Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.

People who believe they have the power to exercise some measure of control over their lives are healthier, more effective and more successful than those who lack faith in their ability to effect changes in their lives.

Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends. This is why most appeals against violent means usually fall on deaf ears.

There are countless studies on the negative spillover of job pressures on family life, but few on how job satisfaction enhances the quality of family life.

Very often we developed a better grasp of the subjects than the over worked teachers.

Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.

Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

As we develop the moral aspect of our lives, we often adapt standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and deterrents for our conduct.

Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling from others.

Given appropriate social conditions, decent, ordinary people can be led to do extraordinarily cruel things.

I have often been struck by the fact that most parents who are experiencing positive and rewarding relationships with their pre-adolescent children are, nevertheless, waiting apprehensively and bracing themselves for the stormy adolescent period.

In the final forms of moral disengagement, wrongdoers treat adversaries as subhuman animalistic, demonic beings. Expunging any sense of shared humanity eliminates moral restraints.

In the past, modeling influences were largely confined to the styles of behavior and social practices in one's immediate community. The advent of television vastly expanded the range of models to which members of society are exposed day in and day out.

It's in our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards, and it helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next.

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do.

Osama bin Laden characterized his terrorist activities as 'defensive jihad,' provoked by 'debauched infidels' bent on enslaving the Muslim world. The lead industry blamed 'ignorant parents' for applying lead paint to juvenile furniture.

People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.

People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is huge variablitiy in how you perform.

Perpetrators absolve their harmful behavior as serving worthy causes.

Some of the most important determinants of life paths arise through the most trivial of circumstances.

The content of most textbooks is perishable, but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time.

The higher the level of people's perceived self-efficacy, the wider the range of career options they seriously consider, the greater their interest in them, and the better they prepare themselves educationally for the occupational pursuits they choose.

When I'm introduced at invited lectures at other universities, the students place a Bobo doll by the lectern. From time to time, I have been asked to autograph one. The Bobo doll has achieved stardom in psychological circles.

Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing

People judge their capabilities partly by comparing their performances with those of others.

Given appropriate social conditions decent ordinary people can be led to do extraordinarily cruel things.

Stringent standards of self evaluation can make otherwise objective successes seem to be personal failures.

By sticking it out through tough times people emerge from adversity with a stronger sense of efficacy.

Even noteworthy performance attainments do not necessarily boost perceived self-efficacy.

Humans are producers of their life circumstance not just products of them.

Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

We have made mistakes. In our haste to do all things for all people, we did not foresee the full consequences of our actions. And when the people raised their voices, we didn't hear. But our deafness was only a temporary condition, and not an irreversible condition.

It would be immoral to walk away from the consequences of our actions, leaving behind anarchy and civil war in Iraq.

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.

I just love having a buzz all the time, regardless of the consequences.

Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess.

Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.

In arriving at a decision in a question of doubt, the apostles in the Acts were guided solely by their sense of the Spirit behind the action, not by any speculations as to consequences which might ensue. And so they found the truth.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

I used to be a good party boy. I'm old. I'm an old man. You pay the consequences. I'm just fine with a couple of drinks, no more than that.

The position I took at the time was that we hadn't really examined any of the potential environmental consequences of introducing genetically modified organisms.

I mean that the function of the police is to solve problems that have law-enforcement consequences in a way that is based on a genuine partnership with the neighborhood in both the venting of the problem and the discussion of the solution.

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

I am not a politician... I only suffer the consequences.

What we can do is to explain as clearly as possible what the benefits would be of him going down one path, and what the potential consequences would be if he chooses another path.