Dissonant Behavior Quotes

Does it make sense to boycott ourselves? Does it hold water to boycott the fluid course of our life? Is it consistent to commit self-sabotage by destroying wittingly our corporeal and mental structure?
Those are the questions thousands of people may ask as they are confronted with the schizophrenic dilemma on the point of smoking, boozing, doping, sexual transgressing or environmental polluting. Many seem to be aware of their problem. Many have decided to stop from tomorrow on. But when tomorrow and after tomorrow come many tend to let slip their vow and their self-sabotage goes on to rule their life. Their dissonant behavior transforms them into social losers or hopeless patsies and depresses them into the class of forlorn pariahs. They realize, as such, that self-handicapping makes no sense, but are not able to protect themselves from themselves since they haven't got the muscle to live down the spell of addiction.
Thousands of people may feel having set the bar too high and recognize they are are failing to find the right angle and are missing sufficient insight to steer their life.
If, however, they decide to give it a try they should be aware that the road may be very bumpy and that they have to be prepared for disappointments and regressions, that they might have to deal with very slowly crescent improvements, that they shouldn't take themselves for a ride and that they could only possibly succeed by focusing painfully on the path to breaking free from th ~ Erik Pevernagie

Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

Why I'm interested in filmmaking is because a moving image is very, very powerful when it comes to changing human behavior. ~ Ruben Ostlund

Criticism is a profession which allows one a certain license to be vicious outside the bounds of normal civilized behavior. ~ Douglas Preston

Parents should monitor their behavior, know who their friends are, and keep track of what they do. ~ John Walters

Your everyday normal behavior has a lot to do with the results in your life. If you're not happy with these results, something has to change. NOTHING MUCH IN YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE, UNTIL YOU DO! ~ Jack Canfield

When students doubt their own competence, they typically respond with two behaviors: they either hide (hoods over faces, heads on desks) and try to become invisible, or they act out to prevent a scenario unfolding in which they will not be able to perform and will once again be proved "less than." Teachers frequently misinterpret both of these behaviors, usually inferring that the student is unmotivated, uninterested, or behavior disordered. ~ Lisa Delpit

Wall Street can be a dangerous place for investors. You have no choice but to do business there, but you must always be on your guard. The standard behavior of Wall Streeters is to pursue maximization of self-interest; the orientation is usually short term. This must be acknowledged, accepted, and dealt with. If you transact business with Wall Street with these caveats in mind, you can prosper. If you depend on Wall Street to help you, investment success may remain elusive. ~ Seth Klarman

God's love is so perfect that He lovingly requires us to obey His commandments because He knows that only through obedience to His laws can we become perfect, as He is. For this reason, God's anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love. Every parent knows that you can love a child totally and completely while still being creatively angry and disappointed at that child's self-defeating behavior. ~ Dallin H. Oaks

Clearly, the Scripture tells us that we lack the capacity to grasp God's infinite mind or the way He intervenes in our lives. How arrogant of us to think otherwise! Trying to analyze His omnipotence is like an amoeba attempting to comprehend the behavior of man. ~ James Dobson

Merchandise from Wal-Mart has become as ubiquitous as the water supply. Yet, still, the company is rebuked and reviled by anyone claiming a social conscience and is lambasted by legislators as if its bad behavior places it somewhere between investment bankers and the Taliban. ~ Charles Platt

The doctors found one electrode contact that greatly relieved the woman's symptoms. But the unexpected happened when the electric current passed through one of the four contact sites on the patient's left side, precisely two millimeters below the contact that improved her condition. The patient stopped her ongoing conversation quite abruptly, cast her eyes down and to her right side, then leaned slightly to the right and her emotional expression became one of sadness. After a few seconds she suddenly began to cry. Tears flowed and her entire demeanor was one of profound misery. Soon she was sobbing. As this display continued she began talking about how deeply sad she felt, how she had no energies left to go on living in this manner, how hopeless and exhausted she was. [ . . . ]

The physician in charge of the treatment realized that this unusual event was due to the current and aborted the procedure. About ninety seconds after the current was interrupted the patient's behavior returned to normal. [ . . . ]

Why would this patient's brain evoke the kind of thoughts that normally cause sadness considering that the emotion and feeling were unmotivated by the appropriate stimuli? The answer has to do with the dependence of feeling on emotion and the intriguing ways of one's memory. When the emotion sadness is deployed, feelings of sadness instantly follow. In short order, the brain also brings forth the kind of thoughts that normally cause the emotion sadness ~ Antonio R Damasio

No matter how you may excel in the art of Karate, and in your scholastic endeavors, nothing is more important than your behavior and your humanity as observed in daily life. ~ Gichin Funakoshi

When someone acts differently with you around other people, it's because they speak differently about you to them. ~ Steve Maraboli

I'm of the old-fashioned opinion that shame can be used for all sorts of good in society. An example of this is smoking: When someone lights up around a crowd, people now usually say something. So I don't understand why it's not OK to apply the same logic to other behaviors. ~ Keli Goff

I think it's almost necessary for most people to have the freedom to pull back, and then re-enter at an adult level, where they are neither playing the victim nor creating victims, but just participating in calm, adult behavior. Because an awful lot of churches just aren't there at adult Christianity, this seems to be the norm anymore. ~ Richard Rohr

Most of us save our best behavior for those whom we barely know and show our worst side to those we know the best. ~ Sheila Wray Gregoire

The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

A honeybee cruising for nectar is pretty despite its implicit threat, but the same behavior in a hornet three times larger makes one glance about for some handy swatting material. ~ Neal Stephenson

But although realism does not add anything to the catalogue of entities or properties that a subjectivist believes to exist in the world, it does hold that certain truths that subjectivists think have to be grounded in something else do not have to be so grounded, but are just true in their own right. After all, whatever one's philosophical views, so long as there is such a thing as truth there must be some truths that don't have to be grounded in anything else. Disagreement over which truths these are defines some of the deepest fault lines of philosophy. To philosophers of an idealist persuasion it is self-evident that physical facts can't just be true in themselves, but must be explained in terms of actual or possible experience, just as it is self-evident to those of a materialist persuasion that mental facts can't just be true in themselves, but must be explained in terms of actual or possible behavior, functional organization, or physiology. The issue over moral realism is of the same kind. ~ Thomas Nagel

My relationship with my father had always been about my version of things; I never contemplated what might have happened in his life to make him act the way he did. I never considered his story. I was a child, yes, but then I was an adult. It's hard for me to have sympathy for my father because a lot of his behavior I find inexcusable, but it's important for me to look at his story as independent from my own, and try to have a little empathy. I had never thought about being his child. I thought about him being my father, but never the other way around. Empathy. We both had none...I don't know if it was the best he could do, but I also don't know that it wasn't...I told him that I now understood my father's limitations along with my own. I thought our relationship was about me showing him how great I was, when truly he was most likely trying to prove to me how great he was. He was wondrously obsessed with himself, as I was with his affection for me. Today I'm able to say with confidence that I do love my father. I don't know how much I like his behavior, but in the end, isn't love more valuable than like? ~ Chelsea Handler

Addictive behavior is kind of the inverse of procrastination: procrastination is about not being able to do what you want to do, addiction about not being able to not do what you don't want to do (drink, use drugs, etc.) ~ James Surowiecki

Human behavior is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable. ~ Patrick White

We sometimes hear people boast about their hurtful behavior: "I know I am outspoken and step on toes, but that's just the way I am!" Such people have never seriously considered the source of their offensive and divisive comments. If they did, they might be shocked to discover they were actually Satan's mouthpieces. ~ Henry T. Blackaby

One might rationally argue that individual human beings should be free choose what moral behavior they approve of, and which they don't, subject to the constraints of the law. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

The world doesn't judge us by our theology; it judges us by our behavior. The validity of Scripture in the world's view is determined by how it affects us. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this. ~ Anna Godbersen

Festinger argued that in reality we usually just find a way to ignore or discount dissonant information. ~ David Patrick Houghton

To the degree to which they correspond to the given reality, thought and behavior express a false consciousness, responding to and contributing to the preservation of a false order of facts. And this false consciousness has become embodied in the prevailing technical apparatus which in turn reproduces it. ~ Herbert Marcuse

Why will the Structure allow every other kind of sexual behavior but that one? Because submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival. They cannot be wasted in private sex. In any kind of sex. It needs our submission so that it can co-opt us into its own power game. There is no joy in it, only power. I tell you, if S and M could be established universally, at the family level, the State would wither away. ~ Thomas Pynchon

In those hours where he'd planned for the [possible future] demise of his family's fortune, he'd settled quickly on the easiest job he could step into: Mechanical Turk.
The Turks were an army of workers in gamespace. All you had to do was prove that you were a decent player - the game had the stats to know it - and sign up, and then log in whenever you wanted a shift. The game would ping you any time a player did something the game didn't know how to interpret - talked too intensely to a non-player character, stuck a sword where it didn't belong, climbed a tree that no one had bothered to add any details to - and you'd have to play spot referee. You'd play the non-player character, choose a behavior for the stabbed object, or make a decision from a menu of possible things you might find in a tree.
It didn't pay much, but it didn't take much time, either. Wei-Dong had calculated that if he played two computers - something he was sure he could keep up - and did a new job every twenty seconds each, he could make as much as the senior managers at his father's company. He'd have to do it for ten hours a day, but he'd spent plenty of weekends playing for twelve or even fourteen hours a day, so hell, it was practically money in the bank. ~ Cory Doctorow

It's important for a parent to learn to take delight in a child whose behavior might seem mystifying. In the case of an extroverted parent with an introverted child, it can be learning to see the inner riches of your child that may not always be expressed on the surface - but are there. ~ Susan Cain

When you are entitled, you are the most insufferable person ever. If you are entitled and hardworking, which I am, you are still pretty insufferable, but at least you somewhat earned your entitled behavior. ~ Mindy Kaling