James O'Shaughnessy Quotes

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

I have a resistance to change in things that I feel comfortable with and that I'm used to.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

If individuals have no sufficient reason to believe that a good situation today will have adverse long-term consequences, it must always be rational for them to aim to maximize their short-term good.

Reformers on the left and right alike must give up the fantasy that humans are blank slates who can be overwritten with ideal values, however discomfiting or disappointing the realization may be.

I think that human nature is scared of change and justifies it in all sort of ways.

Humans are animals of habit - they convince themselves they can't change. And that premise is wrong.

Understanding the psychology of changing norms starts from a simple insight: although we may wish to be perfectly rational and impartial, bias is an inescapable part of what it means to be human.

The status quo is more tenacious than anyone would ever imagine. The human mind prefers continuity rather than change. So it really has to be committed to eliminating a bad habit to even start down that path.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

The easier it is to do something, the harder it is to change the way you do it.

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.

It's just amazing how hard it is for people to change, even when amazing things happen. It almost reinforces who you are instead of making you change.

I guess we resist changing, because we are afraid of change.

Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse.

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

It's not that big a mystery about types. It's not even that big a mystery why so many people are picking up on things now. It's like we were talking about the primitive thing before and all that. Nothing has really changed much. The things that have changed are like we're on the noon now. There are more buildings now. But we're still basically two monkeys sitting here.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

There's a part of all of us whose impulse is to say, "Let's keep everything the same until I die and then you can do whatever you want afterward." And that's a difficult part.

Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?

Could we know what men are most apt to remember, we might know what they are most apt to do.

I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant.

People do what they are told not to do. It happens time and time again. Here on the frozen tundra, it is known as the Tongue on the Frozen Pump Handle principle.