Quotes About Pugnacity

have the syndrome, Mrs. MacNeil. For example, the untidiness; the pugnacity; behavior that's socially embarrassing; the automatism; and of course, the seizures that made the bed shake. Usually, that's followed by either wetting the bed or vomiting, or both,

Leaving aside these experiences or hallucinations of creativity and growth or self-criticism and self-overcoming — we shall return to them — it appears that most of what I have been calling Idolatry and Fundamentalism can be biologically described as normal primate behavior — mechanical imprinting and conditioning combined with normal territorial pugnacity.

Sheridan had a pugnacity that refused to quit, and Sherman described him as "a persevering terrier dog, honest, modest, plucky and smart enough." Quite unlike Grant

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.

The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism.

We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic—a moral code independent of religion—strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities?