Human Behavior Quotes

We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.

The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Führer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.

Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature; they distort it.

It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.

No human being will work hard at anything unless they believe that they are working for competence.

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct-- if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.

It is always man's ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good.

An intelligent couple can read their Darwin and know that the ultimate reason for their sexual urges is procreation. They know that the woman cannot conceive because she is on the pill. Yet they find that their sexual desire is in no way diminished by the knowledge. Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual's psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale.

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

I'm old fashioned. I'm not one of these young guys who think they are so smart that they can prescribe what humanity ought to do. Humanity never learns any lessons. Prescriptions don't matter. We already know exactly what to do. We just don't do it.

Humans are the only animals who will follow unstable pack leaders.

Men are not altogether bad or altogether good.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

Power reveals.

Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

Imgur is a data-driven company, and our community is our most important signal. But you can't perfectly plot humans neatly into a chart. It takes someone with instincts and empathy to truly understand the community and represent them in all of the company decisions.