Compulsion Quotes - Page 14

• Writing has always felt like a compulsion. Even at high school there'd be times when people would ask me if I wanted to go and hang out and I'd sit home and write instead.

  Amanda Hocking

  Home, Writing, School

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• What is it that every man seeks? To be secure, to be happy, to do what he pleases without restraint and without compulsion.

  Epictetus

  Freedom, Men, Restraint

  Epictetus (1758). “All the Works of Epictetus: Which are Now Extant; Consisting of His Discourses, Preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.345

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• I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine.

  Amor Towles

  Blue, Missing, Finishing

  Amor Towles (2011). “Rules of Civility”, p.98, Hachette UK

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• Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.

  Walter Lippmann

  Exercise, Government, Minorities

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• I think that it is a fallacy to suppose that helpful cooperation in the future will be assured by the attempted compulsion of an inflexible rule. Rather will such cooperation depend upon the fostering of firm friendships springing from an appreciation of community ideals, interests, and purposes, and such friendships are more likely to be promoted by freedom of conference than by the effort to create hard and fast engagements.

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Appreciation, Thinking, Effort

  "Autobiographical Notes of Charles Hughes". Book edited by D. J. Danelski and J. S. Tulchin, 1973.

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• The communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.

  Sigmund Freud

  Love, Two, Foundation

  Sigmund Freud, Scientific Literature Corporation (1961). “The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud”

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• When authority is backed up by an immediate physical compulsion, what we are dealing with is not authority proper (i.e. symbolic authority), but simply an agency of brute force.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Agency, Authority, Brute Force

  Slavoj Žižek (2001). “Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out”, p.94, Psychology Press

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• The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...

  Harlan F. Stone

  Opportunity, Thinking, Essence

  Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, (604), 1940.

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• Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.

  Yann Martel

  Animal, Forever, Social Hierarchy

  Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.17, Vintage Canada

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• The desire to succeed has a lot less compulsion than the fear of failure.

  Gerald Seymour

  Desire, Succeed, Fear Of Failure

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• The individual, by means of the discipline imposed on him by sport, not only plays and finds relaxation from the various compulsions to which he is subjected, but without knowing it trains himself for new compulsions. ... Training in sports makes of the individual an efficient piece of apparatus which is henceforth unacquainted with anything but the harsh joys of exploiting his body and winning.

  Jacques Ellul

  Sports, Mean, Winning

  "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul, translated by John Wilkinson, (p. 383), 1964.

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• In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.

  Rollo May

  Errors, Personality, Neurosis

  Rollo May (2009). “Man's Search for Himself”, p.144, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government.

  Johann Most

  Mean, Men, Past

  Johann Joseph Most (1890). “The Social Monster: A Paper on Communism and Anarchism”

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• The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed - we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.

  Albert J. Nock

  Moral Fiber, Law, Proud

  "On Doing the Right Thing". "The American Mercury" Magazine, 1925.

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• In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

  George Orwell

  Thinking, Animal, Law

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Once efficiency is universally accepted as a rule, it becomes an inner compulsion and weighs like a sense of sin, simply because no one can ever be efficient enough, just as no one can ever be virtuous enough. And this new sense of sin only contributes further to the enervation of leisure, for the rich as well as the poor. The difficulty of carrying on a leisure-oriented tradition of culture in a work-oriented society is enough in itself to keep the present crisis in our culture unresolved.

  Clement Greenberg

  Culture, Carrying On, Leisure

  "Art and Culture: Critical Essays". Book by Clement Greenberg, pp. 31-32: "The Plight of Culture" (1953), 1961.

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• To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.

  William Godwin

  Mean, Punishment, Barbarians

  William Godwin (1798). “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness: By William Godwin”, p.373

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• Venus yields to caresses, not to compulsion.

  Publilius Syrus

  Yield, Venus, Seduction

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• Motivation is just this potion to create stuff, a compulsion to express the truth of my own experiences in this life.

  Juliana Hatfield

  Motivation, Stuff, This Life

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• I make music and I can't stop. It's a compulsion and an obsession and a curse.

  Juliana Hatfield

  Obsession, Curse, I Can

  "Juliana Hatfield on life after the spotlight fades". www.today.com. September 16, 2008.

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• When we experience the power of the Self, there is an absence of fear, there is no compulsion to control, and no struggle for approval or external power.

  Deepak Chopra

  Struggle, Self, Approval

  Deepak Chopra (2010). “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams”, p.13, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• Coercion or compulsion never brings about growth. It is freedom that accelerates evolution.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Growth, Coercion, Evolution

  Yogananda (Paramahansa), Swami Dhirananda (1925). “General Principles and Merits of Yogoda, Or, Tissue-will System of Body and Mind Perfection, and the Highest Technique of Concentration and Meditation”

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• Actually, I'd already briefed him, early this morning. Since we were up at six. Since, at six, the nurse had been overcome with the overwhelming compulsion to take Fang's temperature right then.

  James Patterson

  Morning, Nurse, Overcoming

  James Patterson (2010). “Maximum Ride Boxed Set #1”, p.326, Hachette UK

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• No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.

  Samuel Gompers

  Gains, Lasting

  Samuel Gompers, John McBride, William Green (1948). “The American Federationist”

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• The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

  Aristotle

  Sake, Wealth, Making Money

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.1732, Princeton University Press

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