p.11 In our own life... discrimination always goes on pari passu with needs. The satisfaction of human needs is the fundamental law of human existence.

p.11 Facts become such for us when we attend to them.

p.31-32-33 "objective purpose" is understood today as a purpose which is never static but which changes as rapidly as life changes. One activity sets in motion many others; in the interweaving of these lies at any one moment the sought-for purpose... while you are "securing" ends, life goes on to make ends of its own very different perhaps from the original ones.

p.54 Progressive experience, I say, depends on the relating. The ardent search for objectivity, the primary task of the fact worshippers, cannot be the whole task of life, for objectivity alone is not reality.

p.54-55 Dr. Holt... defines reality as "some very comprehensive system of terms in relation."... He shows us how in the "behavior-process" subject and object are equally important and that reality is in the relating of these, is in the endless evolving of these relatings. This has been the grain of gold of the profoundest thinkers from Aristotle to the present day.

p.59 "The reflex arc is the path of the stimulations received in consequence of a function of the individual itself..." "This view does not start from the function of the receptor, but just from the action of the effector, which sounds strange at first, since we are accustomed to look upon the action of the effector as a result only of irritation in the receptor..." "...the reflex-reaction must alter the perception of the reflex-stimulus: in other words, it must very specifically alter the relation of the animal towards that specific stimulus, it must 'respond' to that stimulus."

p.61 In the behavior process then we see the interlocking of stimulus and response, a self-sufficing process... the reflex arc is the path of stimuli received in consequence of an activity of the individual. Thus experience is given us as self-creating coherence.

p.62 the most fundamental thought about all this is that reaction is always reaction to a relating.

p.62,63 In human relations, as I have said, this is obvious: I never react to you but to you-plus-me; or to be more accurate, it is I-plus-you reacting to you-plus-me. "I" can never influence "you" because you have already influenced me... Accurately speaking the matter cannot be expressed even by the phrase used above, I-plus-you meeting you-plus-me. It is I plus the-interweaving-between-you-and-me meeting you plus the-interweaving-between-you-and-me, etc., etc... that response is always to a relation, the relation between the response and that to which the response is being made - needs further consideration, for it is the basic truth for all the social sciences.

p.68 We must therefore in the social sciences develop methods for watching varying activities in their relatings to other varying activities.

p.68-69 The interweaving which is changing both factors and creating constantly new situations should be the study of the student of the social sciences.

p.70 Suppose a school-boy should say to his instructor in calculus: "You are making my head swim; I cannot compare unless you give me something stationary to compare with." The only thing his instructor could reply would be: "You will have then to leave this universe; in this one we so often have variations in relation to other variations that we are obliged to learn to think in terms of those conditions."

p.73 We have now, to repeat in summary, three fundamental principles to guide us in our study of social situations: (1) that my response is not to a rigid, static environment, but to a changing environment; (2) to an environment which is changing because of the activity between it and me; (3) that function may be continuously modified by itself, that is, the activity of the boy going to school may change the activity of the boy going to school. Or it might be put thus: that response is always to a relating, that things which are varying must be compared with things that are varying, that the law of geometrical progression is the law of organic growth, that functional relating has always a plus value.

p.75 Consciousness is the living interplay of a self-generating activity... experience on every level may be found to be an interrelating in which the activity of the relating alters the terms of the relating and also the relating itself.

p.79 We must observe every case of behavior as a whole; this must never be forgotten in the study of social situations.

p.80-81 We see experience as an interplay of forces, as the activity of relating leading through fresh relatings to a new activity... What we possess always creates the possibilities of fresh satisfactions.

p.83 Every relation should be a freeing relation with the "purpose" evolving. This is the truth underneath the admonition that we should not pray for specific things... Activity always does more than embody purpose, it evolves purpose... All history which jumps from one dramatic moment to another falsifies the situation; history must be viewed as continuously evolving relations

p.88 one of the chief contributions to sociology of the psychology I am trying to indicate is the continuing activity of the specific-response relation, the relatings and then the evolving of these relatings.

p.89 Thinking (willing, purposing) is specific relating of the interdependent variables, individual and situation, each thereby creating itself anew, relating themselves anew, and thus giving us the evolving situation.

  The important points to bear in mind are:

1. Behavior is both internally and externally conditioned.
2. Behavior is a function of the interweaving between activity of organism and activity of environment, that is, response is to a relating.
3. By this interlocking activity individual and situation each is creating itself anew.
4. Thus relating themselves anew.
5. Thus giving us the evolving situation.

p.101 In order to rid ourselves of the temptation to think there is such a thing possible as a static whole, we had better always ask, What is the whole doing? It is not a quiet Beneficence watching benignly over its busy children... There is no influence of whole on parts... but only through circular behavior.

p.109 we cannot understand behavior by noting only response to the various stimuli; we must see the multiple-stimulus as a whole and watch response to that... the social worker... studies a whole situation as it develops, as the factors interknit to make the whole developing situation.

p.109 It should be noted that when we say total environment we of course do not mean total "total environment," but that which is in such immediate relation to the individual that its forces can be reckoned with both as cause of and effect of his activity, that is, that much of environment which comes within the appreciable range of circular behavior. [JLJ - of course. Total that is not total. I get it.]

p.112 the... determining wish, as a true whole, that is, it is not the arithmetical sum of desires, nor one which has wiped-out "minor" desires, but an integrating desire which is continuously interweaving with the separate desires. 

p.119-120 Kempf defines behavior as wishes... opposed by the resistance of the environment... I venture to suggest a slight change... for those who take this term over into other fields... I should like for Kempf's opposed by the resistance of environment to substitute confronting the activity of environment.

p.120 It is difficult, in social situations, to see the wish confronted with environment because the interweaving between them is a continuous process: the wish confronts the environment as altered by the wish; the environment confronts a wish as altered by the environment. Further than this, as has been shown, each is altered not only by the other but by the activity between them. The ignoring of this is why we find in some psychoanalysis an over-simplification.

p.121 In Chapter III the point most emphasized was that response is to a relating... In viewing the total situation we found what we were not watching simple reactions correlated serially with external events; we found that we were watching exceedingly complex reactions to a complex environment, that complex sets of reflexes resulting in unitary acts respond to complex combinations of stimuli... We have to study total response to total environment and to a developing environment or situation.

p.123 We are always adjusting ourselves to our total environment which brings about an evolving of all the circumstances of our life in such a way that our wishes toward a particular circumstance will be changed... or shall not that particular wish be fulfilled... Stimulus and response interweave at every instant.

p.124 Any analysis of behavior which does not take into account that response is to a relating, will be inadequate.

p.126-127 The definition of intelligence given by some psychologists is adaptability to new situations, that is, an individual possesses intelligence "in so far as he has learned or can learn to adjust himself to his environment."

p.129 The conception of circular response, of integrative behavior, cuts under the meaning of adjustment in ordinary use and gives us adjustment as a creating relation.

p.151 The only thing which will help toward any genuine solution of our world problems today are methods which will open the way for those responses which will help to create a different situation. Concepts... must be knitted into the structure of my being, and this can be done only through my own activity.

p.181 All control means a sense of power.

p.184 The integrating of wants precludes the necessity of gaining power to satisfy desire.

p.185 We see that the integration of responses means concerted and controlled action. We get control in any instance just to the extent of organization, or rather they are the same thing. Also we can get no continued action without this concerted and controlled activity. These three are bound together: the unifying, controlling, the sustaining are one.

p.185 Whenever we are talking of actual power, then, we are talking of... what is being generated by circular response.

p.191 If we follow our rule throughout of translating everything into activity, if we look at power as the power to do something, we shall understand this.

p.193 To sum up this chapter: Power begins, as far as our study goes, with the organization of reflex arcs. Then these are organized into a system - more power. Then the organization of these systems comprise the organism - more power... Power is the legitimate, the inevitable, outcome of the essential life-process.

p.193-194 For throughout history nothing is more important than: (1) that the urge to power goes on pari passu with unsatisfied desire; (2) that every shift in power brings a change in our ideas and ideals.

p.204 The relation of his own activity to the satisfaction of his desires should be a part of the education of every citizen.

p.261 while the conception of conflict is still valuable, it is valuable for a different reason - because it reveals desires.

p.270 The interweaving of desire... should be the social process... When the social sciences are based, as they should be, on the concept of desire, we shall understand many correlations which escape us now.