Quotes About Instinct

Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was a coward on instinct.

You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you're small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you're wrong." He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he's transmitting electricity through his skin. "My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press." he says, his fingers squeezing at the word break. My body tenses at the edge in his voice, so I am coiled as tight as a spring, and I forget to breathe.

How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.

It is very hard to say where you're going until you get there. That kind of thing is based very much on instinct. As a photographer, one of the most important lessons I have learnt is that you have to learn to listen to and trust your own instinct. It has helped to guide me - this far at least.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

The human instinct for self-preservation is strong. I know, because mine pulls at me, too, like the needle on a compass. And everybody - I've been reading some philosophy - everybody seems to agree that the instinct and responsibility of all humans is to take care of themselves first. You have the right to self-defense. You have the right to survive, if you can.

Yoga says instinct is a trace of an old experience that has been repeated many times and the impressions have sunk down to the bottom of the mental lake. Although they go down, they aren’t completely erased. Don’t think you ever forget anything. All experiences are stored in the chittam; and, when the proper atmosphere is created, they come to the surface again. When we do something several times it forms a habit. Continue with that habit for a long time, and it becomes your character. Continue with that character and eventually, perhaps in another life, it comes up as instinct.

I have replaced my instinct for secrecy with an instinct for confession.

Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our superstitious reverence.

Dance music ... stirs some barbaric instinct - lulled asleep in our sober lives - you forget centuries of civilization in a second, & yield to that strange passion which sends you madly whirling round the room.

The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.

The desire for gold is the most universal and deeply rooted commercial instinct of the human race.

To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!

Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort.

I eat not because I want to, not because I have to overcome anything, not to prove myself to anyone, but because it's there. I eat because that's what people do. And somehow when the food is put in front of you by an institution, when there's a large gray force behind it and you don't have to thank anyone for it, you have the animal instinct to make it disappear.

A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression.

I've done a few movies where I really liked the project, but I wasn't sure about the director, and I still did it and my instinct was right, in the beginning. Even though it was a good story, the guy still didn't really know what he was doing.

When someone wrongs us, we rarely (if ever) want to do the same thing back. Why? Because we want to do something more harmful. Likewise, when someone insults us, our instinct is to search for words that will be more insulting.Revenge always escalates.

Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, - nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.

Our understanding of what constitutes intelligence is utterly relative. If an aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, for example, all of Western civilization would probably flunk. We have a very convenient and self-serving way of defining intelligence. If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Every woman has the instinct, the propensity to profit from her charms, and there's a lot to be said for giving oneself without love, without pleasure.

I think that the insane desire one has sometimes to bang and kick grumblers and peevish persons is a Divine instinct.

Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct. I need to be loved by someone who chooses to love me, who sees in me something worth loving.

In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.

Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark.

I believe a lot in instinct. One should never dull it by wanting to know everything. One shouldn't ask too many questions but do what one does properly, never rush, and never torment oneself.

So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual replenishment.

I looked to animal and insect imagery to develop the lack of substance and wasted motion that my Terminator has. I tried to tap into the killer instinct inherent in animals, where they are locked onto a target and will walk through anything that gets between them and their intended target.

There comes a time when you have to trust your own judgment, when you must close your eyes and let your instinct rule you.

You have to just go with your imagination, where your instinct takes you.

The greatest decisions I've made in my life are by instinct. I remember when I hired Bill I had a lot of people telling me it was a mistake. But he and I had established a rapport in '96 when he coached the secondary. You need a coach that understands economics, that understands the impact of the salary cap and how to make those difficult decisions that allow you to sustain success over the long term. I don't think there's anyone better than Bill at doing that.

Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, - the fear instinct.

The maternal impulse in animals to protect their young - that kind of instinct and subsequent violence is quite beautiful. Mythic even.

That is a true sentiment which makes us feel that we do not love our country less, but more, because we have laid up in our minds the knowledge of other lands and other institutions and other races, and have had enkindled afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity, and of the universal beneficence of the Creator.

I've always felt that actors in my experience have a very good and accurate instinct about whether something feels right or not. They just have a sense because they have to literally do it.

The warrior of light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle, he does not have time to think of the enemy's blows, and so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. in times of peace, he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say, "He's mad." Or, "He lives in a fantasy world." Or even, "How can he possibly believe in such illogical things?" But the warrior knows that intuition is God's alphabet and he continues listening to the wind and talking to the stars.

Part of the challenge with leadership is that it's very driven by gut instinct in most cases - and even worse, everyone thinks they're really good at it. The reality is that very few people are.

My killer instinct is so strong that lions call me to take lessons.

There is this inherent human instinct that the usual way you control trolling is you force people to use their real identities. So there's less trolling on Facebook, for example.

This is how good movies get made and always have: from the gut instinct of the financiers, not just by committee and research.

Janice used to say that instinct was reason in a hurry; I was not so sure about the reason part.

But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.

In the absence of certainty, instinct is all you can follow.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.

One reason (among many) that women may well take over the world of "virtual enterprises" is that they seem to have a greater instinct for networking. And the unfettered-by-machismo males who have taken to networking will do better than those who shun it as "sissy stuff." But truth is, it has always been the age of "networkers"; and in an era where organizations depend more and more on tenuously connected outsiders to get the job done, it will only become so.

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Sweet instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.