instinct quotes

• Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. (Bertrand Russell) [collectivism/fear/instinct]
• Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it. (Laurence Olivier) [instinct]
• I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. ( Socrates) [wisdom/poetry/instinct/inspiration]
• 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. (Theodore Dreiser) [stage/instinct/human]
• The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene. (Hannah Arendt) [human/instinct/aggression/more]
• Instinct is untaught ability. (Alexander Bain) [instinct/ability]
• There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row. (Arnold Bennett) [more/instinct]
• To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. (Samuel Butler) [instinct]
• Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. (Albert Camus) [nature/instinct/right/right]
• Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. (Raymond Chandler) [instinct]
• There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice. (Gilbert K. Chesterton) [people/instinct/instinct/sin]
• The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct. (Marcus Cicero) [experience/instinct]
• Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) [trust/instinct]
• All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) [civilization & progress/instinct/opinion/knowledge]
• Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) [trust/instinct/give]
• In art as in love, instinct is enough. (Anatole France) [art/love/instinct]
• Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish. (Eugene Ionesco) [death/instinct/rest/life]
• A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. (William James) [instinct/loss/weakness/willpower]
• There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention. (Helen Keller) [instinct/being/think/knowledge]
• It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves. (James Lowell) [instinct/men/more]
• The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage. (Rollo May) [growth/basis/instinct/nature]
• Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them -- I can write in letters which make even the blind see. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty -- I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. (Friedrich Nietzsche) [walls/mail/instinct/revenge]
• Instinct. When the house burns one forgets even lunch. Yes, but one eats it later in the ashes. (Friedrich Nietzsche) [instinct]
• What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct. ( Ovid) [instinct]
• I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct -- nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying. (Mark Twain) [instinct/people]
• If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or our country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share. (Virginia Woolf) [sex/instinct/share/benefits]
• So, I work on instinct and start probing with remarks and I have an indication of what the person is like before they even open their mouth. (Bill Bixby) [instinct]
• Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct. (Denis Leary) [decision/instinct]
• Well, it's such an intricate, beautiful script about eight professional robbers pulling a heist, and it deals with elements of betrayal, trust, instinct, and need for relationships. (Harvey Keitel) [trust/instinct]
• “Actors are trusting souls, and we must go by gut-level instinct, even after our agents and business managers weigh all the odds.” (Anne Archer) [instinct/business]
• “and for casting me. He cast me on instinct, not with any concern to box office, so I thank him eternally.” (Cate Blanchett) [instinct/office]

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