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Instinct Quotes

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Instinct Quotes

“The Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God. But this is knowledge which Christians today largely lack: and that is one reason why our faith is so feeble and our worship so flabby... When a person in the church, let alone the person in the street, uses the word God, the thought is rarely of divine majesty.”

PersonsReasonUseTodayChristianChurchStreetsGreatnessDivineWorshipInstinctReason WhyMajestyVery PowerfulGreatness Of God
Author:J. I. Packer
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“There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.”

ForceBornCreativeOur LivesOriginalsInstinctRecoveryLiberationRenewalBorn AgainNewnessCreative Power
Book:Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation
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“The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.”

KnowsWayMomentsFactsCoursesOpportunityAbilityKnow HowPossibilityMedicineInstinctGutsFragileImperfectProbabilityGut Instinct
Book:Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
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“It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.”

IfsCountryDoneFormSexNaturalExampleTerribleThousandNormalResponsibleErrorsInstinctImpulseCrushPreoccupationSuppressionPuritanMorbidPerversion
Book:Moonchild
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“How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.”

MenShouldArtDifferentFactsFormCuttingMinutesDramaPaperTrainingRemainsSellsDancingInstinctMeaningfulConsumersDramaticGentlemanGoodsControlledTwelveFifteenToiletsRabbitsInterruptedProceedingToilet Paper
Author:Rod Serling
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“You've got to struggle against the pollution of intelligence in order to become an animal with very sharp instincts - a sort of intuitive medium - so that to photograph becomes a magical act, and slowly other more suggestive images begin to appear behind the visible image, for which the photographer cannot be held responsible.”

OrderAnimalBehindsStrugglePhotographyResponsibleInstinctPhotographerPhotographMediumsVisiblePollutionIntuitive
Author:Robert Doisneau
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“When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images.' The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts.”

ThinkingFirstsIdeasDifferentIndividualAttitudeVisionStepsSourcePerceptionConsciousConceptsInstinctRationalRecognitionSensualFirst StepsSymbolic
Author:Wolfgang Pauli
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“Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling - feelings don't help much when you're in the lions' den or hanging on a wooden Cross. Faith is not inferred from the happy way things work. It is an act of will, a choice, based on the unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ”

WayMeanPersonsHelpingFeelingsLyingChoicesJesusChristSacrificeJesus ChristCrossesInstinctObedienceWorking ItLionsHanging OnDensUnbreakable
Author:Elisabeth Elliot
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“Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

MenMayDesireFoundWishEmotionInstinctSatisfactionPossessionAccomplishTendenciesBarriersUrgesDislikePrimalInhibitionsObituaryInsurmountableOverpowering
Author:Clarence Darrow
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“With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.”

SelfFormCommunityEconomicWasteRegardInstinctWesternMotiveExceptionCivilizedStrongestPreservationPersistentSelf PreservationPropensityEmulation
Author:Thorstein Veblen
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“The entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement - from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inborn behavior toward acquired knowledge. A half-grown panther abandoned in the wilderness will grow up to be a perfectly normal panther. But a half-grown child similarly abandoned will grow up into an unrecognizable savage, unfit for normal society. Yet there are those who insist the opposite: that we are creatures of instinct, like wolves.”

ChildrenHumanityGrowsAnimalHalfGrowing UpMovementCreaturesBehaviorNormalOppositesInstinctRationalWildernessAbandonedSavagesInexorablePanthersRational ThoughtPerfectly NormalAnimal InstinctGrown Children
Author:Philipp Meyer
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“Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge once called the mighty alphabet of the universe.”

MenLongSaidWarSeemsRememberUniverseWalksAnimalRolesReaderMessagesInstinctShoesAncientBeachComparisonUrgesRefugeeGarmentsAlphabetHomesickTimberSeaweedBereft
Author:Loren Eiseley
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“Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.”

InspirationalHumansMayChildrenSoulKidsAbleYoungSexLove IsEmotionTeachSorrowCreaturesRootsFunctionSafetyInstinctDivinityRighteousnessParenthoodVentureHuman SoulBarrenInsultedRepressedUnafraid
Book:The Journey's Echo: Selections
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“Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.”

WayHumansHeartArtEndsMatterStoriesJoyDesireSidesPiecesPossibilityConflictLogicInstinctRecoveryEach DayHuman HeartGrammarThings That MatterOnly Thing That Matters
Author:Colum McCann
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“Prior to the advent of the civilization of the Third Estate (mercantilism, capitalism), the social ethics that was religiously sanctioned in the West consisted in realizing one’s being and in achieving one’s own perfection within the fixed parameters that one’s individual nature and the group to which one belonged clearly defined. Economic activity, work, and profit were justified only in the measure in which they were necessary for sustenance and to ensure the dignity of an existence conformed to one’s own estate, without the lower instinct of self-interest or profit coming first.”

FirstsSelfIndividualSocialInterestRealizingExistenceGroupsEconomicAchieveCivilizationActivityEthicsCapitalismDignityPerfectionThirdsInstinctWestProfitDefinedFixedEstatesJustifiedSelf InterestAdventSustenanceParameters
Author:Julius Evola
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