Quotes About Instinct

I collapsed into the chair. I am what might be called a slow starter. I tend to recapitulate phylogeny every morning. Basic desires inched their ways through my gray matter to close a connection. Slowly, I extended a cold-blooded member and clicked my talons against a couple of numbers. I croaked my desire for food and lots of coffee to the voice that responded. Half an hour later I would only have growled. Then I staggered off to the place of flowing waters to renew my contact with basics.

Get down, get naked, get savage.

By instinct, by blind faith, by knowledge of his father's private character—by everything but detailed knowledge of his business career

John D. Rockefeller had an unfailing knack for knowing who would help or hinder him in his career, an instinct only sharpened by time.

He doesn't act on analysis.

attraction, that's the farthest thing from an idea. That's an urge, an impulse, a force. It's subconscious, physical. You can't make everything cerebral.

The third guy was different. He was what you got when you ate squirrels for four generations. Smarter than a rat and tougher than a goat, and jumpier than either one.

Never hit a woman unless she's trying to kill you.

You see four guys bunched on a corner waiting for you, you either run like hell in the opposite direction without hesitation, or you keep on walking without slowing down or speeding up or breaking stride...Truth is, it's smarter to run. The best fight is the one you don't have. But I have never claimed to be smart. Just obstinate, and occasionally bad-tempered. Some guys kick cats. I keep walking. - Jack Reacher

Never revive a guy who had just pulled a gun on you.

I took my right hand off the wheel and reverse-punched him square between the eyes. It was a good solid smack. It put him right back to sleep. Manual anesthetic. He stayed out all the way back to the post.

Street-fighting's first rule: there are no rules.

Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.

People who say no right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying no but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add sorry or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say, Sorry, no, why, what happened?

No one expects a head butt. Humans don't hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight. The guy went down like an empty suit.

Two choices, as always: fight or flight. We were on 56th Street's southern sidewalk. I could have run straight across the road and tried to get away. But Leonid and his pal were probably faster than me. The law of averages. Most humans are faster than me. The old lady in the summer dress was probably faster than me. Her old gray mutt was probably faster than me.

They figured they would eat in California. Which would make them hungry, but Reacher didn't mind being hungry. he believed hunger kept him sharp. He believed is stimulated creativity in the brain. Another old evolutionary legacy. If you're hungry, you work out a smarter way to get the next woolly mammoth, today, not tomorrow.

Reacher's personal rule of thumb was never to revive a guy who had just pulled a gun on him. He was fairly inflexible on the matter.

He had seen the herd instinct at work, the anonymity, the removal of inhibition, the implied permissions of collective action. He had seen that an angry crowd was the most dangerous animal on the face of the earth.

If you see something scary you should stand up and walk toward it. Not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.

Face it. The pathology meter was twitching.

I know they're true." "Because?" "Human nature," he said. "You know how it is. Whatever your intentions, if you have the ability to do something, then you will do it, sooner or later. The temptation is always there, and it can't be resisted forever. Don't tell me you think any different.

When your instinct tells you something's wrong, then something's wrong. Always listen to your gut. It's what will save you from getting shoved into the back of some thug's car.

Reacher defaulted to his instinctive position, which was to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.