Impulse Quotes - Page 6

• It's very common to think that we're always evolving, that we've changed so much from our younger selves, that within decades we've transformed into these different people. We like to think that. I feel in some ways that I am still so much my younger self. There are ways that I'm different: I feel like I'm wiser and kinder. But I think a lot of the impulses are still the same. I learned that.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Thinking, Self, People

  "Carrie Brownstein Discusses Her Memoir". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. October 27, 2015.

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• The climate of England has been the world's most powerful colonizing impulse.

  Russell Green

  Powerful, Climate, World

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• Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Swimming, Land, Circles

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.52, Cambridge University Press

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• The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues... and the violent men, who are the most forward to gratify those passions, will be their favorites. What is called the government of the people is in fact too often the arbitrary power of such men. Here, then, we have the faithful portrait of democracy.

  Fisher Ames

  Passion, Men, People

  Fisher Ames, John Thornton Kirkland (1854). “Works of Fisher Ames: With a selection from his speeches and correspondence”, p.393, Burt Franklin

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• People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time-even when hard at work.

  Marcus Aurelius

  People, Purpose, Labor

  Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (2012). “The Modern Library Collection of Greek and Roman Philosophy 3-Book Bundle: Meditations; Selected Dialogues of Plato; The Basic Works of Aristotle”, p.110, Modern Library

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• All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Ignorance, Men, Effort

  Leo Tolstoy (2012). “War and Peace”, p.1371, Modern Library

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• I'd say seeking is one of the fundamental artistic impulses. Art is about discovery. The medium is not the message.

  John Paul Caponigro

  Art, Discovery, Fundamentals

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• Be very focused. Do your homework so your research and claims are unassailable. Make sure it is bulletproof and then make sure you are really focused. The thing I find is that the issues are usually so large that you try to cover a lot of ground. That's a natural impulse.

  Amy Ziering

  Issues, Trying, Research

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of two wholly distinct factors: the individual ... bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

  William James

  Hands, Two, Community

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.144, 谷月社

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• Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Lying, Passion, Heart

  "Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts" collected and published by Cte. A. G. de Liancourt; edited by James Alexander Manning, 1848.

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• Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Fire, Moments, Constant

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• I'll tell you what I think. I think sages are the growing tip of the secret impulse of evolution. I think they are the leading edge of the self-transcending drive that always goes beyond what went before. I think they embody the very drive of the Kosmos toward greater depth and expanding consciousness. I think they are riding the edge of a light beam toward a rendezvous with God.

  Ken Wilber

  Thinking, Self, Light

  Ken Wilber (2007). “A Brief History of Everything”, p.63, Shambhala Publications

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• So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Soul, Facts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.102, Coyote Canyon Press

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• Man governs himself more by impulse than reason

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Reason

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• We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.

  Huston Smith

  Distance, Drama, Character

  Huston Smith, Jeffery Paine (2012). “The Huston Smith Reader”, p.91, Univ of California Press

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• The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Civilization, Ideas

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.76, Princeton University Press

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• It is the natural and inherent impulse of life to seek to live more, it is the nature of intelligence to enlarge itself, and of consciousness to seek to extend its boundaries and find fuller expression.

  Wallace D. Wattles

  Expression, Consciousness, Boundaries

  Wallace D. Wattles (2015). “Wallace D. Wattles Ultimate Collection – 10 Books in One Volume: The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Well, The Science of Being Great, How to Get What You Want and more: From one of the New Thought pioneers, author of Making of the Man Who Can or How to Promote Yourself and New Science of Living and Healing or Health Through New Thought and Fasting”, p.19, e-artnow

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• There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, lead to one or another impulse to act. The root meaning of the word emotion, remember, is "to move.

  Daniel Goleman

  Moving, Emotional, Skills

  Daniel Goleman (2012). “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ”, p.137, Bantam

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• First of all, I love women. But I lust after beautiful women in the way that I lust after a beautiful piece of sculpture - this will probably get me in trouble - or a beautiful car. I believe everyone's on a sliding scale of sexuality. There are moments where I am sexually attracted to women. But it doesn't overpower my first impulse; my lust for them is the same as my lust for beauty in all things.

  Tom Ford

  Beautiful, Believe, Car

  Interview With John Currin, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 30, 2010.

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• Just as a satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering is caused us if the external world lets us starve, if it refuses to sate our needs. One may therefore hope to be freed from a part of one's sufferings by influencing the instinctual impulses.

  Sigmund Freud

  Suffering, Needs, World

  Sigmund Freud, Peter (AFT) Gay, Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• There is scarcely room for doubt that something in the psychological relation of a mother-in-law to a son-in-law breeds hostility between them and makes it hard for them to live together. But the fact that in civilized societies mothers-in-law are such a favourite subject for jokes seems to me to suggest that the emotional relation involved includes sharply contrasted components. I believe, that is, that this relation is in fact an 'ambivalent' one, composed of conflicting affectionate and hostile impulses.

  Sigmund Freud

  Mother, Believe, Son

  Sigmund Freud (2003). “Totem and Taboo”, p.17, Routledge

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• A living faith is always on trial; we call it faith for that reason. When I read in some alarmist book that the Christian faith is now on trial, or "at the crossroads," my impulse is to answer, Why Not? Does anybody know a time when the Christian faith was not on trial, or when the Christian life was a simple walkover, with neither principalities nor powers to dispute its advance?

  John Edgar Park

  Christian, Book, Simple

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• Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person's noblest impulses.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Spiritual, Atmosphere, Woven

  Commencement address at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 8 June 1978

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• I think we owe it to children to let them dig their knowledge, of whatever subject, for themselves out of the "fit" book; and this for two reasons: What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated. I do not mean to say that the lecture and the oral lesson are without their uses; but these uses are, to give impulse and to order knowledge; and not to convey knowledge.

  Charlotte Mason

  Song, Children, Book

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• Love is a many-sided sacrifice; it means thoughtfulness for others; it means putting their good before self-gratification. Love is impulse, no doubt, but true love is impulse wisely directed.

  Hugh Reginald Haweis

  Mean, Sacrifice, Love Is

  Hugh Reginald Haweis (1875). “Speech in Season”, p.373

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