Instinct Quotes - page 28
Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources.
Immanuel Kant
I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood. When I look for my diametric opposite, an immeasurably shabby instinct, I always think of my mother and sister, - it would blaspheme my divinity to think I am related to this sort of canaille. The way my mother and sister treat me to this very day is a source of unspeakable horror; a real time bomb is at work here, which can tell with unerring certainty the exact moment I can be hurt - in my highest moments, ... because at that point I do not have the strength to resist poison worms ...
Friedrich Nietzsche
Whether in a South African coal mine, on an Alaskan fishing boat, or in the American military, men's protective instinct toward women, and women's protective instinct toward themselves (and children) keeps men more disposable than women. Here's an example of the dynamic at work in the military. At the military's SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) schools, concern about the well-being of women was so prevalent among male students that trainers now work to desensitize men to sexual assault and other abuse of women lest their sensitivity be used against them in war. We think of women in the military as being safer in part because they are still prohibited from the most dangerous assignments. But this prohibition is just a reflection of the traditional male's instinct to protect women.
Warren Farrell
The Industrial Revolution, then, took men's occasional absence from home -- previously needed only in wartime and for hunting -- and made it the norm. This increasing division of labor magnified the division of men's and women's interests. It magnified the belief in the maternal instinct and the reality of the distant father. Prior to industrialization, divorces usually led to children living with dads. Not after.
Warren Farrell
Man is born egotistical, a result of the conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that fills us with virtues. Nature makes us do things instinctively; one of these is the instinct for survival which can lead to infamy, while on the other side, our conscience can lead us to great acts of heroism. It doesn't matter what each one of us is like, how different we are from each other, but when we unite we become one.
It is amazing that in spite of the differences between human beings, they can become as one in a single instant or they can be millions, and they can be a million strong just through their ideas. Nobody followed the Revolution as a cult to anyone or because they felt personal sympathy with any one person. It is only by embracing certain values and ideas that an entire people can develop the same willingness to make sacrifices of any one of those who loyally and sincerely try to lead them toward their destiny.
Fidel Castro
Pussy really is the main motivating factor in all of humankind. It really is. It's what gets shit built. [reacting to applause from the audience]: I'm not 'yeah' for pussy. This is a flaw in the system, don't clap for it! [I'm] saying, they know that is a catalyst, and that's why religion and government have to control supply and demand of pussy. And they do that by heaping shame upon you should you want to give away more than the 'federally allocated recommended daily allowance of pussy'. "Oh, she wants to suck more than one dick?! Whore! Shun your natural instinct, whore, or nothing'll get built." - It comes down to production, it really does. They have to keep that pussy like a dangling carrot, something that's hard to get so he keeps running on the treadmill, building more shit, sending out more boxes to the dollar store, pointless shit that no one needs. - That's why cocaine is illegal: it makes pussy too easy to get.
Doug Stanhope
Minds differ in the vividness with which they recall the elements of previous experience, and mentally see the absent objects; they differ also in the aptitudes for selection, abstraction, and recombination: the fine selective instinct of the artist, which makes him fasten upon the details which will most powerfully affect us, without any disturbance of the harmony of the general impression, does not depend solely upon the vividness of his memory and the clearness with which the objects are seen, but depends also upon very complex and peculiar conditions of sympathy which we call genius.
George Henry Lewes
I once said to her "It must be a very enviable thing to be Maria Callas.” And she said, "No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand.” She couldn't really explain what she did. It was all done by instinct. It was something embedded deep within her.
Maria Callas
Altruism is an instinct we've inherited from the small society where we knew for whom we work, whom we serve. When you pass from this, as I like to call it, 'concrete society', where we are guided by what we see, to the abstract society which far transcends our range of vision, it becomes necessary that we are guided not by the knowledge of the effect of what we do, but by some abstract symbols. Now, the only symbol which tells us where we can make the best contribution is profit. And in fact by pursuing profit, we are as altruistic as we can possibly be, because we extend our concern to people who are beyond our range of personal conception. This is a condition which makes it possible to produce what I call an extended order, an order which is not determined by our aim, by our knowing what are the most urgent needs, but by an impersonal mechanism which by a system of communication puts a label on certain things which is fully impersonal.
Friedrich Hayek
I don't believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That's a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn't express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don't know what I believe, because it's instinctive, and how can you describe an instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a power that demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that though we may writhe and squirm we have to submit, for the power is ourselves.
W. Somerset Maugham
Whenever I'm faced with a difficult choice, my approach has always been to make an estimate of the situation- a familiar military process. What's the situation? What's the mission? What are the different courses of action? Which looks most likely to succeed? Now, follow your informed instinct, decide, and execute forcefully; throw the mass of your forces and energy behind the choice. Then take a deep breath and hope it works, remembering that "hope is a bad supper, but makes a good breakfast."
Colin Powell
And no doubt it is easy thus to circumvent a child with catchwords, but it may be questioned how far it is effectual. An instinct in his breast detects the quibble, and a voice condemns it. He will instantly submit, privately hold the same opinion. For even in this simple and antique relation of the mother and the child, hypocrisies are multiplied.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The realization that our mental functioning is largely irrational was arrived at by several thinkers at the same time, including Friedrich Nietzsche... Freud, who was much influenced by both Darwin and Nietzsche... was its most profound and articulate exponent. ...Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele also discovered and explored new aspects of our unconscious mental life. They understood women better than Freud... and they saw more clearly than Freud the importance of an infant's bonding to its mother. They even realized the significance of the aggressive instinct earlier than Freud did. ...Plato discussed unconscious knowledge ...pointing out that much of our knowledge is inherent in the psyche in latent form. ...Hermann von Helmholtz... advanced the idea that the unconscious plays a critical role in human visual perception.
Eric Kandel
Our instinct has outrun our theory in this matter; for while we still insist upon free will and sin, we make allowance for individuals who have gone wrong, on the very ground of provocation, of temptation, of bad education, of infirm character. By and by philosophy will follow, and so at last we may hope for a true theory of morals. It is curious to watch, in the history of religious beliefs, the gradual elimination of this monster of moral evil. The first state of mankind is the unreflecting state. The nature is undeveloped, looking neither before nor after; it acts on the impulse of the moment, and is troubled with no weary retrospect, nor with any notions of a remote future which present conduct can affect; and knowing neither good nor evil, better or worse, it does simply what it desires, and is happy in it. It is the state analogous to the early childhood of each of us, and is represented in the common theory of Paradise - the state of innocence.
James Anthony Froude
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex.
T. E. Lawrence
It dawned on me then that Nick was proud of himself. Proud of what we had done. It may have been an unfamiliar feeling for him: that peculiarly delicious pride that comes from having taken a terrible risk to do something truly admirable. Of overcoming the instinct of self-presrvation: of fighting our fears and winning. It is the pride of discovering that one is not merely a bundle of reflexes and conditioned responses; that instead one is a thinking being, who can choose the right over the easy, and justice over safety.
Matthew Stover
