Top Instinct Quotes
Browse top 1168 famous quotes and sayings about Instinct by most favorite authors.
Favorite Instinct Quotes
1. "Intuition is the wisdom formed by feeling and instinct - a gift of knowing without reasoning... Belief is ignited by hope and supported by facts and evidence - it builds alignment and creates confidence. Belief is what sets energy in motion and creates the success that breeds more success."
Author: Angela Ahrendts
Author: Angela Ahrendts
2. "You picked the seats you did for a reason, right? Familiarity. Too bad the best sleuths avoid familiarity. It dulls the investigative instinct."
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick
3. "Intuition is not a single way of knowing - it's our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we've developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faithand reason."
Author: Brené Brown
Author: Brené Brown
4. "Confucianism is all about tempering your instincts with intellectual discipline, with book learning."
Author: Brian Reynolds Myers
Author: Brian Reynolds Myers
5. "We've been trained since kindergarten: Be nice, be kind, share, put on a smile. So we're conditioned to squash our natural selfish instincts, and that's the right thing for society."
Author: Bryan Cranston
Author: Bryan Cranston
6. "Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires - one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys."
Author: C.S. Lewis
Author: C.S. Lewis
7. "I used my instincts. It's very easy to imagine how you'd feel, actually. I just had to tell the narrative."
Author: Christopher Eccleston
Author: Christopher Eccleston
8. "How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet--on the other hand--what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt..."
Author: David Guterson
Author: David Guterson
9. "When anything is wrong with your child, your first instinct is to make it better."
Author: Didi Conn
Author: Didi Conn
10. "Making movies is all about instinct."
Author: Dino De Laurentiis
Author: Dino De Laurentiis
11. "Purity does not mean crushing the instincts but having the instincts as servants and not the master of the spirit."
Author: Eric Liddell
Author: Eric Liddell
12. "My God, she's good-looking!" said Mr. Sandwood, who was just over thirty."Good-looking!" cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, "she always looks as if she wanted to be kissed! Turning those big cow-eyes on every calf in town!"It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the maternal instinct."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
13. "Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face."
Author: Fannie Flagg
Author: Fannie Flagg
14. "You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost."
Author: Francis Ford Coppola
Author: Francis Ford Coppola
15. "The Lurking Fear:Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined condors of purple fulgurous sky... formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous over-nourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion... insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon arcades choked with fungous vegetation... Heaven be thanked for the instinct which led me unconscious to places where men dwell; to the peaceful village that slept under the calm stars of clearing skies."
Author: H.P. Lovecraft
Author: H.P. Lovecraft
16. "What has come to light is neither nihilism nor cynicism, as one might have expected, but a quite extraordinary confusion over elementary questions of morality—as if an instinct in such matters were truly the last thing to be taken for granted in our time."
Author: Hannah Arendt
Author: Hannah Arendt
17. "Art was a union of the father and mother worlds, of mind and blood. It might start in utter sensuality and lead to total abstraction; then again it might originate in pure concept and end in bleeding flesh. Any work of art that was truly sublime, not just a good juggler's trick; that was filled with the eternal secret, like the master's madonna; every obviously genuine work of art had this dangerous, smiling double face, was male-female, a merging of instinct and pure spirituality."
Author: Hermann Hesse
Author: Hermann Hesse
18. "8 April 1891The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!"
Author: Jean Lorrain
Author: Jean Lorrain
19. "...that renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left?"
Author: Jennifer Haigh
Author: Jennifer Haigh
20. "The karmic cycle, when someone screws up really bad and hurts you. Our first instinct is to hurt back, or refuse to forgive."
Author: Jennifer Probst
Author: Jennifer Probst
21. "Life is full of toil, sacrifice, and pain, and from the time we stop growing, we know that we've begun dying. We watch helplessly as year by year, our bodies age and fail, while our survival instincts compel us to keep on going-which means living with the terrifying knowledge that ultimately death is inescapable."
Author: Jim Butcher
Author: Jim Butcher
22. "Looking back on those games, I probably hustled out of position as much as I hustled into position since I really never had any real training. I was working on instincts alone."
Author: Jim Evans
Author: Jim Evans
23. "I think just because life is hard, it does seem fun to have a break and laugh about things, so I think in the end, my instincts go there."
Author: Joan Cusack
Author: Joan Cusack
24. "An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life."
Author: Jose Marti
Author: Jose Marti
25. "It's hard to learn to listen to your instincts. It's easier for some who have a natural ability to follow that little voice inside, but for others it takes practice."
Author: Judith Victoria Douglas
Author: Judith Victoria Douglas
26. "He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense."
Author: Julian Barnes
Author: Julian Barnes
27. "Jericho? You're smiling." "I am?" He stroked her cheek again. Warm tingles coursed through her, and instinctively, she followed his touch a second time. His smile widened. "I must be happy." (...) "You're quite handsome when you're happy." Jericho trailed one finger under her chin. "I'll make a note of your preference."
Author: Karen Witemeyer
Author: Karen Witemeyer
28. "Doubt is a skill. credulity ,by contrast, appears to be something very like an instinct"
Author: Kathryn Schulz
Author: Kathryn Schulz
29. "It was as natural as breathing to all human beings, and to all warm-blooded creatures, for that matter, to wish quick deaths for monsters. This was an instinct."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
30. "Monk worked on his remaining Intertect cases at his dining table while I tried to hone my detecting instincts by reading the Murder, She Wrote novel he bought in Mill Valley.I can't say that I learned much about investigative procedure but I discovered that you should stay far away from Cabot Cove. That tiny New England village is deadlier than Beirut, South Central Los Angeles, and the darkest back alley in Juarez combined. Even though every killer eventually gets caught by Jessica Fletcher, I still wouldn't feel safe there. I'm surprised the old biddy walks around town unarmed."
Author: Lee Goldberg
Author: Lee Goldberg
31. "To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact. Our subliminal brain is invisible to us, yet it influences our conscious experience of the world in the most fundamental of ways: how we view ourselves and others, the meanings we attach to the everyday events of our lives, our ability to make the quick judgment calls and decisions that can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, and the actions we engage in as a result of all these instinctual experiences."
Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Author: Leonard Mlodinow
32. "My mum says, 'Go with your first instinct,' but this can lead to impulse buying!"
Author: Lindsay Lohan
Author: Lindsay Lohan
33. "A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story."
Author: Lynn Abbey
Author: Lynn Abbey
34. "I think we all want to find the love of our life and live our fantasies. What art student hasn't used his art to get girls? What journalists or actors haven't used their craft as well? It's a very human instinct to pursue."
Author: Max Minghella
Author: Max Minghella
35. "We try so hard because it is all we've ever known, I thought. We try to fit ourselves into this world so that we don't seem more different than different, an oddity in a sea of normality. We try because it is only instinct, but we obey because it is law."
Author: Nadège Richards
Author: Nadège Richards
36. "Women are not wrong if they react instinctively – often jealously – against their partner's interest in porn, since pornography is actually, neurologically, a woman's destructive rival for her man's sexual capabilities."
Author: Naomi Wolf
Author: Naomi Wolf
37. "What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble; what seemed like sympathy was the instinct to prevent trouble before it started. It was hard to see what growing older would mean to such a person. His emotions, from lack of exercise, had disappeared almost altogether. Adaptability and curiosity, he had found, did just as well."
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
38. "Instinct leads me to another flow"
Author: Queen Latifah
Author: Queen Latifah
39. "Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success."
Author: Quentin Blake
Author: Quentin Blake
40. "I have the kind of personality that I always look ahead than look at what's happened. It does help a lot, especially when you've done badly or you've failed. It's instinctive of me that I look at what's next, I look ahead a lot, and start preparing for that, in victory and in defeat."
Author: Rahul Dravid
Author: Rahul Dravid
41. "A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts."
Author: Richard Branson
Author: Richard Branson
42. "The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness."
Author: Sigmund Freud
Author: Sigmund Freud
43. "Drugs rob every person, man, woman, and child of their beauty. Drugs turn people into animals who can only respond to instincts. Drugs are so powerful they eradicate the God in both the taker and the giver."
Author: Sister Souljah
Author: Sister Souljah
44. "Every good story starts with a simple premise. This one begins with the notion of survival. The determination to live is both instinctive and ferocious. It often encourages compromise with evil. Only the Devil ever benefits from such a bargain."
Author: Taona Dumisani Chiveneko
Author: Taona Dumisani Chiveneko
45. "Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter."
Author: Tennessee Williams
Author: Tennessee Williams
46. "The snake who tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit was not the Devil, but her own instinctive nature saying, Honor your hunger and feed yourself."
Author: Terry Tempest Williams
Author: Terry Tempest Williams
47. "If they had had a different neighbour, one less sel-absorbed and more concerned for others, a man of normal, charitable instincts, their desperate state would not have gone unnoticed, their distress-signals would have been heard, and perhaps they would have been rescued by now. Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single, fateful world. They are les misérables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need for charity?"
Author: Victor Hugo
Author: Victor Hugo
48. "I don't know who you are; you could be an axe murderer for all I know. How am I supposed to trust you and follow you? For that matter, follow you where?" Gabe inquired."Search yourself, what do your instincts tell you?" Uri asked."That you're a crazy nut job and freaking me out!" Gabe snapped back."
Author: Wendy Owens
Author: Wendy Owens
49. "If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence."
Author: Will Cuppy
Author: Will Cuppy
50. "She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true… she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things."
Author: Willa Cather
Author: Willa Cather
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Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters."
Author: Brian McNaughton
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