Quotes by American Authors - Page 268

...he fed his insides before they fed on him.
Michael L. Martin Jr.
Life goes on. And so does death.
Michael L. Martin Jr.
Some would do just about anything for an exodus.
Michael L. Martin Jr.
And here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. Dieneke, even if we won't see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand.
Diet Eman
Eternity was a restless bitch.
Michael L. Martin Jr.
To Hell we have already been.
Michael L. Martin Jr.
That human life is but a first installment of the serial soul and that one's individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution, becomes something more than an optimistic conjecture, and even more than a matter of religious faith, when we remember that only commonsense rules immortality out.
Vladimir Nabokov
There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?
Gabrielle Zevin
Here's my question: What age are you when you're in Heaven?
Jodi Picoult
I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conservation of souls.
John Green
The heavens will not be filled with those who never made mistakes but with those who recognized that they were off course and who corrected their ways to get back in the light of gospel truth.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Let me explain before another word is written: I have never once asked a cat, "So tell me what's up, Charlie?" and Charlie says, "Jeez Jackson, thanks for asking. A little annoyed by the fluorescent lights, and will you please check out this tiny piece-of-junk pan I have to crap in but, hey, I still got my legs, you know? Can't complain, pal.
Jackson Galaxy
Just because your pain is understandable, doesn't mean your behavior is acceptable.
Steve Maraboli
Maybe what stopped people from voting wasn't a lack of information about the candidates or a feeling that the outcomes of races didn't matter or a sense that a trip to the polls was inconvenient. What if voting wasn't only a political act, but a social one that took place in a liminal space between the public and private that had never been well-defined to citizens? What if toying with those expectations was key to turning a person into a voter? What if elections were simply less about shaping people's opinions than changing their behaviors?
Sasha Issenberg
We generally describe the most repulsive examples of man's cruelty as brutal or bestial, implying that such behavior is characteristic of less highly developed animals than ourselves. In fact, however, the extremes of brutal behavior are confined to us: there exists no parallel in nature to our savage treatment of each other. The unmistakable truth is that man is the most vicious and cruel species that ever walked the earth.
Hans Askenasy
The realization, early in high school, that a particle behaved differently if observed or left alone.
Lara Santoro
We are what we adapt to.
Carter Stroud
As believers, everything we do is based on how we view God.
Hayley DiMarco
If in doubt, keep quiet. Play safe, talk less, and observe.
Alison Golden
You’re being nicer to me than I've been to you lately," I said."Yes, I am. But then, Hitler was nicer to Poland than you've been to me lately.
Molly Ringle
Perhaps we can recognize our way out of patterns rather than repeating our way out of them.
Patti Digh
LOVE – PEACE – SUCCESS: When they are what we desire, they fuel our hope… When they are seen in our behavior, they change our lives.
Steve Maraboli
Set a high standard on how you treat women. Whether they appreciate it or not, don’t lower your own standards of behavior.
Steve Maraboli
You can teach a child the importance of pain by your behavior. You can also teach as child the importance of no pain by your behavior.
Milton H. Erickson
Time decides who you meet in life, your heart decides who you want in your life, and your behavior decides who stays in your life.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Brené Brown
If they do it often, it isn't a mistake; it’s just their behavior.
Steve Maraboli
Just because we live in a world of chaos and madness doesn’t mean we have to subscribe to that sort of behavior.
J.M. Northup
I understand that you are under a lot of pressure and that it's hard being a bride. That is all well and good. But it does not, ever, entitle you to be rude, selfish, uncaring, and generally obnoxious to me or Haven or anyone else. We've been very patient with you because we're your family and we love you, but it stops here. I don't care if the wedding is two weeks or two hours away, you were never raised to behave this way.
Sarah Dessen
You want to BE happy and HAVE success? Join those words, BE+HAVE… To experience success in your life requires that you decide what you want and BEHAVE accordingly.
Steve Maraboli
In my opinion, being a Christian is a noticeable behavior. If you have to tell somebody you’re a Christian, then you’re probably not doing it right.
Steve Maraboli
The most effective alternative process [to punishment] is probably extinction. This takes time but is much more rapid than allowing the response to be forgotten. The technique seems to be relatively free of objectionable by-products. We recommend it, for example when we suggest that a parent 'pay no attention' to objectionable behavior on the part of his child. If the child's behavior is strong only because it has been reinforced by 'getting a rise out of' the parent, it will disappear when this consequence is no longer forthcoming. (p. 192)
B.F. Skinner
Severe punishment unquestionably has an immediate effect in reducing a tendency to act in a given way. This result is no doubt responsible for its widespread use. We 'instinctively' attack anyone whose behavior displeases us - perhaps not in physical assault, but with criticism, disapproval, blame, or ridicule. Whether or not there is an inherited tendency to do this, the immediate effect of the practice is reinforcing enough to explain its currency. In the long run, however, punishment does not actually eliminate behavior from a repertoire, and its temporary achievement is obtained at tremendous cost in reducing the over-all efficiency and happiness of the group. (p. 190)
B.F. Skinner
Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Organizations can’t change their culture unless individual employees change their behavior—and changing behavior is hard.
Keith Ferrazzi
If they do it often, it isn’t a mistake; it’s just their behavior.
Steve Maraboli
You don’t say, “I’m sorry,”’ he says. ‘Getting injections, and experiencing pain, is part of life. There’s no reason to apologize for that.’ He seems to be channelling Rousseau, who said, ‘If by too much care you spare them every kind of discomfort, you are preparing great miseries for them.’ (I’m not sure what Rousseau thought about suppositories.)
Pamela Druckerman
Behavior isn't something someone "has." Rather, it emerges from the interaction of a person's biology, past experiences, and immediate context.
L. Todd Rose
Behavior is math: Truth is found in the sum of its parts.
Steve Maraboli
BEHAVIOR is the bridge between what you want and what you have.
Steve Maraboli
The human brain works by identifying patterns. It uses information from the past to understand what is happening in the present and to anticipate the future. This strategy works elegantly in most situations. But we inevitably see patterns where they don’t exist. In other words, we are slow to recognize exceptions. There is also the peer-pressure factor. All of us have been in situations that looked ominous, and they almost always turn out to be innocuous. If we behave otherwise, we risk social embarrassment by overreacting. So we err on the side of underreacting.
Amanda Ripley
I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself.
Philip Roth
Control the manner in which a man interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior. That is why ideology, an attempt to interpret the condition of man, is always a prominent feature of revolutions, wars, and other circumstances in which individuals are called upon to perform extraordinary action.
Stanley Milgram
Using information about animal behavior to justify social or political ideology is wrong . . . People need to be able to make decisions about their lives without having to worry about keeping up with the bonobos.
Marlene Zuk
Habits aren’t destiny. Habits can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But the reason the discovery of the habit loop is so important is that it reveals a basic truth: When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new routines—the pattern will unfold automatically.
Charles Duhigg
Behavior speaks… If you’re chasing them, it means they’re running from you. Save your energy.
Steve Maraboli
You're lucky I'm drawn to things that are sick and weird. Makes it so I can actually still like you.
Molly Ringle
If we conform our behavior to God’s ancient moral prescription, we are entitled to the sweet benefits of life. But if we defy its imperatives, then death is the inevitable consequence. AIDS is only one avenue by which sickness and death befall those who play Russian roulette with God’s eternal moral law.
James C. Dobson
Behavior has consequences, and stupid behavior often has terrible consequences.
James C. Dobson
Pay attention, behavior speaks… While preacher are telling you to pray for abundance, they’re passing around a basket.
Steve Maraboli
I share your feeling that such behavior is, in some sense, unwise or erroneous, but this does not mean that it does not occur,' Amos wrote to an American economist who complained about the description of human nature implied by 'Value Theory.' 'A theory of vision cannot be faulted for predicting optical illusions. Similarly, a descriptive theory of choice cannot be rejected on the grounds that it predicts 'irrational behavior' if the behavior in question is in fact observed.
Michael Lewis
It took me a long time to realize that when someone is not sorry for their behavior, that's their problem, not mine... I'll forgive them anyway, for me. Sometimes forgiveness is loving yourself enough to move on.
Steve Maraboli
...insisting that you control the topic of behavioral conversation ensures accountability by students...
Doug Lemov
Behavior slays the dragon of illusion and reveals the truth.
Steve Maraboli
The porpoises and whale themselves, in their quests for entertainment, often created problems. One summer a fashion developed in the training tanks (I think Keiki started it) for leaning out over the tank wall and seeing how far you could balance without falling out. Several animals might be teetering on the tank edge at one time, and sometimes one or another did fall out. Nothing much happened to them, except maybe a cut or a scrape from the gravel around the tanks; but of course we had to run and pick them up and put them back in. Not a serious problem, if the animal that fell out was small, but if it was a 400-pound adult bottlenose, you had to find four strong people to get him back, and when it happened over and over again, the people got cross. We feared too, that some animal would fall out at night or when no one was around and dry out, overheat, and die. We yelled at the porpoises, and rushed over and pushed them back in when we saw them teetering, but that just seemed to add to the enjoyment of what I'm sure the porpoises thoguht of as a hilariously funny game. Fortunately they eventually tired of it by themselves.
Karen Pryor
Religious beliefs...should never be an excuse to treat people badly.
Zach Wahls
A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good mor
Christopher Isherwood
One can't live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.
Philip G. Zimbardo
Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.
Philip G. Zimbardo
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?
Philip G. Zimbardo