Popular quotes about Instinct! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.
Carl JungThe pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.
Sigmund FreudYoga 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 arenโt completely erased. Donโt 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.
Swami SatchidanandaWhat I was doing when I was creating my werewolves is really basing them on a wild wolf pack, as much as possible. It's not as if being bitten brings you in, but what it does is that it strengthens that instinct for pack. It strengthens that instinct to need to be with others who are like you, and to form tight bonds, as an actual wolf pack does.
Kelley ArmstrongStories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.
Colum McCannFor a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.
Carl SaganAnd it was kind of funny to see all these professional fighters unwilling to get within a mile of the female. Then again, if you wanted to survive doing the work they did, accurate risk assessment was something you developed early -- and even Qhuinn, who was the object of the protective instinct the Chosen was rocking, wouldn't have dared touch her.
J.R. WardGuys can smell desperation. It triggers an instinct in them to run far and fast so they aren't around when a woman starts peeling apart her heart.
Janette RallisonIf we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness of natural force and instinct. The farm must yield a place to the forest, not as a wood lot, or even as a necessary agricultural principle but as a sacred grove - a place where the Creation is let alone, to serve as instruction, example, refuge; a place for people to go, free of work and presumption, to let themselves alone. (pg. 125, The Body and the Earth)
Wendell BerryInstinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
Denis DiderotIf sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.
Charles Caleb ColtonI do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.
Anthony TrollopeThe wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
Marcus Tullius CiceroI remember that, although I was full of fervour, I didn't have the slightest inkling, even at forty, of the deeper side to the movement we were pursuing by instinct. It was in the air!
Camille PissarroEverything I've done in my life has been by instinct. I never had any doubt I could do anything... I always knew I was going to be a writer.
Elizabeth RiddellInstinct tells me to go to Hannah's, but she doesn't live there anymore and that's when I realize the major difference between my mother and Hannah. My mother deserted me at the 7-Eleven, hundred of kilometers away from home. Hannah, however, did the unforgivable. She deserted me in our own backyard.
Melina MarchettaWell, you put a little piece of yourself into every character that you do. Even if you're playing some psychotic person, which of course I'm not, some part of you is in that character and it's hopefully believable. I always come back to the fact that my own instinct is better than something I build in my mind.
Scarlett JohanssonWe all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.
Martin Luther King, Jr.As an adult after college and as an artist I thought about what was real, what sustained me - it was Christian Science. I was using that when I didn't know it. Saying yes to the Light and your better instinct.
Alfre WoodardI know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.
Vincent Van GoghThe things that are reflected back at us, often times, are appealing to a base instinct that's about response as opposed to reflection. So for me, it's important to turn on a piece of information that might interest people, you know, that might interest them in pursuing or researching maybe, or even just thinking about it in that moment as I'm performing it.
Reggie WattsProgress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
George SantayanaDo you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?
Steven PressfieldSome fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.
Shirley ChisholmThere are... for us no instinctsโwe no longer need the term in psychology. Everything we have been in the habit of calling an 'instinct' today is a result largely of trainingโbelonging to man's learned behavior.
John B. WatsonPart 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.
Laszlo BockMen have been found to deny woman intellect; they have credited her with instinct, with intuition, with a capacity to correlate cause and effect much as a dog connects its collar with a walk.
W. L. GeorgeThere is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck.
Lajos KossuthThe religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more "enlightened" age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.
Muhammad AsadThe main source of psychopathic diseases is the fundamental instinct of fear with its manifestations, the feeling of anxiety, anguish, and worry.
Boris SidisSomeone might have a germ of talent, but 90 percent of it is discipline and how you practice it, what you do with it. ... Instinct won't carry you through the entire journey. It's what you do in the moments between inspiration.
Cate BlanchettNast is an artist of uncommon abilities. His works evince originality of conception, freedom of manner, lofty appreciation of national ideas and action, and a large artistic instinct.
James Jackson JarvesThe press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.
Benjamin DisraeliMan is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!
Tennessee WilliamsAnd of course she understood now why her body wanted to run whenever he appeared. It was a correct instinct, for there was nothing to be got from this but sadness.
Kristin CashoreMuch of her life had been lived like a balancing act on a spearpoint fence, and on a particularly difficult night when she was twelve, she had decided that instinct was, in fact, the quiet voice of God. Prayers did receive replies, but you had to listen closely and believe in the answer. At twelve, she wrote in her diary: "God doesn't shout; He whispers, and in the whisper is the way.
Dean KoontzWithout the instinct for adventure, any civilization, however enlightened; any state, however well-ordered, will wilt and wither.
Kurt HahnTo write honestly and with conviction anything about the migration of birds, one should oneself have migrated. Somehow or other we should dehumanize ourselves, feel the feel of feathers on our body and wind in our wings, and finally know what it is to leave abundance and safety and daylight and yield to a compelling instinct, age-old, seeming at the time quite devoid of reason and object.
William BeebeBecause her instinct has told her, or because she has been reliably informed, the faded virgin knows that the supreme joys are not for her; she knows by a process of the intellect; but she can feel her deprivation no more than the young mother can feel the hardship of the virgin's lot.
Arnold Bennett