Quotes About Intrinsic

The term "autotelic" derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.

Children who grow up in family situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible.

If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one's attention.

Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. It is no longer necessary to struggle for goals that always seem to recede into the future, to end each boring day with the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, something good will happen. Instead of forever straining for the tantalizing prize dangled just out of reach, one begins to harvest the genuine rewards of living.

Many people give up on learning after they leave school because thirteen or twenty years of extrinsically motivated education is still a source of unpleasant memories.

Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically.

Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.

We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.

I am more than a face and a body. I am Hira. But no one wishes to know Hira.

Perhaps it is only when we realize and celebrate the intrinsic value of every human life that celebrity - true celebrity - shines most brightly. On our deathbeds, none of us will speak of the jobs we've held or the stuff we've acquired in our lifetimes; here bull markets and Nielsen ratings are irrelevant. A life-threatening illness jettisons pretension in no time flat. Death is the great equalizer. Death dares us to define what really matters.

The truth of the matter is that many health professionals have an intrinsic mistrust of nature. We are taught as pediatricians, for example, that a baby is sick unless proved otherwise. This isn't usually said in so many words, but it is the message behind what we do. The fear of litigation plays a large part in this. As pediatricians, we're always assuming the worst,

Armies, like human beings, are not capable of what is not in them.

Running taught me valuable lessons. Training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

Science... denude(s) all religious beliefs... denigrating them as irrational forms of superstition or myth regardless of their intrinsic rationality or value.

For a cat is just a cat, and cannot change its nature.

What's the point of doing something good if nobody's watching?

What you're calling evil, is part of human nature.

The tendency of man's nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downwards. Now by striking water and causing it to leap up, you may make it go.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.

Power! Did you ever hear of men being asked whether other souls should have power or not? It is born in them. You may dam up the fountain of water, and make it a stagnant marsh, or you may let it run free and do its work; but you cannot say whether it shall be there; it is there. And it will act, if not openly for good, then covertly for evil; but it will act.

In every aspect of our lives, we are always asking ourselves, How am I of value? What is my worth? Yet I believe that worthiness is our birthright.