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Instinct Quotes

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Instinct Quotes

“There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day.”

GivingHumansHappensPainPastFacesFoundWinningDifferencesHuman BeingsVictoryBattleLimitsLosingNegativeLuckInstinctDefeatAthleteOpponentsWinning And LosingYou Can Win
Author:Jesse Owens
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“All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole.... Wordsworth is right: there is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition.”

KnowsWholeBodyGrowsProcessPlansEvolutionWeaponsInstinctSpeciesPossessionImpulseBehaviourAdequateUsageInhibitionsWordsworth
Book:King Solomon's ring: new light on animal ways
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“Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it.”

BookEyeFilmFormYoungCultureParentLevelsSuccessfulViolenceArmsIndustryInstinctVideoTreatmentInterfereAdolescencePowerlessTextureSchizophreniaAmbivalenceYoung Parents
Author:C. Sommerville
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“I never considered myself a good photographer. I still don't. I thought of myself as a hard worker. My camera was a sponge and I had an instinct that athletes have - anticipation. Photography really represents an enormous amount of anticipation - understanding what might be there the next moment and being prepared for it.”

StillsHardMomentsMightNextUnderstandingHard WorkAmountPhotographyCamerasPreparedInstinctWorkersPhotographerAthleteEnormousAnticipationSpongesHard Worker
Author:Lawrence Schiller
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“There is a certain point of unity within the self, and between the self and its world, certain complicity and magnetic mating, a certain harmony, that conscious mind and will cannot direct. Perhaps analysis and the separate mastery of each element are required before the instincts are ready to assume command, but only at first. Command by instinct is swifter, subtler, deeper, more accurate, more in touch with reality than command by conscious mind. The discovery takes one's breath away.”

WorldMindFirstsSelfRealityCertainReadyElementsConsciousDiscoveryDirectHarmonyBreathsAssumingUnityInstinctDeeperCommandAnalysisMasteryAccurateMagneticConscious MindComplicityMating
Book:The Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Baskets, Balls, and the Consecration of the American Spirit
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“To write honestly and with conviction anything about the migration of birds, one should oneself have migrated. Somehow or other we should dehumanize ourselves, feel the feel of feathers on our body and wind in our wings, and finally know what it is to leave abundance and safety and daylight and yield to a compelling instinct, age-old, seeming at the time quite devoid of reason and object.”

KnowsFeelsShouldWritingReasonBodyAgeObjectsWindBirdSafetyWingsInstinctOneselfConvictionHonestlyAbundanceYieldCompellingFeathersDaylightSeemingMigration
Book:A Naturalist's Life of New York
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“The Republican party must break with its long-established instinct for caution and make a bold stand for first principles of freedom and constitutional limitations on government - from full repeal of Obamacare to rolling back multitrillion-dollar deficits. This is not so much a reproach of past Republican conduct as it is a recognition of new opportunities.”

FirstsLongGovernmentPastOpportunityPartyPrinciplesBreakRepublicanDollarsInstinctRecognitionLimitationRollingRepublican PartyCautionDeficitObamacareReproachNew Opportunity
Author:Tony Blankley
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“With the best intentions, the job of acting can become a display of accumulated bad habits, trapped instincts and blocked energies. Working with the Alexander Technique has given me sightings of another way... Mind and body, work and life together. Real imaginative freedom.”

WayMindRealBodyTogetherJobsEnergyGivenActingHabitIntentionInstinctTechniqueDisplayTrappedImaginativeAnother WayMind And BodyBad HabitsBlockedLife TogetherBest IntentionsWork And LifeBody Work
Author:Alan Rickman
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“For most problems found in mathematics textbooks, mathematical reasoning is quite useful. But how often do people find textbook problems in real life? At work or in daily life, factors other than strict reasoning are often more important. Sometimes intuition and instinct provide better guides; sometimes computer simulations are more convenient or more reliable; sometimes rules of thumb or back-of-the-envelope estimates are all that is needed.”

PeopleImportantRealSometimesProblemFoundNeededComputerMathematicsInstinctIntuitionGuidesReal LifeFactorsMathematicalReasoningDaily LifeStrictConvenientThumbsFacts Of LifeTextbooksEnvelopesSimulation
Author:Lynn Steen
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“It would be hard to conceive a system of instincts more nicely adjusted, where the constituents should represent or support one another better. The husband has an interest in protecting the wife, she in serving the husband. The weaker gains in authority and safety, the wilder and more unconcerned finds a help-mate at home to take thought of his daily necessities. Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.”

ShouldChildrenHardHelpingHomeWould BeParentInterestMemoriesSupportWifeHusbandAuthorityGainsSafetyInstinctImmortalityServingMatesConstituentsWilderVicariousUnconcerned
Book:The Life of Reason: Human Understanding
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“The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon.”

MayHas BeensArtLyingBrainTeachingArt IsShadowInstinctApplicationAcademicVenusMisledCanonNymphsParthenon
Author:Pablo Picasso
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“Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant.”

PeopleLongOrderUniverseTeachCryKingsUnderstoodDiedMovedInstinctTyrannyImmortalRepublicTyrantsCriedReignSublimeDespotismSuccessorsVersailles
Author:Maximilien Robespierre
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“I believed the people had a true instinct in most matters of government when left alone. That they were not swayed, as specially favoured individuals were, by personal interest, but rather by a sense of what best served the common good. That they recognized the truth when it was put before them, and that a leader can guide so long as he kept to the right lines. I did not think it was a mark of leadership to try to make the people do what one wanted them to do.”

PeopleThinkingTryingLongMatterGovernmentWantedIndividualLeftInterestLinesCommonLeaderMarkInstinctGuidesCommon GoodLeft AlonePersonal Interest
Author:William Lyon Mackenzie King
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“The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to 'educate', and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole.”

LongHardWholeRealityPleasurePrinciplesSucceedEgoOvercomingMethodInstinctStartingEducatePersistOrganismsEmployed
Book:Beyond the Pleasure Principle
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“Eisenhower managed to begin the Vietnam war by not following his normal instinct of staying out of mischief. In his memoirs, he tells us why we didn't honor the Geneva accords and hold elections in Vietnam: because some 80 percent of the country would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. This is very candid. The sort of thing one might have found in Stalin'smemoirs, had he not made ghosts even of ghosts.”

MadeWarCountryMightFoundHonorNormalPercentElectionInstinctFollowingGhostMemoirStayingVietnamAccordVietnam WarMischiefCandidGeneva
Author:Gore Vidal
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“I found that with Rooney, her instincts in films was always to underplay and to sort of reduce down what was necessary to bring you in - a sense of economy, a sense of scale, which just seemed to understand the medium so well. When you see that in a younger actor, I always think it speaks to incredible knowledge. I can't exactly figure out where that comes from, that confidence to know how to be quiet.”

ThinkingKnowsWellsI CanFilmActorsFoundSpeakKnow HowEconomyFiguresQuietInstinctIncrediblesScalesMediumsRooney
Author:Todd Haynes
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“There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.”

MenEmotionClearPsychologyStreetsHe ManArgumentInstinctSeekingIntellectAppealsYieldTacticsNo PointUnimportantCrudeSubordinatesPsychological Warfare
Author:Joseph Goebbels
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