Quotes About Instinct

When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, 'animalistic' instinct.

Now it is human nature to want to eat to ones fill when hungry, to want to warm up when cold, to want to rest when tired. These all are a part of people's emotional nature.

All I could feel was this warm liquid running down my neck. You automatically think it's blood, it's all in split seconds, so I decided to say I didn't agree with him.

Natural selection shaped the human brain to be drawn toward aspects of nature that enhance our survival and reproduction, like verdant landscapes and docile creatures. There is no payoff to getting the warm fuzzies in the presence of rats, snakes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, herpes simplex and the rabies virus.

From a Darwinian perspective, it is clear what pain is doing. It's a warning: 'Don't do that again.' If you burn yourself, you're never going to pick up a live coal again.

Most of us know when we are about to react emotionally. We can feel it. Often there is a brief warning before the amygdala hijack. For some of us, it is butterflies in the stomach; for some, it is an increased heart rate, and for others, it is a feeling of agitation.

Warren Buffet told me once and he said always follow your gut. When you have that gut feeling, you have to go with don't go back on it.

I guess I'm just a natural warrior.

I think that there is a difference between men and women as a warrior and a nurturer... It's innate.

I am, by instinct, wary of revolutions. The gathering of the masses fills me with trepidation.

There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car.

That was basic hound logic, learned from Faffy: if you ran, you were prey.

Follow your inclination. It will take you to the thoughts you'd never known you'd had.

a woman with young children is not a woman but a mammal, salve, croon, water carrier

But even as she struck the bonds seemed to tighten, with each fresh blow to bind more securely. Mary now clung with every fibre of her sorely distressed and outraged being; with every memory that Stephen stirred; with every passion that Stephen had fostered; with every instinct of loyalty that Stephen had aroused to do battle with Martin.

Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them. The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard -- it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one's back for a moment.

the eyes see faster than the hand moves

Every instinct inside her cried out for her to rush back down the street, race up the three flights to her apartment, climb into her bed and yank the covers over her head.

W]e are all savages under the cloak that civilization fashions for us.

The fear factor is a very powerful weapon. It makes people do what they would not normally do. They would jump out from the 20th floor of a building to face certain death if the building is on fire because of the fear of getting burned alive. Both ways you die. But the fear of dying in a fire is stronger than the fear of dying from the fall. So they jump and die.Is that sensible? There is nothing sensible when it comes to fear. Fear overrides common sense.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

Never, never underestimate a politician's need to survive . . . I will not make the mistake of underestimating the political instinct of a Kashmiri, who is, additionally, Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter.