Quotes & Sayings About Human Behaviour

Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob setting. The problem with a lot of software designs is that they switch us to that setting. — Jaron Lanier

All of us, have our antenna up for people who might harm us in one way or another, not just people who might hurt us physically, but also for people who might treat us unfairly, take advantage of us, cheat us or fail to do their share. And we react very strongly to be misleading by other people, is part of human nature, to guard against being hurt and exploited. — Mark Leary

Pseudo idealism: apparent charitable behaviour that on scrutiny is revealed as selfish, because the giver is engaging in it only so that he or she can feel good about him or herself — Jeremy Griffith

Our behavior is human with a sliver of animal, our souls animal with a sliver of human. — Carrie Latet

And so it is inevitable that the day has come when we write about privacy with such nostalgia, analysing it as we would some unearthed fossil of a creature our human eyes had never fallen on. — Aysha Taryam

his real point is that in the climate of fear that would follow the breakdown of authority, the kinder, more trusting, side of human nature would be obliterated. And from what we know of human behaviour when people are caught up in civil war and other situations in which their very survival is at stake, he seems to have been right. We — David Miller

What's exciting about theatre is observing human behaviour. You're constantly making judgments about body language, the physical, the emotional, the intellectual. — Hattie Morahan

Nobody else can be a better critic of yours than your enemy, who hates you to the core.
He will speculate your work minutely to find out your mistakes to let you down, the more he lets you down, the more you will excel.
And your true victory will be the day he praises your work.
The only condition is, you have to be negatively positive and positively negative to provide the comments and compliments, a space in your heart and mind, respectively. — Himmilicious

We must recognize that we are living in an imperfect world in which human and superhuman forces of evil are at work and so long as those forces affect the political behaviour of mankind there can be no hope of abiding peace. — Christopher Dawson

If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple. If we want to bring about deep change, we need to realize that certain mindsets really do influence our behaviour. Our efforts at education will be inadequate and ineffectual unless we strive to promote a new way of thinking about human beings, life, society and our relationship with nature. Otherwise, the paradigm of consumerism will continue to advance, with the help of the media and the highly effective workings of the market. — Pope Francis

The ideal of free medical services collided against the reality of human behaviour, certainly in Singapore. My first lesson came from government clinics and hospitals. When doctors prescribed free antibiotics, patients took their tablet or capsules for two days, did not feel better, and threw away the balance. They then consulted private doctors, paid for their antibiotics, completed the course, and recovered. — William A. Haseltine

Do we have to say goodnight? It just feels so final.... And then it feels like I HAVE to go to sleep, and then I just can't... — Coco Moodysson

I like to go to Starbucks and watch the intellectuals. I observe them and their intellectualness. They in turn observe me drinking coffee and being a creeper. — Ryan Lilly

The pace at which science has progressed has been too fast for human behaviour to adapt to it. As I said we are still apes. A part of our brain is still a paleo-brain and many of the reactions come from our fight or flight instinct. As long as this part of the brain can take over control the rational part of the brain (we will face these problems). — Jean-Marie Lehn

In its various forms, so far as we know them, Love seems always to have a deep significance and a most practical importance to us little mortals. In one form, as the mere semi-conscious Sex-love, which runs through creation and is common to the lowest animals and plants, it appears as a kind of organic basis for the unity of all creatures; in another, as the love of the mother for her offspring - which may also be termed a passion - it seems to pledge itself to the care and guardianship of the future race; in another, as the marriage of man and woman, it becomes the very foundation of human society. And so we can hardly believe that in its homogenic form, with which we are here concerned, it has not also a deep significance, and social uses and functions which will become clearer to us, the more we study it. — Edward Carpenter

There is no one here, said the girl with dark glasses, and burst into tears leaning against the door, her head on her crossed forearms, as if her with her whole body she were deperately imploring pity, if we did not have enough experience of how complicated the human spirit can be we would be surprised that she should be so fond of her parents as to indulge in these demonstrations of sorrow, a girl so free in her behaviour, but not far away is someone who has already affirmed that there does not exist nor ever has existed any contradiction between the one and the other. — Jose Saramago

A fresh approach is needed - an analysis of our human situation from a basis that recognises and confronts the psychological dimension to our behaviour — Jeremy Griffith

The hero of the following account, Homo immunologicus, who must give his life, with all its dangers and surfeits, a symbolic framework, is the human being that struggles with itself in concern for its form. We will characterize it more closely as the ethical human being, or rather Homo repetitious, Homo artista, the human in training. None of the circulating theories of behaviour or action is capable of grasping the practising human - on the contrary: we will understand why previous theories had to make it vanish systematically, regardless of whether they divided the field of observation into work and interaction, processes and communications, or active and contemplative life. With a concept of practice based on a broad anthropological foundation, we finally have the right instrument to overcome the gap, supposedly unbridgeable by methodological means, between biological and cultural phenomena of immunity - that is, between natural processes on the one hand and actions on the other. — Peter Sloterdijk

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour. — Ben Kingsley

The fundamental human values all emanate from Dharma, based on Truth. If human behaviour has no such basis, it leads to disaster. — Sathya Sai Baba

There's no map to human behaviour. — Bjork

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the myriad of other services resonate with the basic human urge to be social. The tools have changed, but human behaviour remains consistent. — Alfred Hermida

Food, like sex, is one of the principal kinds of human activity that engage people when they wonder about how to account for different kinds of human behaviour. — Marvin Harris

At the turn of the twentieth century, the first wave of academic political scientists attacked some of their theoretical predecessors for the supposed mistake of assuming that human beings were entirely rational. This mistake had allegedly been made by politicians and theorists who had tried to appeal to voters in terms of purely rational argument. The new political scientists triumphantly pointed out that image, stereotype, the emotions arising in crowds, family background, and many other irrational factors were actually the main determinants of political behaviour. — Kenneth Minogue

However, she wouldn't be the first person to mistrust her nearest and dearest yet confide in the first stranger who comes along: a strange but true quirk of behaviour, whose root is easily traced to the human heart. Some people perhaps have nothing left to gain from those they live with; having revealed the emptiness of their souls, they secretly feel themselves to be judged with deserved severity; however, as they have a powerful craving for the flattery they need but lack, or a burning desire to appear to possess qualities they do not have, they hope to take by surprise the heart and esteem of those who are strangers to them, at the risk of one day falling from grace. — Honore De Balzac

Being home secretary involves having to face some of the worst of human behaviour and challenges of modern society. — David Blunkett

I don't think I've ever met an addict in long-term recovery who hasn't gone through at least one traumatic childhood experience. Research indicates that one traumatic event in childhood is as grave as continuous combat in a war zone. A traumatic event during childhood can leave a grave imprint on the human body. — Christopher Dines

When we say that human behaviour is unpredictable, we are right, because it is too complex to be predicted, especially by ourselves. Our intense sensation of internal liberty, as Spinoza acutely saw, comes from the fact that the ideas and images which we have of ourselves are much cruder and sketchier than the detailed complexity of what is happening within us. We are the source of amazement in our own eyes — Carlo Rovelli

Our behaviour as an athlete is often determined by our previous experiences and how we dealt with those experiences. It is these experiences from past performances that can often shape what will happen in the future. It is for this reason that you learn and move on to be more mentally stronger as both an athlete and as a human! — David Horne

Human behaviour reveals uniformities which constitute natural laws. If these uniformities did not exist, then there would be neither social science nor political economy, and even the study of history would largely be useless. In effect, if the future actions of men having nothing in common with their past actions, our knowledge of them, although possibly satisfying our curiosity by way of an interesting story, would be entirely useless to us as a guide in life. — Vilfredo Pareto

The comic strip is what I looked at, and it's another reason I did it. The comic strip, where animals would comment on human behaviour, interested me. — Garry Shandling

You'd be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical. — Dianna Hardy

The Machinery are a bunch of fuckwits who believe that the human body is best conceptualised as a machine, and that if behaviour is stripped down to only what is functional, a higher form of humanity will emerge. This means actions that lead to the fulfilment of their basic needs only. Disease is a malfunction. You can see where this goes. They're boring as hell, they only speak to convey information and they are more inflexible than actual machines. They are said to be good spouses and accountants. The one beside me has a distinct self-image, fully identified as a machine. He repeats to himself mentally, 'You are a machine, you are a machine. — Tade Thompson

People are different in reality from the way you've seen them while making scenarios in your mind. For one thing, they're less consistent. They surprise you all the time. — Ruth Rendell

In the world of animals, pain serves an equivocal role. Parental nips and swipes are common tools in upbringing. And socially, pain is sometimes used to maintain hierarchies of dominance. But this animal use of pain seems somewhat restrained, at least in contrast with the human situation. Here the capacity for pain is often used to systematically exploit and oppress at intensities often far beyond those seen in the behaviour of our nearest primate relatives. At the same time, at least in western culture, pain is rarely used for pleasure. Is it little wonder that all pain is viewed as intrinsically evil? Or that the pain-pleasure of leatherspace has been labelled torture? — Geoff Mains

It's a bitter truth but we humans are the only creature in this universe who not only fed up with things but also by other human beings. — M.H. Rakib

The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved. — Aldous Huxley

Now, in the modern money economy everything in the nature of a social-economic occurrence consists in human actions and behaviour. — Oskar Morgenstern

I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC?s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. — Jeremy Paxman

Man's unconscious ... contains all the patterns of life and behaviour inherited from his ancestors, so that every human child, prior to consciousness, is possessed of a potential system of adapted psychic functioning. — Carl Jung

People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron ... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for. — George Mallory

Only human beings guide their behaviour by a knowledge of what happened before they were born and a preconception of what may happen after they are dead; thus only humans find their way by a light that illuminates more than the patch of ground they stand on. P. B. and J. S. MEDAWAR, The Life Science (1977) — Richard Dawkins

If we turn to palaeontology to tell us about our biological evolution it is to prehistory that we look for evidence of the evolution of specifically human patterns of behaviour. — John G. D. Clark

It could have been so beautiful.
The way our elbows always collide and not a single word was needed to make each other laugh. I laughed at your existence, I said, and you laughed even harder and that's how we spent our time.
It could have been so beautiful
the way the first hit felt good and something to deserve
because I've read every psychology book you can find on human behaviour and know for a fact that anger grows from caring
too much
and so it was a privilege to be in the war zone with someone like you.
How much you must have cared to hit that well
and that hard
and I remember saying thank you
and I'm sorry
at the same time
because what else is there to say. — Charlotte Eriksson

A good sense of humour is the sign of a healthy perspective, which is why people who are uncomfortable around humour are either pompous (inflated) or neurotic (oversensitive). Pompous people mistrust humour because at some level they know their self-importance cannot survive very long in such an atmosphere, so they criticise it as "negative" or "subversive." Neurotics, sensing that humour is always ultimately critical, view it as therefore unkind and destructive, a reductio ad absurdum which leads to political correctness. Not that laughter can't be unkind and destructive. Like most manifestations of human behaviour it ranges from the loving to the hateful. The latter produces nasty racial jokes and savage teasing; the former, warm and affectionate banter, and the kind of inclusive humour that says, "Isn't the human condition absurd, but we're all in the same boat. — John Cleese

I accepted that a new kind of hate had emerged, silent and disciplined, a racism tempered by loyalty cards and PIN numbers. Shopping was now the model for all human behaviour, drained of emotion and anger. — J.G. Ballard

When you can begin to see the similarities between you and your work colleagues in respect of 'being human' and the collective challenges we all face, it makes life much easier to deal with, especially when met with overbearing behaviour. — Christopher Dines

Disgusting are not men but their behaviours. — M.H. Rakib

The morphic fields include all kinds of organizing fields ... : The organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory. — Rupert Sheldrake

Prison opened my eyes to so many things. It was a great time. I met interesting people. I got to understand the behaviour of the police and the media. I am an observer of the human race. — Jonathan King

The disenfranchised offspring, along with an entire ageless class of human discards, know only that they are doomed. They are drawn to spikes and pentagrams, gasoline, guitars screaming like whips, MIDI-programmed Thanatos, with sufficient amplitude to occupy that hollow space where consciousness once resided. These Dionysians obliterate themselves by removing filters, ultimately becoming insensate with sensation. This mode of behaviour originates in the superstitious belief that transcendence is acquired in the precise ratio by which reason is destroyed. — Adam Parfrey

The problem is not that greed is "bad" in early development it is necessary for survival - but that greed has psychological consequences. Specifically, the intention to possess not only intensifies the object self, but it engenders fear of the loss of what is possessed.....It is hard to find a neurotic symptom or a human vice that cannot be traced to the desire to possess or the fear of loss....We can understand that neurotic symptoms might disappear as a by-product of a process that diminishes the dominance of the object self.
Ultimately, renunciation, selflessness, and virtuous behaviour, in general, are necessary because they reflect the nature of reality. — Arthur Deikman

In such systems, there is unquestioning respect for authority. Faith trumps evidence. But if indeed this is broadly the explanation for how co-operative behaviour has evolved and been maintained in human societies, it could be very bad news. Because although such authoritarian systems seem to be good at preserving social coherence and an orderly society, they are, by the same token, not good at adapting to change. — Robert May, Baron May Of Oxford

If you accept mass production, you accept that a small number of people will supervise the daily existence of a much larger number of people. You accept that human beings will spend long hours, every day, engaged in repetitive work, while suppressing any desires for experience or activity beyond this work. The workers' behaviour becomes subject to the machine. With mass production, you also accept that huge numbers of identical items will need to be efficiently distributed to huge numbers of people and that institutions such as advertising will arise to do this. One technological process cannot exist without the other, creating symbiotic relationships among technologies themselves. — Jerry Mander

All human behaviour, language, thoughts, feelings, actions, and consciousness emerge from this massively interconnected network of neurons. Each neuron is pretty dumb; it either fires in a certain situation or it doesn't, but out of this mass dumbness comes great cleverness. — Trevor Harley

Modifying one's vocabulary to avoid embarrassment is a universal human behaviour. — Gaston Dorren

What we create online becomes part of our digital DNA, this in turns becomes part of our human DNA. — Tiffany Sunday

In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else. — George Orwell

I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen. — Kingsley Amis

It's exciting that you've got an entire season to experience 24 hours of highly dramatically charged human experience. It allows for the close inspection of minutiae in behaviour. — Xander Berkeley

Religious beliefs and practices are certainly not the only factors determining the behaviour of a given society. But, no less certainly, they are among the determining factors. At least to some extent, the collective conduct of a nation is a test of the religion prevailing within it, a criterion by which we may legitimately judge the doctrinal validity of that religion and its practical efficiency in helping individuals to advance towards the goal of human existence. — Aldous Huxley

If we return to the roots of planning we see at its heart a desire to understand human behaviour and provide a robust model for influencing it. Rather than dismantling strategy into endless experimentation, we need a new way of understanding the world, a modern philosophy. — Faris Yakob

Mental stories can literally spoil a human life. It took me a long time to become aware of my mental commentary, such as: "Everything always goes wrong", "I won't be accepted", "I'm a failure" or "What's the point?" Those fears were deep-rooted and triggered many upsetting addictive patterns of behaviour — Christopher Dines

Good sociologists have always had an insatiable curiosity about about even the trivialities of human behaviour, and if this curiosity leads a sociologist to devote many years to the painstaking exploration of some small corner of the social world that may appear quite trivial to others, so be it: Why do more teenagers pick their noses in rural Minnesota than in rural Iowa? What are the patterns of church socials over a twenty-year period in small-town Saskatchewan? What is the correlation between religious affiliation and accident-proneness among elderly Hungarians? — Peter Berger

Given the behaviour of human beings throughout the ages, they do not deserve life, with its many dark sides, in all its beauty, grandeur and magnificence ... — Jose Saramago

Whatever we thought was certain is no longer certain, and therefore in science probably certain things must be correct, but in human behaviour I am not so sure. — Elie Wiesel

From the perspective of the radicals, the habitus basis of human existence is, as a whole, no more than a spiritually worthless puppet theatre into which a free ego-soul must be implanted after the fact, and through the greatest effort. If this fails, one experiences an effect in most people that is familiar from many athletes and models: they make a promising visual impression - but if one knocks, no one is at home. According to these doctrines, the adept can only rid themselves of their baggage by subjecting their life to a rigorous practice regime by which they can de-automize their behaviour in all important dimensions. At the same time, they must re-automatize their newly acquired behaviour so that what they want to be or represent becomes second nature. — Peter Sloterdijk

A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression. — Bill Bryson

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. — Hector Berlioz

Climate change has happened because of human behaviour, therefore it's only natural it should be us, human beings, to address this issue. It may not be too late if we take decisive actions today. — Ban Ki-moon

Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states. — Paul Goodman

Sentimentalising is anathema, as far as I am concerned. It leads you into ethical problems about violence and killing and eating meat. The whole world becomes topsy-survy if you impose moralities that were evolved within human society on what a blowfly or what a parasite does ... there are lots of emotions you can deduce from an animal's behaviour that are correct, but when you start saying it's feeling guilty or thinking or a loved one or mourning, you must be very careful of those feelings. — David Attenborough

Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me — Marquis De Sade

Since God is the author, the Bible is authoritative. It is absolute in its authority for human thought and behaviour. "As the Scripture has said" is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament contains more than two hundred direct quotations of the Old Testament. In addition, the New Testament has a large and uncertain number of allusions to the Old. New Testament writers, following the example of Jesus Christ, built their theology on the Old Testament. For Christ and the apostles, to quote the Bible was to settle an issue. — Robertson McQuilkin

Modern economics is a set of formal models and equations purporting to fully determine human behaviour, at least in the economic realm. And there is no way that uncertainty can be compressed into determinate mathematical models. — Murray Rothbard

Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behaviour and judgment. — Amartya Sen

Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit. — Joe Eszterhas

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour. — Gary Oldman

The day I will stop being shocked by human behaviour, is the day I will know that the last bit of my heart purity is lost forever. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

[Google is] an omnivorous collector of information, a hyperencyclopedic vault of human knowledge, an unerring auctioneer, an eerily skilful student of languages, behaviour, and desires. — Steven Levy

The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behaviour of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behaviour patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behaviour patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largerly responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves. — Carl Sagan

The first rule of world-building is available physics, which basically means that if you want it to feel real, it has to follow the same rules as this world, from gravity to how human behaviour works. If you have a fantasy element that doesn't obey the laws of physics, make sure that it has a fantasy explanation. — Trudi Canavan

One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal an get away with it. — Margaret Mead

People are disappearing from movies, and normal human behaviour is disappearing from movies ... You are not always fighting a creature in life. That's part of life, it's a pretty big part of life, but it's not all of life. — Judd Apatow

I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour — Gary Becker

The anti-psychiatrists held various, sometimes conflicting views but one particular line of reasoning is attributable to all of them - they all pitched their arguments against the power of the psychiatric establishment. They argued that the psychiatric diagnosis is scientifically meaningless. It is a way of labeling undesirable behaviour, under the guise of medical intervention. Those who are diagnosed ill are subjected to treatment which is a violation of human rights and dignity. The situation amounts to psychiatry having a mandate to declare some citizens unfit to live in an 'ordinary' community. It claims to cure but the supposed beneficiaries of that cure are often held in hospitals against their will. Within a structure like this it is impossible to understand the real nature of mental suffering and it is just as impossible to develop a coherent system of help. — Zbigniew Kotowicz

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence. — Gary L. Francione

Unfortunately, psychologists know much less about how the environment influences a person's personality than is commonly assumed. People often talk as if the environmental effects had been well understood for decades, and the new discovery was that there were genetic effects too. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The area of environmental influences on personality is a morass of unsupported or poorly tested ideas, and, ironically, it is behaviour geneticists who have brought the most progress to the field. The irony is that behaviour genetics was founded in order to discover heritable influences on human behaviour. The methods such studies use, however, also allow us to identify non-genetic influences, and say quite a lot about them. — Daniel Nettle

Theatre is a concentrate of life as normal. Theatre is a purified version of real life, an extraction, an essence of human behaviour that is stranger and more tragic and more perfect than everything that is ordinary about me and you. — Eleanor Catton

I'm simply trying to tell the truth about human behaviour as I see it. — Sarah Kane

I'm not a fan of Dr. Seuss's better-known work, but his fables leave me awe-struck. 'Ten Tall Tales' is a collection of stories where his trademark anarchy is combined with a tautness of writing that shines an affectionate yet uncompromising spotlight on some of the absurdities of human behaviour. — Giles Andreae

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community. — Orson Scott Card

One of the things that cause stress and strain in human social life is that it is possible, up to a point, to become aware of rational grounds for a behaviour not prompted by natural instinct. But when such behaviour strains natural instinct too severely nature takes her revenge by producing either listlessness or destructiveness, either of which may cause a structure imposed by reason to break down. — Bertrand Russell

Those who have a scientific outlook on human behaviour, moreover, find it impossible to label any action as 'sin'; they realise that what we do has its origin in our heredity, our education, and our environment, and that it is by control of these causes, rather than by denunciation, that conduct injurious to society is to be prevented. — Bertrand Russell

Mixing humour and harsh reality is a very human behaviour, it's the way people stay sane in their daily lives. — Jorge Garcia

I get tested for HIV twice a year ... One has to be socially aware. It's part of being a decent human to be tested for STDs. It's just disgusting behaviour when people don't. It's so irresponsible. — Scarlett Johansson

Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato , interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato , looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge. — Wolfgang Pauli

JOHN: You said "Good day." I think that it is a nice day today.
CAROL: Is it?
JOHN: Yes, I think it is.
CAROL: And why is that important?
JOHN: Because it is the essence of all human communication. I say something
conventional, you respond, and the information we exchange is not about the
"weather," but that we both agree to converse. In effect, we agree that we are both
human. — David Mamet

I wanted to show life and to see ourselves and our behaviour through an outsider's eye ... from the point of view of someone who knows nothing about being a human being ... He doesn't have the feelings that the rest of us do. — Jeff Lindsay

Though when she thought of it after, it was rather unprofessional behaviour, but sometimes when people are involved, business has to stop being business and the human must win. However, Kitty couldn't ignore the underlying truth that they both hung on to that hug for a little too long. — Cecelia Ahern