Impulse Quotes

• There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

  Daniel Goleman

  Skills, Fundamentals, Psychological

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

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  We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

  Marquis de Sade

  Sex, Sea, Wave

  Sade (marquis de), Marquis de Sade (1987). “The 120 days of Sodom and other writings”, Grove Pr

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• The anterior cingulate fires up as the end result of a series of events. First, estrogen levels fall. Meanwhile, serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitter, also decreases. The deficiency in serotonin causes the anterior cingulate gyrus to fire up. To make things worse, just about this time the PFC tends to quiet down, which is why women may have a hard time focusing and controlling impulses. So we see emotional difficulties, intensified feelings of sadness, and disturbed sleep.

  Daniel Amen

  Fall, Sadness, Sleep

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• Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

  Robert Collier

  Inspirational, Life, Imagination

  Robert Collier (2009). “Riches Within Your Reach!”, p.234, Penguin

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• All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.15, Open Road Media

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• Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

  Robert Collier

  Life, Giving, Vision

  Robert Collier (2009). “Riches Within Your Reach!”, p.234, Penguin

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• Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

  Eric Hoffer

  God, Stars, Airplane

  www.nytimes.com. July 21, 1969.

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• I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free.

  Angelina Jolie

  Inspirational, Positive, Hurt

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• For great things do not done just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Motivational, Perseverance

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from The Hague, www.webexhibits.org. October 22, 1882.

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• He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Lying, Wind

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• Interesting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity, freedom and intensity.

  Saul Bass

  Interesting, Design, Creative

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• The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Sex, Actors

  Dell' Anatomia Fogli B (transl. Edward MacCurdy in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. 1, Ch. III)

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• Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Trust, Forgiveness, Powerful

  1883-92 Also sprach Zarathustra ( Thus Spake Zarathustra) (translated by R J Hollingdale).

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• Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

  David Seabury

  Love, Jealousy, Hate

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• Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Reason, Vain, Checks

  "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, Book IX, (7), (c. 161 - 180 AD).

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• The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

  Agnes Repplier

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

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• What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Light, Guidance, Spontaneous

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Stuart Blackie (1883). “The Wisdom of Goethe”, Edinburgh, W. Blackwood

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• The Indian who fells the tree that he may gather the fruit, and the Arab who plunders the caravans of commerce are actuated by the same impulse of savage nature, and relinquish for momentary rapine the long and secure possession of the most important blessings.

  Edward Gibbon

  Blessing, Long, Tree

  Edward Gibbon, H. H. Milman (1856). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.425

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• All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them.

  Aime Martin

  Reflection, Movement, Firsts

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• Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

  Augustus Hare

  Men, Thinking, Principles

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• Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.

  Brian Aldiss

  Law, Growth, Growing

  "Hothouse". Book by Brian Aldiss, 1962.

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• One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

  Helen Keller

  Inspirational, Life, Leadership

  Address to American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, Philadelphia, Pa., 8 July 1896

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• The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest.

  Emile Souvestre

  Spring, Selfishness, Spurs

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• The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.

  C. S. Lewis

  Cost, Dangerous, Ought

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Mere Christianity”, p.22, HarperCollins UK

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• The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars.

  Max Weber

  Artist, Soldier, Gains

  1904-5 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (translated by Talcott Parsons,1930).

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