Quotes About Instinct

Trust is a thing you know without words.

There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals.

Cualquier cosa era buena para humeceder la garganta; de dejas las cosas tal como estaba, podría acabar por consumir la sangre de mi cuerpo

Indeed, jealousy is an animal feeling, capable even of rising to murder. There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals.

Sean stood up and stepped toward me, ostensibly to show me the book. He was definitely invading my personal space, as I had learned in a Human Evolution class last summer, and I instinctively backed up till my legs hit the chair I had been sitting in. That just made him move in closer, until the grommets in the leather embossed the backs of my knees, and he finally tilted the book toward me.

Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems.

It makes me wonder which tendencies are decided by birth, and which by desire.

We call them feelings because we feel them. They don't start in our minds, they arise in our bodies

Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Pheromones are Earth's primordial idiom.

The idea of our own rationality...was convincing to us only because we so wished to be convinced. To any impartial observer, could such a thing exist, the sham was patent. Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it's our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient

Humans believed they thought things consciously when most of the time they were simply rationalizing instinctive reactions as basic as the amoeba's, and after those reactions had already taken place.

They said the world was divided into those folks who ran away from danger, and those who ran toward it.

My body's been here before a thousand times, and it gets on with the job without asking my brain if it has anything to say about opening fire.

When you're drowning, you don't stop to teach somebody else how to swim.

Press evenly," the praying mantis said, chewing off the wings of a fly.

conversation. He'd felt his gut clench at Emma's

Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es.

I've always wanted to kick a duck up the arse.

Terror is the instinct that tells you to run, dear God, run, she murmured. Run for your life. But it just makes you into meat. Predators take the ones who run. Horror is the mind-thing, the worm of knowledge you can't stop turning over no matter how awful it is. It grows in your mind and destroys you by your own intelligence.

Do you think horses like to race?

he had stayed...because something told him that this was the life that had to be lived out.

A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.