Quotes About Compulsion

Habits can be good or bad, whereas addictions are always bad.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.

My obsession with accumulation, which at times has taken on the whisper of a psychic illness - as anyone who has experienced the ode to the Collyer brothers that is my 'Vogue' office will concur - began in infancy.

In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways.

Food compulsion isn't a character disorder; it's a chemical disorder.

See, I will always shop, and that's sort of a problem. Clothes are always exploding out of my closet!

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

I have to shave every day. If I don't, it's sort of like going to bed without brushing your teeth for me - but I'm a crazy person so maybe that's why.

My experience is that when one is in psychosis, you're on a mission and nothing is going to stop you. At some level your brain is telling you you probably shouldn't be doing this, but you're on a mission.

It was a convulsion of obscenity, a spasm of lasciviousness – an exudation of secret hungers framed by compulsion: desire without pleasure, pain mated awfully to lust. It was like watching a soul stripped naked, and all its dark and unmentionable secrets laid bare.

The man was half-insane . . . I saw then what living with something like this could do to you. The obsession had taken over his entire life.

How much of the total educational effort is devoted to teaching people who do not have a motivation, other than responding to compulsion, to learn what we are trying to teach them? Is there any way out of this dilemma (if you concede that it is a dilemma) other than Ivan Illich's revolutionary approach?

You should know our mania for building is stronger than ever," Catherine wrote to Grimm in 1779. "It is a diabolical thing. It consumes money and the more you build, the more you want to build. It's a sickness like being addicted to alcohol.

He was one of those people who feel so compelled to fulfill duties that they go plunging into great collapsing edifices constructed entirely of disagreeable duties simply out of the fear that some secret, inconspicuous duty might somehow elude them.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

Restriction promotes addiction.

Any demand is frigid until desire, until neurosis forms in it.

It's true.' 'Then why did you snatch him?' 'We had to. We don't have any choice.' 'Everyone

Strange as it may sound, in this part of the argument it appears to be easier to persuade the multitude to accept the rule of the philosophers than to persuade the philosophers to rule the multitude: the philosophers cannot be persuaded, they can only be compelled to rule the cities.

An ordinary home about to be shattered. I'd rather cut off my hand than look into Belinda Horner's eyes and ask her to identify a body I'm certain is her daughter. But this is my job, and I don't have a choice.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.