Top 1200 Instinct Quotes & Sayings

Trust your instinct. And if you can't tell what your instinct is telling you, learn how to peel back the noise in your life that is keeping you from hearing it.

I have replaced my instinct for secrecy with an instinct for confession.

I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.

The repression of virtuous instinct in the modern world is an incremental tragedy. Repress one instinct, and you repress many; other parts of consciousness go down, also.

Entrepreneurs typically have an instinct for smelling opportunity, but that same killer instinct can quickly turn to weakness when it becomes a distraction from primary goals.

Every GM will tell you it's an instinct. It's an instinct to be patient, to react, or act, or not to do anything at all. It just comes. What I can say is you must have a plan and a goal and a way to do things. At the end of the day, it's an instinct. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our superstitious reverence.

Sometimes I'll read things in the script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that role and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. My initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice.

Boxing brings out my aggressive instinct, not necessarily a killer instinct.

I think societal instinct much deeper than sex instinct — and societal repression much more devastating.

The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.

They teach you some things, but football is instinct sometimes. You just get the ball, and sometimes you dribble past three players and pass it; other times, you can shoot from far away. It's just instinct. If you feel something, just do it. I am free to do that.

Instinct is a great matter. I was now a coward on instinct.

The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is uncomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.

I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

We lost this animal instinct that we used to have. We use a very low percentage of our instinct.

Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face.

All over the world, relationships between men and women are very, very tricky and very difficult and you don't learn anything. It's not an exact science, so you can't learn anything. You're always going by instinct and your instinct betrays you because you want what you want when you want it.

The instinct to worship is hardly less strong than the instinct to eat.

Each of has a natural instinct to rise like a flame. Lets nurture that instinct

I always go by instinct and then wrestle with where by instinct brought me.

The best option that you can have as an actor is pure instinct and you should be able to protect your instinct. Information can either cloud your instinct or aid it.

Railing in other men may be a crime, But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transprose.

I always believe your instinct is the most correct instinct.

The thing a drama school can't give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can't be taught, and you have to have intuition. It's an essential ingredient.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

I had an instinct before and maybe now I don't have that instinct as much as knowing what to do, what shots to hit, where to place the ball, things like that.

The instinct of interest is the universal instinct of mankind.

It is very hard to say where you're going until you get there. That kind of thing is based very much on instinct. As a photographer, one of the most important lessons I have learnt is that you have to learn to listen to and trust your own instinct. It has helped to guide me - this far at least.

I think life is instinct, and I just really go by that. That's one of the things I've learned - to always trust my instinct and it's always served me well.

In each verse, a decision awaits us, and we can't choose to close our eyes and let instinct work on its own. Poetic instinct consists of an alert tension.

What I was doing when I was creating my werewolves is really basing them on a wild wolf pack, as much as possible. It's not as if being bitten brings you in, but what it does is that it strengthens that instinct for pack. It strengthens that instinct to need to be with others who are like you, and to form tight bonds, as an actual wolf pack does.

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire or spend the next week getting grass stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.

Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.

The instinct of acquisitiveness has more perverts, I believe, than the instinct of sex. At any rate, people seem to me odder about money than about even their amours.

The human instinct for self-preservation is strong. I know, because mine pulls at me, too, like the needle on a compass. And everybody - I've been reading some philosophy - everybody seems to agree that the instinct and responsibility of all humans is to take care of themselves first. You have the right to self-defense. You have the right to survive, if you can.

It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

I try to follow my instinct as a moviegoer and I do the thing I would love to see it at a movie. I'm like everyone, almost, I go to a movie once a week. I like every kind of film if it’s well made. I’m fine. I’m not a specialist fighting for a genre of film. You just have to follow your instinct.

...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.

It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.

I have one instinct stronger than any other thing in life, and that is the instinct for survival.

As an entrepreneur, you can have an instinct, and your instinct is right, but your idea you're substantiating that into is wrong, and the world is not ready for it.

I've always believed in instinct over intellect. The instinct is what you always knew; intellect is what you figure out.

Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.

Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct. Instinct is a lifesaver for sharks and entrepreneurs alike. Most people can recall times they ignored their gut only to regret it later. Learning to actually listen to your instinct is a great form of self-preservation. It's both incredibly easy and tough at the same time, but worth the effort to master.

Generosity is revolutionary, counter-instinctual. Our survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But we can transform our relationship to that survival instinct by constantly asking ourselves, ‘How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?

When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God.

Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.

Indians are born with an instinct for riding, rowing, hunting, fishing, and swimming. Americans are born with an instinct for fooling around with machines.

It is very easy to make athletes, and it is very difficult to make rugby players with that rugby instinct. I would like to think I have got a bit of rugby instinct and have become more of a rugby athlete along the way.

Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was a coward on instinct.

There is no instinct that has been so maligned, suppressed, abused, and distorted by religious teaching as the instinct of sex.

Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cöoperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing and desperation is an instinct too. To be active, well, happy, implies courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.

the anxiety arising from the perpetual activity of the death instinct, though never eliminated, is counteracted and kept at bay by the power of the life instinct.

In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.