Smith book Evolution and the Theory of Games

Source: Evolution and the Theory of Games (1973), p. vii.

Sex, Way, Game, Thinking

“In fact, there may be a day in the near future when you find yourself in a conversation about this book, and someone will ask you what the story is really about, beyond the rudimentary narrative of a cross-country death trip based on a magazine article. And it's very likely you will say, "well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped, but there is this point early in the story where he takes a woman to Ithaca for no real reason, and it initially seems innocuous, but - as you keep reading - you sort of see how this behaviour is a self-perpetuating problem that keeps reappearing over and over again." In all probability, you will also complain about the author's reliance on self-indulgent, postmodern self-awareness, which will prompt the person you're conversing with to criticize the influence of Dave Eggers on the memoir-writing genre. Then your cell phone will ring, and you will agree to meet someone for brunch.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Death, Books, Problem, Reading

“Christianity does not, repeat, not, look forward to a gradual betterment of human behaviour and society or to the progressive spread of peace and justice upon earth. Still less does Christianity purport to offer a scheme or general outline for bringing that about. Quite the reverse, it uniformly teaches, as if to emphasize the point for good measure, that things will get worse rather than better before we are through.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Wrestling with the Angel (1977), p. 61
1970s

Peace, Justice

“Harsha was a fellow-traveller: not yet a full convert to Islam (he still ate pork), but quite adapted to the Islamic ways, for "he ever fostered with money the Turks, who were his centurions"…. This behaviour was so un-Hindu and so characteristically Islamic that Kalhana reports: "In the village, the town or in Srinagara there was not one temple which was not despoiled by the Turk king Harsha."”

Harsha of Kashmir

Raiatarangini 7:1095; translation by R.S. Pandit, quoted in Elst, K. (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism.

Money, Way, Travel

“There is a somewhat analogous situation with regard to the heterosexual seduction procedure in our Politically Correct times: the two sets, the set of PC behaviour and the set of seduction, do not actually intersect anywhere; that is, there is no seduction which is not in a way an "incorrect" intrusion or harassment — at some point, one has to expose oneself and "make a pass." So does this mean that every seduction is incorrect harassment through and through? No, and that is the catch: when you make a pass, you expose yourself to the Other (the potential partner), and she decides retroactively, by her reaction, whether what you have just done was harassment or a successful act of seduction — and there is no way to tell in advance what her reaction will be. This is why assertive women often despise "weak" men — because they fear to expose themselves, to take the necessary risk. And perhaps this is even more true in our PC times: are not PC prohibitions rules which, in one way or another, are to be violated in the seduction process? Is not the seducer’s art to accomplish this violation properly — so that afterwards, by its acceptance, its harassing aspect will be retroactively cancelled?”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

The Fragile Absolute: or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? (London: Verso, 2000, ), p. 111.

Women, Men, Fear, Art

“This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [between the brothers van Gogh] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Source: 1940 - 1960, Les frères Van Gogh, origine et justification', c. 1955, pp. 67-69

Art, Painting

“The reality of the situation is obscured when population is expressed as a percentage proportion taken over the whole of the United Kingdom. The ethnic minority is geographically concentrated, so that areas in which it forms a majority already exists, and these areas are destined inevitably to grow. It is here that the compatibility of such an ethnic minority with the functioning of parliamentary democracy comes into question. Parliamentary democracy depends at all levels upon the valid acceptance of majority decision, by which the nation as a whole is content to be bound because of the continually available prospect that what one majority has decided another majority can subsequently alter. From this point of view, the political homogeneity of the electorate is crucial. What we do not, as yet, know is whether the voting behaviour of our altered population will be able to use the majority vote as a political instrument and not as a means of self-identification, self-assertion and self-enumeration. It may be that the United Kingdom will escape the political consequences of communalism; but communalism and democracy, as the experience of India demonstrates, are incompatible. That is the spectre which the Conservative party's policy of assisted repatriation in the 1960s aimed to banish; but time and events have swept over and passed the already outdated remedies of the 1960s. We are entering unknown territory where the only certainty for the future is the relative increase of the ethnic minority due to the age structure of that population which has been established.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Article on the 25th anniversary of his 'Rivers of Blood speech', The Times (20 April 1993), p. 18
1990s

Age, Democracy, Communication, Question

“A good definition of a network is organic behaviour in a technological matrix.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“In appearance and behaviour, Norbert Wiener was a baroque figure, short, rotund, and myopic, combining these and many qualities in extreme degree. His conversation was a curious mixture of pomposity and wantonness. He was a poor listener. His self-praise was playful, convincing and never offensive. He spoke many languages but was not easy to understand in any of them. He was a famously bad lecturer.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Norbert Wiener (2008)

Understanding, Appearance

“He is a noble gentleman; withal
Happy in his endeavours: the general voice
Sounds him for courtesy, behaviour, language,
And every fair demeanour, an example:
Titles of honour add not to his worth;
Who is himself an honour to his title.”

John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist

Act I, sc. iii.
The Lady's Trial (1638)

Happiness

“[Television] may teach self-interest rather than philanthropy, violence rather than gentleness, a disregard for human dignity rather than a respect for it. It may not always teach the truth but teach it does, and it is more than time that responsible people both within and outside the broadcasting professions said boldly what is so obvious in commonsense terms — we cannot understand what is happening in international, cultural, economic, political and social affairs without coming to grips with the way in which television influences virtually all our behavioural and thought processes.”

Mary Whitehouse (1910–2001) British activist

Television: Controlling the Explosive Influence http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/28th-december-1974/14/television, The Spectator archive (28 December, 1974).

People, Truth, Way, Understanding

“There is no over-arching theory of complexity that allows us to ignore the contingent aspects of complex systems. If something really is complex, it cannot by adequately described by means of a simple theory. Engaging with complexity entails engaging with specific complex systems. Despite this we can, at a very basic level, make general remarks concerning the conditions for complex behaviour and the dynamics of complex systems. Furthermore, I suggest that complex systems can be modelled.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. ix

“Competition without solidarity is predator behaviour, especially when competition is rigged in favour of mega-corporations and monopolies.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/151/19/PDF/G1615119.pdf?OpenElement. <br class="br">2016, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

“The quantum theory, as it is now constituted, presents us with a very great challenge, if we are at all interested in such a venture, for in quantum physics there is no consistent notion at all of what the reality may be that underlies the universal constitution and structure of matter. Thus, if we try to use the prevailing world view based on the notions of particles, we discover that the 'particles' (such as electrons) can also manifest as waves, that they move discontinuously, that there are no laws at all that apply in detail to the actual movements of individual particles and that only statistical predictions can be made about large aggregates of such particles. If on the other hand we apply the world view in which the world is regarded as a continuous field, we find that this field must also be discontinuous, as well as particle-like, and that it is as undermined in its actual behaviour as is required in the particle view of relation as a whole.”

David Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)

World, Law, Reality, Universe

“What has caused confusion and misunderstanding about his Hinduism is the concept of sarva-dharma-samabhAva (equal regard for all religions) which he had developed after deep reflection. Christian and Muslim missionaries have interpreted it to mean that a Hindu can go aver to Christianity or Islam without suffering any spiritual loss. They are also using it as a shield against every critique of their closed and aggressive creeds. The new rulers of India, on the other hand, cite it in order to prop up the Nehruvian version of Secularism which is only a euphemism for anti-Hindu animus shared in common by Christians, Muslims, Marxists and those who are Hindus only by accident of birth. For Gandhiji, however, sarva-dharma-samabhAva was only a restatement of the age-old Hindu tradition of tolerance in matters of belief. Hinduism has always adjudged a man’s faith in terms of his AdhAra (receptivity) and adhikAra (aptitude). It has never prescribed a uniform system of belief or behavior for everyone because, according to it, different persons are in different stages of spiritual development and need different prescriptions for further progress. Everyone, says Hinduism, should be left alone to work out one’s own salvation through one’s own inner seeking and evolution. Any imposition of belief or behaviour from the outside is, therefore, a mechanical exercise which can only do injury to one’s spiritual growth. Preaching to those who have not invited it is nothing short of aggression born out of self-righteousness. That is why Gandhiji took a firm and uncompromising stand against proselytisation by preaching and gave no quarters to the Christian mission’s mercenary methods of spreading the gospel.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Age, Faith, Religion, Behavior

“Two people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet one may be getting better, and the other worse, which is the greatest of differences that could possibly exist between them.”

George MacDonald book The Princess and Curdie

The Princess and Curdie (1883)

People

“Economic theory, in every branch, deals with practical affairs. Its subject is human welfare, and it is never entirely dissociated from the practical question of how human welfare is to be promoted. But it is a special characteristic of the art of central banking that it deals specifically with the task of an authority directly entrusted with the promotion of human welfare. Human welfare, human motives, human behaviour supply material so baffling and elusive that many people are sceptical of the possibility of building a scientific edifice on so shifting a foundation. But however complex the material, and however imperfect the data, there is always an advantage to be gained from systematic thought.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Preface
The Art of Central Banking (1932)

People, Art, Motivation, Question

“It is possible that the major collaboration between economists and engineers is still to come, in the greater use of physical analogues and computers of the analogue type to avoid the difficulties of calculation. Apart from their major use as possible tools for economic regulation, physical analogues have a subsidiary use, for there are students of economics, as there are many students of engineering, who can better understand the significance of the somewhat formidable mathematics that tends to be used in this field, if they can first acquaint themselves with the types of behaviour in question as exhibited by physical objects that can be seen, felt, handled and experimented with. It may also be suggested that economists may find that what they have to say about economic policy will be very readily assimilated by one group of attentive pupils, namely the scientists, engineers and technicians of industry, if explanatory notions can be drawn from the theory of automatic control, which is now part of a normal engineering education. The aim of this essay has been to give explanations of system behaviour, and some approaches to its analysis, using geometrical construction and physical analogy where possible to clarify the implications of the more usual formal algebraic approach.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. 2

Education, Mathematics, Understanding, Question

“There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction -- all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Women, Men

“There is hardly any bodily blemish which a winning behaviour will not conceal, or make tolerable; and there is no external grace which ill-nature or affectation will not deform.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Nature

“Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: "I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you." Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behaviour, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: "Let me seduce you"”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: 1980s, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987), p. 67

Secret, Smile, Nature

“This case is all about creating a public sob story. There is no homophobic behaviour in Brazil. Those who die, 90% of homosexual deaths, they die in drug related situations, in prostitution, or even killed by their own partners. I went into battle with the gays because the government proposed anti-homophobia classes for the junior grades, but that would actively stimulate homosexuality in children from 6 years old. This is not normal.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

About the kidnapping and murder of the teenager Alexandre Ivo by skinheads in 2010, in an interview to Stephen Fry in October 2013. Jair Bolsonaro provoca polêmica em documentário do ator Stephen Fry sobre homofobia https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/pop/jair-bolsonaro-provoca-polemica-em-documentario-do-ator-stephen-fry-sobre-homofobia/. Veja SP (23 October 2013).

Death, Children

“There's nothing like spending other peoples money, Gordon and Tony discovered this very quickly, and have been going crazy, ordering off the menu ever since. Tony quickly exited the restaurant, leaving Gordon footing the bill, and thats why we're in the mess we're in now. Meanwhile Tony's laughing all the way to the bank where his £14 million is sitting pretty. It's just disgraceful behaviour and ordinary people are suffering because of the megalomania of those two crooks.”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Speaking bluntly at a conference at the World Economic Forum, Davos, 2009.[citation needed]

Money, People, Way, Suffering

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People, Hope, Way, Home

“A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Love, Peace, Angels, Way

“Two small and rather unappealing animals possess patterns of behaviour that have great relevance for the student of intelligent systems. These are the wood louse and the maggot of the common housefly, and it is the difference in their behaviour which is so illuminating. It has to do with the way in which they orient themselves to their environment. Wood lice like moist places and succeed in aggregating there by the simple device of slowing down their otherwise random movements as the humidity increases. The maggot, which, during a certain stage of its development needs to come out of the dark, finds light by a slightly more sophisticated system. It has a single, non-directional light-sensing organ at the forward end of its body and as it moves along it swings this end left and right, allowing the amount of light gathered during each swing to determine the extent of its forward motion. In this way it keeps altering its course until the amounts of light sensed are equal for both sides, by which time it must be heading straight for the light.”

Edward Ihnatowicz (1926–1988) Cybernetic sculptor

Edward Ihnatowicz. " MAGGOTY INTELLIGENCE http://www.senster.com/ihnatowicz/articles/maggoty_intelligence.pdf," Unpublished. Date unknown: pre 1988. at senster.com, 2015

Way, Intelligence, Sense, Light

“Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously study everything they say, and in conversation bore us as painfully as was the travail of their mind; they are, as it were, made up of phrases and quaint expressions, whilst their gestures are as affected as their behaviour. They call themselves "purists," and do not venture to say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be. Nothing comes from them worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and unrestrained; they speak correctly, but they are very tiresome.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

15
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

Men, Thinking, Study

“Johann Herbart’s work on education and particularly mathematical psychology influenced me. I think mathematics is the pure instance of construct functioning—the model of human behaviour.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Attributed to George A. Kelly in Hinkle (1970, p. 91), as cited in: Fay Fransella and Robert A. Neimeyer. "George Alexander Kelly: The man and his theory." International handbook of personal construct psychology (2003): 21-31.

Education, Mathematics, Thinking

“In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

Thinking, Parting

“(…) I have written so far around 200 books and articles on different aspects of science, philosophy, theology, and hekmat (wisdom). (…) I never entered the service of any king as a military man or a man of office, and if I ever did have a conversation with a king, it never went beyond my medical responsibility and advice. (…) Those who have seen me know, that I did not into excess with eating, drinking or acting the wrong way. As to my interest in lil pump yuhh!! people know perfectly well and must have witnessed how I have devoted all my life to science since my youth. My patience and diligence in the pursuit of science has been such that on one special issue specifically I have written 20,000 pages (in small print), moreover I spent fifteen years of my life - night and day - writing the big collection entitled Al Hawi. It was during this time that I lost my eyesight, my hand became paralyzed, with the result that I am now deprived of reading and writing. Nonetheless, I've never given up, but kept on reading and writing with the help of others. I could make concessions with my opponents and admit some shortcomings, but I am most curious what they have to say about my scientific achievement. If they consider my approach incorrect, they could present their views and state their points clearly, so that I may study them, and if I determined their views to be right, I would admit it. However, if I disagreed, I would discuss the matter to prove my standpoint. If this is not the case, and they merely disagree with my approach and way of life, I would appreciate they only use my written knowledge and stop interfering with my behaviour.”

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865–925) Persian polymath, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher

Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists

Life, Wisdom, People, Books

“I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in the event of my death, no Regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the Royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady [Princess, later Queen, Victoria], the heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me [Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent], who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed. I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted grossly insulted by that person, but I am determined to endure no longer a course of behaviour so disrespectful to me. Amongst other things, I have particularly to complain of the manner in which that young lady has been kept away from my Court; she has been repeatedly kept from my Drawing Rooms, at which she ought always to have been present, but I am fully resolved that this shall not happen again. I would have her know that I am King, and I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do.”

William IV of the United Kingdom (1765–1837) King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover

As quoted in The Early Court of Queen Victoria http://www.archive.org/stream/earlycourtofquee00jerruoft/earlycourtofquee00jerruoft_djvu.txt (1912) by Clare Jerrold

Life, Death, God, Exercises

“The idea that consciousness is a mystery is a prejudice inherited from monotheism. The early seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes believed that animals other than humans are insensate machines. Obviously, this was a restatement in rationalist terms of the Christian belief that only humans have souls. Even if mind and matter were categorically distinct, that would not mean humans alone have minds. It was reported that in order to test his theories, Descartes used to throw animals out of the window and observe their reactions. Looking at behaviour of this kind, one might reasonably conclude that humans are the senseless machines.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Freedom for Über-Marionettes: What Science Won't Tell You (p. 151)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Soul, Idea, Animals

“I will continue to work for the advancement of freedoms in Egypt and the Arab world until I drop dead. … Education itself — which can and should play an important role in the apprenticeship of tolerance and respect for other people — sometimes encourages identitarian closure, or even extremist behaviour … It is therefore vital to ensure that education does not encourage rejection of other people or identitarian closure, but that on the contrary it encourages knowledge and respect for other cultures, other religions and other ways of being and living.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Quoted in "Boutros Boutros-Ghali: The world is his oyster" by Gamal Nkrumah in Al-Ahram weekly No. 777 (10 - 18 January 2006)
2000s

People, World, Education, Religion

“(talking about his children) I'm interested in avoiding two types of behaviour: one is the sense of guilt and the other is a sense of entitlement. If these two are avoided, then the rest is up to them.”

John Elkann (1976) Italian businessman

"Unlikely heir who saved the family jewels" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0693507a-4830-11e0-b323-00144feab49a.html#axzz1GZU7VVRA, Financial Times, 03-06-11

Children, Sense

“The area of scientific interest is… the study of the objectives, functions, structure, properties, behaviour, performance and effects of informative communication processes and information systems. To this study the name "information science" can legitimately be attached.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 330; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Communication, Study, Science

“I discovered long ago that, if you write a book about cats or dogs, everybody loves you, but if you dare to write a book about human beings, all hell breaks loose. It is impossible to write an uncensored, honest book about human behaviour without offending at least part of your audience. If you feel you have a basic truth to tell, then you must tell it and be prepared to suffer the inevitable criticisms.”

Desmond Morris (1928) English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter

Desmond Morris in: "The Dan Schneider Interview 8: Desmond Morris" at cosmoetica.com, first posted 2/16/08.

Love, Truth, Books, Dogs

“All of us can be influenced through psychological techniques. For example, if I say “don’t think of a black cat” what do you do? You think of a black cat because the command ‘think of a black cat’ was there in the sentence. Techniques like this can be used to influence people’s thoughts, behaviour, even their memory.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

People, Cats, Thinking, Memory

“Today our main problem is that of organized complexity. Concepts like those of organization, wholeness, directiveness, teleology, control, self-regulation, differentiation and the like are alien to conventional physics. However, they pop up everywhere in the biological, behavioural and social sciences, and are, in fact, indispensable for dealing with living organisms or social groups. Thus, a basic problem posed to modern science is a general theory of organization.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Von Bertalanffy (1956) "General System Theory". In: General Systems, Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research, vol. 1, 1956.
1950s

Problem, Science

“But neither approach seems to lead to the kind of answer which those who ask the question are seeking. What they seem to want to know is—Are the Modern Greeks the same as the Ancient Greeks? Are their racial and national characteristics the same? Do the Modern Greeks behave in the same kind of way as the Ancient Athenians, Spartans, and Corinthians behaved? If one looks among the Modem Greeks will one find the equivalents of Pericles and Sophocles and Plato? By their nature such questions are vague and contain within them a host of assumptions—about human nature, genetics and race, the influence of environment on behaviour, and the reliability of our knowledge of ancient history—all of which are questionable and some of which are simply unfounded.”

William St Clair (1937) author

Source: That Greece Might Still be Free (1972), p. 15-16.

Way, History, Question, Nature

“If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 205.

Evil, Past, Parting

“You who witnessed these horrors, you who saw your parents, wives, children fall under German bullets, how could you be expected to understand and stand idly by if today, after our victory, there were people sufficiently blind to advise you to leave unpunished the actions of such outrages, and to allow Germany to keep the indemnities she owes…That kind of behaviour…was encouraged or tolerated by all Germans; all Germans abetted the sacking and firing of the unfortunate provinces in the North and East…We shall see to it that they repair the damage”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Speech at Triaucourt (c. 1922), quoted in Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870-1940 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 172.

Children, People, Understanding, Parent

“Addictive drugs misuse the brain’s existing pre-programming, activating reward mechanisms and extreme feelings of pleasure. When stimulated, the brain’s pleasure centres emit signals to repeat the behaviour. In this sense, the brain is pre-programmed to feel good.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.97

Pleasure, Feeling, Sense

“I have tried to make clear in this brief sketch of the nature of deductively formulated theories, at least as they occur in economics, that, although their origin lies in common observation and introspection, nevertheless they are capable of a purely mathematical development through the exact statement of a of a set of postulates which, however, since they must inevitably contain assumptions about human behaviour, require to be tested by reference to actual events.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 14-15

Mathematics, Nature

“You ought to regulate your manner of behaviour towards others, not according to your own humour, but agreeably to the pleasure and inclination of those with whom you converse.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 6

Pleasure

“No wonder that in this setting [Eton], during those impressionable years, I acquired lasting respect for tradition and veneration of the past. Here, too, from masters and boys alike, I learnt responsibility, the decencies of life, and standards of civilised behaviour.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Source: The Life Of My Choice (1987), p. 73.

Life, Boy, Past

“A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities. Nay, it is my duty, according to the teaching of the Quran, even to defend their places of worship, if need be. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and behaviour; and which has formed me what I am by giving me its religion, its literature, its thought, its culture, and thereby recreating its whole past as a living operative factor, in my present consciousness.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, 29 December 1930 (from University of Columbia website http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html)

Love, Life, Religion, Law

“Some of these patterns of performance were calculable, though only as types of behaviour, in advance; some were quite unforeseen.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: The Living Brain (1953), p. 130 : Note about the recording of the behavior of a complex system

“For nearly four decades I placed some ideation, some ideal, some abstraction, before personal love, foolishly - inhumanly - believing that some cause, some goal, some ideology, was the most important thing and therefore that, in the interests of achieving that cause, that goal, implementing that ideology, one's own personal life, one's feelings, and those of others, should and must come at least second if not further down in some lifeless manufactured schemata. My pursuit of such things - often by violent means and by incitement to violence and to disaffection - led, of course, not only to me being the cause of suffering to other human beings I did not personally know but also to being the cause of suffering to people I did know; to family, to friends, and especially to those - wives, partners, lovers - who for some reason loved me. In effect I was selfish, obsessed, a fanatic, an extremist. Naturally, as extremists always do, I made excuses - to others, to myself - for my unfeeling, suffering-causing, intolerant, violent, behaviour and actions; always believing that 'I could make a difference' and always blaming some-thing else, or someone else, for the problems I alleged existed 'in the world' and which problems I claimed, I felt, I believed, needed to be sorted out […] Yet the honest, the obvious, truth was that I - and people like me or those who supported, followed, or were incited, inspired, by people like me - were and are the problem.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Letter To My Undiscovered Self (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/letter-to-self.html

Love, Life, People, Truth

“Today, with the weapons of mass destruction at man’s disposal, the human race itself is in imminent danger of being destroyed. It is a far cry from vegetarianism to atomic or hydrogen bomb, but if you look at it, there is no escape from vegetarianism ultimately if we want to escape from the hydrogen bomb. Any integrated view of life as a whole will reveal to us the connection between the individual’s food and his behaviour towards others, and through a process of ratiocination which is not fantastic, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the only means of escaping the hydrogen bomb is to escape the mentality which has produced it, and the only way to escape that mentality is to cultivate respect for all life, life in all forms, under all conditions. It is only another name for vegetarianism.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

"Spiritualism, Morality and Eating Habits" (Inaugural speech at the International Vegetarian Congress at Bombay on November 9, 1957), in Speeches Of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, President Of India, 1957-58, p. 96 https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.100670/2015.100670.Speeches-Of-Drrajendra-Prasad-President-Of-India1957-58#page/n105/mode/2up/search/MORALITY+AND+EATING.

Life, Food, Way, Cry

“One might expect bad behaviour from existentialists – indeed that was what existentialism was all about, was it not? – but to find this happening on one’s own doorstep was a shock.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

Love Over Scotland, chapter 50.
The 44 Scotland Street series

“This book an attempt will be made to outline the principles of cybernetics and relate them to what we know of behaviour, both from the point of view of experimental psychology and also from the point of view of neurophysiology.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.1

Books

“Spaces that trigger emotions alter the behaviour of people. Architecture aims at influencing human behaviour by space creations.”

Justus Dahinden (1925) Swiss architect

Räume, die Empfindungen auslösen, verändern das Verhalten des Menschen. Die Verhaltensbeeinflussung des Menschen durch die gestaltete Umwelt ist eine qualitative Zielsetzung des architektonischen Entwurfs.
Man and Space - Mensch und Raum 2005

People

“No nation can prosper unless the men and women of whom it is composed apply to their own behaviour the same high standards of social morality as they demand of the officers of their government; for it is your fathers, your sons and your brothers—in a word, it is yourselves—who are responsible for the country's administration.”

Muhammad Asad (1900–1992) Austro-Hungarian writer and academic

Source: This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987), Chapter: Calling All Muslims, Radio Broadcast # 6, p 114

Women, Men, Country

“However, there are all sorts of behaviours in the Bible that might be called mad now, but aren't designated as insanity by the text itself. People see visions — of angels going up and down ladders, of fiery chariots — and, like Moses, who hears a bush talking, and Balaam the prophet who has a conversation with his donkey, they hear voices of those who cannot be said to be present in any usual sense of the word. They also speak in tongues, as the disciples do at Pentecost. Like madness, the visions, the voices and the speaking in tongues are due to external and usually divine agencies. In a world so permeated with supernatural powers, there are no accidents, and in one so riddled with prophets — who went into a frenzy while prophesying — many more kinds of behaviour were accepted as normal, at least for a prophet or an inspired person, than would be the case now. John the Baptist, dressed in animal skins and wandering around in the wilderness denouncing his social superiors, was not thought of as a de-institutionalized street person who's gone off his medications, but as a saint. And this was the pattern for mediaeval views of aberrant behaviour — if you were acting crazy it was a divine punishment, or else you were possessed, by powers either divine or demonic — perhaps aided, in the latter case, by witches.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People, World, Angels, Sense

“Some People are not to be persuaded to taste of any Creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with, while they were alive; others extend their Scruple no further than to their own Poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves; yet all of them will feed heartily and without Remorse on Beef, Mutton and Fowls when they are bought in the Market. In this Behaviour, methinks, there appears something like a Consciousness of Guilt, it looks as if they endeavor'd to save themselves from the Imputation of a Crime (which they know sticks somewhere) by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves; and I can discover in it some strong remains of Primitive Pity and Innocence, which all the arbitrary Power of Custom, and the violence of Luxury, have not yet been able to conquer.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark P, pp. 188-9
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

People, Strong, Appearance

“Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Hurrahing in Harvest http://www.bartleby.com/122/14.html", lines 1-4 <br class="br">Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Love, Beauty, Summer

“Many Muslim women will not consider themselves as inferior but wear a veil because they feel as dignified human beings. Because they want to protect themselves against staring and judging by men. If women are so dignified, why is it the burden of women to cover up, in order to protect themselves from the stares of men? Why can't be accepted from men to control their own instincts or animal behaviour? This is a question that I have never heard a satisfactory answer from a Muslim women.”

Irshad Manji (1968) Feminist from Canada, author, journalist, activist

Muslims need critical thinking - Irshad Manji http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0818verhofstadt.html August 18, 2004 (interview by Dirk Verhofstadt)

Women, Men, Feeling, Question

“To Namier it had seemed obvious that political theories act as the merest ex post facto rationalisations of political behaviour. If we are looking for explanations of political action, he maintained, we must seek them at the level of ‘the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality’. For critics of Namier such as Sir Herbert Butterfield, the only possible retort seemed to be to go back to a famous dictum of Lord Acton’s to the effect that ideas are often the causes rather than the effects of public events. But this response duly incurred the scorn of Namier and his followers for the alleged naiveté of supposing that political actions are ever genuinely motivated by the principles used to rationalise them.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), p. 104

Music, Motivation, Idea

“In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world.”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

The First World War ([1963] 1970) p. 165

World, History, Birth, Sense

“I want a grown-up attitude to Cuba, for instance, a country and people I love. I want an end to the war immediately, and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. But most of all I want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend", and this Obama has shown he can do.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

"Obama is the change that America has tried to hide" in The Guardian (1 April 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/01/barackobama.uselections2008

Love, War, People, Confidence

“In discussing all these aggressive and submissive behaviour patterns, it has been assumed that the individuals concerned have been 'telling the truth' and have not been consciously and deliberately modifying their actions to achieve special ends. We 'lie' more with our words than our other communicative signals, but even so the pheneomenon cannot be overlooked entirely. It is extremely difficult to 'utter' untruths with the kind of behaviour patterns we have been discussing, but not impossible. As I have already mentioned, when parents adopt this procedure towards their young children, it usually fails much more drastically than they realize. Between adults, however, who are much preoccupied with the verbalized information content of the social interactions, it can be more successful. Unfortunately for the behaviour-liar, he typically lies only with certain selected elements of his total signalling system. Others, which he is not aware of, give the game away.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

(2010), p. 115-116
The Naked Ape (1967)

Children, Truth, Lie, Game

“So no, I'm not in that camp, but I do think that statutory regulation is not required, and most of the heinous crimes that came up and have made such a splash in front of this Inquiry have already been illegal. Contempt of court is illegal. Phone tapping is illegal. Taking money from - policemen taking money is illegal. All of these things don't need a code. We already have laws for them. The fact that these laws were not rigorously enforced is, again, due to the behaviour of the police, the interaction of the police and News International, and - I mean, let's be honest about this - the fact that our politicians have been very, very involved, in ways that I think are not sensible, with senior News International people, and I hope you'll be calling the Prime Minister and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to explain how that comes down from the top.”

Ian Hislop (1960) Satirical comedian, Editor, Television and radio presenter

At the Leveson Inquiry, 17 January 2012.

Money, People, Law, Hope

“The beauty of behaviour consists in the manner more than the matter of your discourse.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Beauty

“The enduring assumption that human behaviour is governed by innate morality and reason is at odds with the persistence of human deprivation, inequality, injustice, misery, brutality and conflict.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.16

“If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as "programming."”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

“I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore fair game for my pen and I refuse to avoid him any longer simply because some of his behaviour patterns are rather complex and impressive. My excuse is that, in becoming so erudite, Homo sapiens has remained a naked ape nevertheless; in acquiring lofty new motives, he has lost none of the early old ones. This is frequently a cause of some embarrassment to him, but his old impulses have been with him for millions of years, his new ones only a few thousand at the most - and there is no hope of quickly shrugging off the accumulated genetic legacy of his whole evolutionary past. He would be a far less worried and more fulfilled animal if only he would face up to this fact. Perhaps this is where the zoologist can help.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

Introduction
The Naked Ape (1967)

Hope, Game, Motivation, Past

“Gravitation is entirely independent of everything that influences other natural phenomena. It is not subject to absorption or refraction, no velocity of propagation has been observed. You can do whatever you please with a body, you can electrify or magnetise it, you can heat it, melt or evaporate it, decompose it chemically, its behaviour with respect to gravitation is not affected. Gravitation acts on all bodies in the same way, everywhere and always we find it in the same rigorous and simple form, which frustrates all our attempts to penetrate into its internal mechanism.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Way, Nature

“Not it is different with type 14 vehicles. They move through their world with consistent determination, always clearly after something that very often we cannot guess at the outset - something that may not even be there when the vehicle reaches the place it wants to get to. But it seems to be a good strategy, this running after a dream. Most of the time the chain of optimistic predicitions that seems to guide the vehicles's behaviour proves to be correct, and Vehicle 14 achieves goals that Vehicle 13 and its predecessors "couldn't not even dream of." The point is that while the vehicle goes through its optimistic predicitions, the succession of internal states implies movements and actions of the vehicle itself. While dreaming and sleepwalking, the vehicle transforms the world (and its own position in the world) in such a way that ultimately the state of the world is a more favorable one.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

As cited in: [ http://transit-port.net/Citations/index.html Citations] at transit-port.net, 2013
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984)

World, Dreams, Way, Time

“In one of my early books I suggested that the potential significance of LSD and other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the value the microscope has for biology or the telescope has for astronomy. My later experience with psychedelics only confirmed this initial impression. These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the cathexis (energetic charge) associated with the deep unconscious contents of the psyche and make them available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviours to a depth that cannot be matched by any other method and tool available in modern mainstream psychiatry and psychology. In addition, it offers unique opportunities for healing of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

Foreword to the MAPS edition of LSD: My Problem Child (October 2005) by Dr. Albert Hofmann

Books, Study, Personality

“Conduct, of course, is possible without science. Humans carried on in their daily affairs long before the first spark of science had been struck. And today there are millions of people living whose actions are not determined by anything we call science. Science, however, could not but gain an increasing influence on human behaviour. To describe this influence roughly and briefly will throw a new light on science. Exaggerating and schematizing the differences, we can say: in the prescientific stage man behaves in a situation as the situation tells him to behave. To primitive man each thing says what it is and what he ought to do with it: a fruit says, "Eat me"; water says, "Drink me"; thunder says, "Fear me," and woman says, "Love me."”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 7

Love, People, Fear, Drink

“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Donald Davidson. "Radical interpretation." Dialectica 27.3‐4 (1973): p. 324; as cited in; Herman Parret, ‎Jacques Bouveresse (1981) Meaning and Understanding, p. 186

Way, Intelligence, Optimism, Falseness

“…then the study of human nature must have profound implications for the study of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and politics. Each of those disciplines is an attempt to understand human behaviour, and if the underlying universals of human behaviour are product of evolution, then it is vitally important to understand what the evolutionary pressures were.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

History, Understanding, Nature, Study

“Smith certainly thought he was reflecting on general human experience, and his evidence was not limited to his own society. He had a fairly wide knowledge of history, including the history of ancient Greece and Rome, and he took a keen interest in such anthropological reports as were available, notably reports about the indigenous inhabitants of North America. He knew that the behaviour and the ethics of the American Indians differed markedly in some respects from what was found in Europe, and he knew, too, that the ethics of ancient Graeco-Roman civilization differed, in other respects, from the ethics of Christianity. He was also aware of minor differences in the mores of at least some European societies”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

France and Italy as compared with Britain and with each other
The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

History, Knowledge

“In my opinion, the Union Government's decision to impose President's rule in UP is flawed. That some members of the House indulged in violence and unruly behaviour does not warrant the conclusion that the government of the state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

The Rediff Interview/R Venkataraman

Decision, Housing

“Nick: I'm sorry if my behaviour last night caused your wife anxiety, but I've a burning desire to sleep with every woman I meet.
Prentice: That's a filthy habit and, in my opinion, very injurious to the health.
Nick: It is, sir. My health's never been the same since I went off stamp-collecting.
Prentice: We have an overall moral policy in this clinic from which even I am not exempt. Whilst you're with us I shall expect you to show an interest in no one's sexual organs but your own.
Nick: I would miss a lot of fun that way.
Prentice: That is the object of the exercise.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act I

Health, Way, Exercises, Sleep

“My broad position remains firmly libertarian, sceptical of official cover-ups and uncompromisingly internationalist, believing sovereignty to be an almost total illusion in the modern world, although both expecting and welcoming the continuance of strong differences in national traditions and behaviour. I distrust the deification of the enterprise culture. I think there are more limitations to the wisdom of the market than were dreamt of in Mrs Thatcher's philosophy. I believe that levels of taxation on the prosperous, having been too high for many years (including my own period at the Treasury), are now too low for the provision of decent public services. And I think the privatisation of near monopolies is about as irrelevant as (and sometimes worse than) were the Labour Party's proposals for further nationalisation in the 1970s and early 1980s.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

A Life at the Centre (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 617
1990s

Wisdom, World, Thinking, Strong

“It is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behaviour.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1960s, Understanding Media (1964)

Understanding

“And after this episode, as I sat on the floor trembling in fear, my grandmother, instead of berating her son for his horrid behaviour, went up to me and said to me in Chinese ‘He’s just doing this because he cares for you, you should behave yourself and not make him so angry”

Amos Yee (1998) blogger

Wordpress Postings

Fear

“We're talking about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by Muslims, and justified using their holy scripture. But apparently it's got nothing to do with Islam. Well, I'm sorry, but just because every Muslim doesn't support it doesn't mean it's not Islamic. People say you can't judge Islam by its followers, but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers. Because there's no central authority the Koran is open to interpretation by men, who, being human, will always interpret to suit their own cultural prejudices. So Islam is its followers. It's a representation of how they interpret their holy book. And therefore, the only way it can be judged is by their behaviour.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sharia fiasco" (10 February 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=mM2dC1iWzww <br class="br">2008

Men, People, Books, Way

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Love, Wisdom, Money, Children

“While it is much preferable to anarchy, government cannot abolish the evils of the human condition. At any time the state is only one of the forces that shape human behaviour, and its power is never absolute. At present, fundamentalist religion and organized crime, ethnic-national allegiances and market forces all have the ability to elude the control of government, sometimes to overthrow or capture it. States are at the mercy of events as much as any other human institution, and over the longer course of history all of them fail. As Spinoza recognized, there is no reason to think the cycle of order and anarchy will ever end. Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress – whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists – think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes –as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government – in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 264-5)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

War, Religion, Way, History

“Each element in the system is ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole, it responds only to information that is available to it locally… If each element 'knew' what was happening to the system as a whole, all of the complexity would have to be present in that element.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 4-5; as cited in: Peter Buirski, ‎Amanda Kottler (2007) New Developments in Self Psychology Practice http://books.google.nl/books?id=PinroXBLDkIC&pg=PA9, p. 9

“An earlier paper (Pask, 1976) introduced conversational techniques, some involving a human participant in dialogue with a student, others involving a mechanically or computer implemented 'participant' through which the student 'talks to himself' under restrictions imposed by the device. In either case (human or mechanical monitoring) the subject matter of a conversation is represented in a liberally conceived, but standard, fashion, as a conversational domain consisting in an entailment structure (embodying one or more description schemes and indicating the many ways in which one topic may be known in terms of or derived from others) and behaviour graphs (one for each topic in the domain) that prescribe what may be done to model or explain the topic in question. Within this framework, the conversational techniques secure, or approximate, a standard condition for experiments on learning.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Styles and Strategies of Learning (1976), p. 128: Pask is referring to the article: Pasc, G. (1976). "Conversational techniques in the study and practice of education". In: British Journal of educational Psycholy, Vol 46, p. 12-25.

Way, Fashion, Question, Learning

“I am not interested so much in behaviour from which you infer consciousness because that is a mug's game. I don't know whether you're conscious. I take a good guess that you are and you can take a good guess that I am but it's not something you can prove. We can't work out what someone else feels.”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

The simple things are hardest (2005)

Feeling, Game

“This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book I, Chapter 1, "The Law of Human Nature"
Mere Christianity (1952)

People

Quotes about behaviour page 2

Quotes about behaviour
page 2