Behavioral Development Quotes

A long while ago an eager group of reformers wrote to me asking if I could suggest anything that would improve the morals of the American people. I replied that the trouble with the American people in general was not lack of morals but lack of brains.

Experts say that children are not born criminals, nor pampered parasites. They are made that way by the environment in which they live.

There's increasing evidence on both sides of the Atlantic that when babies, beginning in the first or even the second year of life, spend long hours in childcare centers and maybe even with child minders, that as they go to school they're more likely to be more aggressive and disobedient than are other children.… that seems to be the case even when they've been, if you would, in better quality or good quality nurseries and child minder settings.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.

The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.

From the point of view of evolution, trying to consciously shape the the how your children will turn out is both futile and self-defeating.

I wasn't a pain in the ass when I was a kid. So I think being a screw-up as an adult is way more acceptable.

Shrews are made, not born.

The reason why feral kitties are hard to tame is because they have missed socialization the period - you need to be touching and petting those kittens when they are real young.

Sentence structure is innate, but whining is acquired.

In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.

Men are built, not born.... Give me the baby, and I'll make it climb and use its hands in constructing buildings of stone or wood.... I'll make it a thief, a gunman or a dope fiend. The possibilities of shaping in any direction are almost endless.

How use doth breed a habit in a man.

I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.

It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

Mammals of every species indulge in play. Games are Nature's way of preparing us to face difficult realities.

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?

You can't rehabilitate someone who hasn't been habilitated.