INSTINCT QUOTES
quotations about instinct
Instinct is a makeshift, an admission of helplessness before the problem of reality.
LEO FROBENIUS
Kulturgeschichte Afrikas
Only animals have to satisfy instincts! Surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs! Than monkeys! Pigs!
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Glass Menagerie
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
BILLY WILDER
attributed, Know Your Limits--Then Ignore Them
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
attributed, The Irish Digest, 1960
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in man, and finds the readiest response.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.
RUMI
attributed, Spirituality: Passages in Search of the Heart of God
Regular people have such a hard time listening to the low hum of instinct.
SUZANNE PALMIERI
The Witch of Little Italy
An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action.
RICHARD WHATELY
On Instinct
Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.
DON MARQUIS
attributed, The Art and Science of Logic
Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
He was ruled by the tyranny of instinct, by passion and the instant legislation of a simple heart.
PAT CONROY
The Lords of Discipline
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.
SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA
The Yoga Sutras
Instinct ... is, to a certain extent, common to Man with brutes, though far less in amount, and less perfect in Man; and more and more developed in other animals, the lower we descend in the scale.
RICHARD WHATELY
On Instinct
I work on instinct. It's my best adviser.
PRINCESS DIANA
interview, Le Monde, August 27, 1997
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.
HERMANN HESSE
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth
Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner creatures, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Doves
I must cling with all my might to my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
speech at Columbia University, December 1991
Habit can overcome anything but instinct, and can greatly modify even that.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Instinct is the nose of the mind.
MADAME DE GIRARDIN
attributed, Edge-tools of Speech