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Behavior Quotes

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Behavior Quotes

“Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.”

“We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.”

“Human beings are many-layered creatures, and do not succumb to the hegemony of others as easily as historians and politicians sometimes imply. Those Welsh, Scottish and Anglo-Irish individuals who became part of the British Establishment in this period did not in the main sell out in the sense of becoming Anglicised look-alikes. Instead, they became British in a new and intensely profitable fashion, while remaining in their own minds and behavior Welsh, or Scottish, or Irish aswell.”

“I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.”

Want Humans Body Action Human Beings Audience Tree Planets Flower Creatures Behavior Miracle Dance Everyday Wave Dancer Phenomenon Exotic Modern Dance

Author:Martha Graham

“The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.”

Firsts Littles Moments Able Culture Individual Belief Born Community Birth Habit Activity Shapes Creatures Behavior Standards Patterns Customs Impossibility Accommodations

Author:Ruth Benedict

“Just as we have the power to harm the ocean, we have the power to put in place policies and modify our own behavior in ways that would be an insurance policy for the future of the sea, for the creatures there, and for us, protecting special critical areas in the ocean.”

Way Would Be Sea Special Policy Creatures Behavior Ocean Areas Critical Harm Insurance Policy

Author:Sylvia Earle

“Parents sometimes think of newborns as helpless creatures, but in fact parents' behavior is much more under the infant's control than the reverse. Does he come running when you cry?”

Thinking Doe Sometimes Facts Running Parent Cry Creatures Behavior Reverse Helpless Infant

Author:Sandra Scarr

“Maternal behavior helps when you have to be patient with nonverbal creatures.”

Helping Creatures Behavior Patient Be Patient Nonverbal

Author:Jane Goodall

“Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.”

Want Wells Creatures Behavior Plant Chemicals Warfare Resorts Saturated Toxins Irritants Chemical Warfare

Author:Steven Pinker

“Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.”

Humans Creatures Behavior Despise Human Behavior

Author:Sidney Poitier

“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.”

Men Humans Human Beings Creatures Behavior Victim Oppression Vegetarian Vegan Animal Rights Nazi Vegetarianism Vegetarian Health Vegan Health

Author:Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes. And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible.”

Source: The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy

“Any man or woman who neglects to maintain inward vigilance, and only makes an outward show of holiness in dress, speech, and behavior, is a wretched creature. For they watch the doings of other people and criticize their faults, imagining themselves to be something when in reality they are nothing. In this way they deceive themselves. Be careful to avoid this, and devote yourself inwardly to His likeness by humility, charity, and other spiritual virtues. In this way you will be truly converted to God.”