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.

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.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Handcuffing the ability of states and localities to develop clean fuels in the cheapest possible way, using local resources, is not sound or sensible policy.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The Stones are a different kind of group. I realized that when I joined them. It's not really so much their musical ability, it's just they have a certain kind of style and attitude which is unique.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn't want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

We have the most flexible and adaptive economy. Making sure we sustain the ability of the American economy to perform well is really the priority of economic policy.

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.