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Instinct |
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| “Instinct is the nose of the mind.” |
| -- Madame de Girardin |
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“Systems die; instincts remain.” |
| -- Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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| "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the
intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The
creative mind plays with the objects it loves." |
| -- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961),
Swiss psychiatrist, founded psychology |
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| " The bit of truth behind all this-- one
so eagerly denied-- is that men are not gentle, friendly creatures
wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked,
but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be
reckoned as a part of their instinctual endowment." |
| -- Sigmund Freud |
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| "Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is
much higher and truer courage." |
| -- Wendell Phillips (1811-84),
American abolitionist |
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"Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness."
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-- John Sterling |
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| “Instinct guides the animal better than the
man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason
and intelligence.” |
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-- Denis Diderot |
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| "Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited
from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion
of fear than they should." |
| -- Bertrand Russel (1872-1970),
British philosopher, mathematician, social critic, writer |
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| "Life is like music; it must be
composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule." |
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-- Samuel Butler |
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| "Let him make use of instinct who cannot
make use of reason." |
| -- English Proverb |
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| “One of the reasons why so few of us ever
act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our
deepest impulses.” |
| -- Henry Miller |
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| "Someone once asked me why women
don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we
don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact,
women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage." |
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-- Gloria Steinem |
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| "Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from
the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." |
| -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939),
Austrian physician, founder of psychoanalysis |
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| "The instinct of nearly all
societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins
by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this
fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head." |
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--
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) |
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| "The herd instinct seems to be the
strongest human emotion, one that the race is constantly breeding
off as the mavericks are liquidated. Happiness is running with the
crowd." |
| -- John Train |
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| "Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential,
craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process." |
| -- A(ngelo) Bartlett Giamatti
(1938-89), American educator, President, Yale |
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| "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
(1803-82), American writer, philosopher, poet, essayist |
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| "Man's natural instinctual driving power
is love." |
| -- Albert Emerson Unaterra (1952-2002),
American writer |
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| "My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that
possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not
derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy
to every kind of cruelty and hatred." |
| -- Albert Einstein (1875-1955),
German-born American theoretical physicist |
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| "What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing
for their babies is usually best after all." |
| -- Benjamin McLane Spock (b.
1903), American pediatrician, educator, writer |
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| "If the single man plant himself
indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will
come round to him." |
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-82), American writer, philosopher, poet, essayist |
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| "Man only of all earthly creatures, asks,
Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question
is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain." |
| -- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton
(1803-73), British writer |
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| "It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their
activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately
destroy the instincts. But until this has occurred, words do not count. ("Science
and the Modern World") |
| -- Alfred North Whitehead
(1861-1947), British mathematician & philosopher |
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| "Morality is the herd-instinct in
the individual." |
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-- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) |
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| "Telling
us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say
different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each
instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense
of the rest...." |
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--
C. S. Lewis |
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| "It is impossible to overlook the extent
to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of
instinct." |
| -- Sigmund Freud |
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| "Life
without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex
instinct which makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue
moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle
it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to
the prosiac, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an
anthill". |
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-- Henry
Louis Mencken (1880-1956), American editor, critic |
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| "Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is
shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility
in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in
the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for
fidelity and happiness." |
| -- George Santayana (1863-1952),
Spanish-born American philosopher, writer |
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“Life without sex might be safer but
it would be unbearably dull. It is the sex instinct which
makes women seem beautiful, which they are once in a blue moon, and
men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle
it, denaturalize it, take it away, and human existence would be
reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life
in an anthill.” |
| --
Henry Louis Mencken |
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| "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
(1803-82), American writer, philosopher, poet, essayist |
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"The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach." |
| -- Sophocles (495 BC - 406 BC), Greek
playwright |
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