Quotes About Instinct

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

The heart knows no logic beyond need and desire; the head has no senses except the common and the pragmatic. Neither, frankly, is particularly useful in love, anyway.

I'd bite myself and take out my feelings with my teeth.

I can't help it," I said at last, "I'm a born lever-puller.

Hoorah, all things lycanthropic.

Already there was talk of abortion, which Chesterton described as a "more than usually barbaric form of birth control," which goes against every instinct and "the common conscience of men."88 He said it should be called by its real name: "murder at its worst; not only the brand of Cain but the brand of Herod.

simultaneously. Instinctively

I had this urge to give Andrea a kiss!

Cats' whiskers are not only to make them look pretty, they are their radar system. Because the whiskers are sensitive, they notify the cat if a gap is too narrow. If the whiskers can get through a gap, so can the cat.

He scissored his legs, pulled hers out from under her, and brought her to the ground. Then, on some stupid impulse, he rolled on top of her to immobilize her, like he would have with an enemy combatant. She stared up at him, wide-eyed, her long hair spread over the carpet of autumn leaves. She was soft against all his hard places. "Maybe I could get into this one-with-nature business.

I just go where my heart tells me, where my gut tells me to go, where I'm enjoying my life the most, where I feel like I can have the most success. I've truly enjoyed my experience in NASCAR, to the point that I want to do it full time.

The limbic system is essentially devoted to moving us rapidly toward or away from things in life that are relevant to our survival.

As Albert Einstein said, "One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts.

They demonstrated that a series of small, humble exchanges—Anybody have any ideas? Tell me what you want, and I'll help you—can unlock a group's ability to perform. The key, as we're about to learn, involves the willingness to perform a certain behavior that goes against our every instinct: sharing vulnerability.

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.

When we are in the grip of craving or fury, head-over-heals in love our recoiling in dread, it is the limbic system that has us in its grip.

I'm convinced that Type I is the natural state—the default setting—for most human beings. By contrast, Type X behavior is something people learn through their experiences

You are designed to want something that will hurt you. And you cannot help wanting it. You cannot stop wanting it. It is in your design. And when you finally find it, this thing will burn you up. This thing will destroy you.

What the hell, I think. My pistol is on my hips and my balls are between my legs.

The underlying logic of a living thing is its own survival.

This is why Stern picked you at the last minute. On a damned hunch.

I don't think. I react. My action is divorced from all emotion and logic. It isn't human or inhuman-it just is. I believe that choices like these, made in absolute crisis, come from our True Selves, bypassing all experience and thought. These kinds of choices are the closest thing to fate that human beings will ever experience.