Innate Quotes - Page 2

• Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.

  David Rakoff

  Flipped, Altruism

  "Altruism: Better Late Than Never" by Paula Gardner, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 28, 2016.

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• Our goal while on this earth is to transcend our illusions and discover the innate power of our spirit. We are responsible for what we create, and we must therefore learn to act and think with love and wisdom and live in service to others and all life.

  Caroline Myss

  Life, Thinking, Goal

  Caroline Myss (2013). “Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing”, p.283, Harmony

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• Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

  Albert Ellis

  Real, Self, Order

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• I take up the standpoint that the tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man, and I come back now to the statement that it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.

  Sigmund Freud

  Powerful, Independent, Men

  "Civilisation, War and Death".

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• Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.

  Lord Byron

  Love, Spring, Men

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.2725, Delphi Classics

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• All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

  Samuel Butler

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Notebooks (1912) ch. 1

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• Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.

  Max Beerbohm

  Humility, Guests, Virtue

  Max Beerbohm (2015). “The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm”, p.69, New York Review of Books

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• We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Boys, Opportunity, Garden

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• Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Views, Ordinary, Ethics

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• When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Jobs, Drama, School

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• I think women have an innate ability to be intuitive with people that they truly love, but they have to trust that inner voice, and I think it is there. I think we are more intuitive than men.

  Andie MacDowell

  Men, Thinking, Voice

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• No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Passion, Heart, Hypocrite

  "The Fable of the Bees". Book by Bernard Mandeville. "An Essay on Charity, and Charity-Schools", p. 319, 1732.

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• But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

  Jane Goodall

  War, Mean, Violence

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• It's innate in me to be a Democrat - a true Southern populist kind of Democrat. There's not a lot of those anymore. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. That's just the way I feel.

  Tim McGraw

  Southern, Way, Kind

  "10 Questions for Tim McGraw". Interview with Jeff Chu, content.time.com. October 15, 2006.

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• Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender.

  Jon Meacham

  Children, Race, Sexuality

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• There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.

  Steven Pinker

  Culture, Doe, Acquire

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• Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language.

  Steven Pinker

  Kids, Race, Culture

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• The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

  Steven Pinker

  Dream, Pursuit Of Happiness, Desire

  "Steven Pinker: the optimistic voice of science" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2011.

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• What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Education, Lost Love, Divorce

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2010). “Education Automation: Comprehensive Learning for Emergent Humanity”, p.20, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• I don't think public life in and of itself can destroy you. I think it's the way people react to it, and some people are more sturdy than others... I don't think any one faction can be blamed for a person's self destruction - a certain amount of that has to be innate.

  Patti Smith

  Thinking, Self, People

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• The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.

  Donna Tartt

  Reading, Practice, Style

  Barnes & Noble Interview, www.barnesandnoble.com.

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• I've always had an innate ability to dance, but I'm not as spiffy as those cinema legends like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

  John Travolta

  Cinema, Legends, Genes

  Parade Interview, parade.com. December 4, 2007.

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• Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Sports, Enlightenment, Body

  "Inspire! What Great Leaders Do" by Lance Secretan, (p. 45), 2004.

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• Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.

  Diana Vreeland

  Elegance, Well Dressed, Refusal

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• Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Mother, Art, Children

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