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Instinct Quotes

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Instinct Quotes

“To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. This instinct, 'tis true, arises from past observation and experience; but can anyone give the ultimate reason, why past experience and observation produces such an effect, any more than why nature alone should produce it?”

GivingShouldIdeasSoulMatterReasonPastScienceCertainNatureQualitySituationWonderfulEffectsProduceParticularUltimateRelationTrainInstinctAriseObservationReason WhyCarriePast Experiences
Book:A Treatise of Human Nature
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“One night she hid the pink cotton scarf from her raincoat in the pillowcase when the nurse came around to lock up her drawers and closets for the night. In the dark she had made a loop and tried to pull it tight around her throat. But always just as the air stopped coming and she felt the rushing grow louder in her ears, her hands would slacken and let go, and she would lie there panting for breath, cursing the dumb instinct in her body that fought to go on living”

MadeBodyHandsLyingNightGrowsFeltDarkAirGoes OnLetting GoEarsBreathsSuicideInstinctDumbThroatNurseLocksClosetsOne NightRushingCottonDrawersLoopsSelf HarmCursingScarvesLock UpPillowcases
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.”

MenMayLittlesHumanityStrongAnimalIndustryHabitRootsPhilosophicalInstinctCrueltyCustomsVeganAnimal RightsProtectedAnimal WelfareAnimal CrueltyInhumanityHuman AnimalAnimal LifeAnimal TestingKindness To AnimalsHuman CrueltyThoughtlessnessAnimal InstinctAnimals And Society
Author:Albert Schweitzer
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“The religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more "enlightened" age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.”

MenNeedsRealAgeSpiritualHumanityReligiousAnswersEnvironmentSourceDevelopmentMoralityConceptsUltimateMereInstinctPassingPassingsAll TimeOutcomesEnlightenedUrgesEthicalPrimitivePhasesSpiritual DevelopmentCredulityBasic Needs
Book:The Principles of State and Government in Islam
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“The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”

PeopleMenHumansMeanChoicesGrowthDecisionCourageCreaturesCommitmentDignityCatBasesInstinctMultitudesIdenticalOaksKittenAcornsNo Commitment
Book:The Courage to Create
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“...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.”

FeelsBelieveReasonEnoughScienceI BelieveResultsKnowledgeVirtueResearchDiscoveryInstinctPracticalsBiographiesScientific ResearchScientific Discovery
Book:The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1847-1850
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“His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.”

FirstsLittlesBookScienceChanceViewsKnowledgeKnowingLearningTheoryAmountLaborMiracleMethodBlindInstinctSorryExtremesSavedPracticalsWitnessMathematicalAccomplishmentCoveredContemptCentsImmenseInventorCalculationsDoingsProdigiousBook Learning
Author:Nikola Tesla
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“Psychogenesis has led to man. Now it effaces itself, relieved or absorbed by another and a higher function-the engendering and subsequent development of the mind, in one word noogenesis. When for the first time in a living creature instinct perceived itself in its own mirror, the whole world took a pace forward.”

MenWorldMindFirstsWholeScienceDevelopmentHigherCreaturesFirst TimeFunctionMirrorsInstinctWhole WorldPaceOne WordRelievedLiving Creatures
Book:The Phenomenon of Man
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“So far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life,-sensation,-instinct,-the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason,-and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself, presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter.”

MenMindMatterReasonEarthScienceHigherPeriodsInstinctTendenciesSensationsIntroductionDominionMaterialistic
Book:The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation by Charles Lyell
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“"God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", "beyond" - Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them? I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers - at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!”

ThinkingKnowsMeanChildrenSoulMatterEnoughCoursesAnswersResultsAttentionAtheismEventsConceptsInstinctBottomPositive AtheismRedemptionImmortalityExceptionThinkerDevotedGrossProhibitionChildlikeQuestionableInquisitive
Book:Basic Writings of Nietzsche
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“How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.”

KnowsMenWorldYearsMindWellsReasonBeliefReligiousBrainAtheismEssenceInstinctWorthyPositive AtheismAbsurdAcquireQuartersImpressedRemarksAgnosticismReligious BeliefYears Of LifeImpressionable
Book:The Descent of Man
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“The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction ... One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgements of value follow directly from his wihes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.”

KnowsMenHumansSelfSeemsCertainValuesCultureSupportOne ThingDevelopmentSucceedIllusionArgumentDestructionInstinctSpeciesJudgementAggressionSelf DestructionDisturbanceHuman Species
Book:The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud
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“I don't think I would use a gun, but who knows what a person would do in certain circumstances? My instincts are that I don't see the point of using violence to oppose violence, but many people would and the Brotherhood know that. For this reason they want an unarmed population. Adolph Hitler introduced gun laws shortly before he began to transport people to his concentration camps.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantPersonsReasonUseLawCertainViolenceCircumstancesGunInstinctPopulationConcentrationCampsBrotherhoodGun ControlTransportConcentration CampUnarmedGun LawAdolph Hitler
Book:The Biggest Secret
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“Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation.”

MadeSelfValuesSoundChristianityTakenHighestIntellectualLowsIdealsWeakInstinctTemptationFacultyMisleadVigorousRepresentingAntagonism
Book:Writings of Nietzsche: Volume 1
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