Quotes About Instinct

Frequently we imagine that we are behaving in a particular way because such behaviour accords with some abstract, lofty code of moral principles, when in reality all we are doing is obeying a deeply ingrained and long 'forgotten' set of purely imitative impressions.

of eighteen kittens reared in the company of rodents, only three became rodent-killers later on. The other fifteen could not be trained to kill later by seeing other cats killing. For them the rodents had become 'family' and were no longer 'prey'. Even the three killers would not attack rodents of the same species as the one with which they were reared.

ALL ANIMALS PERFORM actions and most do little else. A great many also make artefacts

As a species we may be technologically clever and philosophically brilliant, but we have not lost our animal property of being physically active;

Animals spent their entire lives focused on survival. Humans could look beyond survival, seek meaning in life, harm others to save themselves, help others by sacrificing themselves.

FEAR OF DEATH LEADS TO two kinds of fears as it transforms all living creatures either into predator or prey. The fear of scarcity haunts the predator as it hunts for food; the fear of predation haunts the prey as it avoids being hunted. Nature has no favourites. Both the lion and the deer have to run in order to survive.

It is about realising that in every human being is a frightened beast, seeking survival and significance, and knowing very well that humans can outgrow this beast as they empathise with others.

those who live by the law of the jungle must be ready to die by the law of the jungle.

Herons and cranes often stand on one foot, to fool fish into believing their solitary legs are reeds. When a fish comes near a heron's leg, it immediately catches hold of its hapless prey.

No beast of prey can kill its victim without frightening him first. In fact, no animal perishes until its destroyer strikes terror into its heart. To put it succinctly, an animals fear kills it before its enemy gives it the final blow.

Fear is taught by grown up men and beasts to their young. Once we learn to be afraid, we rarely shake off the habit, and I believe our fear frightens other beasts causing them to attack us.

Marry, don't marry,' Auntie Aya says as we unfold layers of dough to make an apple strudel. Just don't have your babies unless it's absolutely necessary .' How do I know if it's necessary?' She stops and stares ahead, her hands gloved in flour. 'Ask yourself, Do I want a baby or do I want to make a cake? The answer will come to you like bells ringing.' She flickers her fingers in the air by her ear. 'For me, almost always, the answer was cake .

When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.

When people have guns, you run in the other direction or you're meat. We have a half-dozen deer heads on the wall at home that can tell you that." "Or would," Howard added," if they weren't dead. And deer.

Why was it, she asked herself, that 'animals can sometimes subdue their predatory ways in only a few months, while humans, despite centuries of refinement, can quickly grow more savage than any beast.

Nature is not affected by finance. If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch your eyeball without blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.

If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.

We all know that, when caught off our guard, there comes a dark temptation from the depths of our lower selves, something atavistic stirs, and we think thoughts, or even do deeds, of which we would never have believed ourselves capable.

the people... they are church-broken, nation-broken -- they drink and pray and piss in the one place. Every man has a house-broken heart except the great man. The people love their church and know it, as a dog knows where he was made to conform, and there he returns by his instinct.

I might have known better, nothing is what everybody wants, the world runs on that law. Personally, if I could, I would instigate Meat-Axe Day, and out of the goodness of my heart I would whack your head off with a couple of others. Every man should be allowed one day and a hatchet just to ease his heart.

In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic.

another policy review sparked by George Bush's "gut instinct

Simon drove as if he knew something about physics that Einstein hadn't thought of and God never intended. If nature abhorred a vacuum, Simon positively loathed one, and rushed to fill in the tiniest gap in the heavy flow of speeding traffic. He passed on the right, left, center, and all variations in between, and the Keble responded as if involved in some kind of blood compact with its human master.

You can't invite wolves to dinner and not expect them to eat.