Impulse Quotes - Page 28

• Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

  Will Durant

  Art, Men, Order

  Will Durant (2011). “Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

  Philip Larkin

  Art, Lying, Thinking

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• I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

  John Steinbeck

  Spiritual, Sweet, Passion

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• Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for nonviolence, justice and equality. He exposes the fallacy of the claim that everyone can be rich and successful provided they work hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry.

  Nelson Mandela

  Spiritual, Hard Work, Successful

  "The Sacred Warrior" by Nelson Mandela, content.time.com. December 31, 1999.

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• True drama can be conceived only as resulting from the collective impulse of all the arts to communicate in the most immediate way with a collective public... Thus especially the art of tone, developed with such singular diversity in instrumental music, will realize in the collective artwork its richest potential -- will indeed incite the pantomimic art of dancing in turn to wholly new discoveries and inspire the breath of poetry no less to an undreamed-of fullness. For in its isolation music has formed itself an organ capable of the most immeasurable expression - the orchestra.

  Richard Wagner

  Art, Drama, Discovery

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• The violent, antirationalistic impulse in Western countries is reacting to an intellectual state of affairs in which all thinking has become strategy; this impulse shows a disgust for a certain form of self-preservation. It is a sensitive shivering from the cold breath of a reality where knowledge is power and power is knowledge.

  Peter Sloterdijk

  Country, Reality, Thinking

  "Critique of Cynical Reason". Book by Peter Sloterdijk, 1983.

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• Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Perfect, Violence

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble.

  Harriet Lerner

  Wise, Fear, Self

  FaceBook post by Harriet Lerner from Nov 19, 2015

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• He was trapped in the electrochemical web of cognition, wherein curiosity leads into temptation, temptation leads into fear, and fear is considered an impulse to be mastered.

  Laird Barron

  Fear, Temptation, Curiosity

  Laird Barron (2007). “The Imago Sequence”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

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• Perpetual spring, the flare of adventure in the blood, the impulse of men who packed Virgil with their bean-bags on the overland journey, conspired~ to make San Francisco a city of artists.

  William Henry Irwin

  Spring, Adventure, Journey

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• The earlier, more analytic impulse was to use very rational but kind of absurd techniques or tendencies—mapping, charting, and architecture—to try and make sense of who I was in my time and space and political environment. But there’s only so much truth to a theoretical understanding of something.

  Julie Mehretu

  Space, Political, Understanding

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• Adolescence is when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for possession.

  G. Stanley Hall

  Struggle, Soul, Worst

  G. Stanley Hall (2013). “Adolescence - Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, and Religion (1931)”, p.365, Read Books Ltd

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• He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Fear, Cowardice, Driven

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850). “The Scarlet Letter”, p.168

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• I support, defend, and admire prostitutes, gay or straight. They do important and necessary work, whether moralists of the Left and Right like it or not. Feminists who think they can abolish the sex trade are in a state of massive delusion. Only a ruthless, fascist regime of vast scale could eradicate the rogue sex impulse that is indistinguishable from the life force. Simply in the Western world, pagan sexuality has survived 2000 years of Judaeo-Christian persecution and is hardly going to be defeated by a few feminists whacking at it with their brooms.

  Camille Paglia

  Christian, Sex, Gay

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• Often men's impulses to coerce and degrade women seem to express not a confident assumption of dominance but a desire to retaliate for feelings of rejection, humiliation, and impotence: as many men see it, they need women sexually more than women need them, an intolerable balance of power.

  Ellen Willis

  Men, Rejection, Feelings

  Ellen Willis (2012). “No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays”, p.33, U of Minnesota Press

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• Instead of fighting the ego, I align with the evolutionary impulse and I ask myself: What does the evolutionary impulse wants to say or do through me?

  Marc Gafni

  Fighting, Ego, Doe

  FaceBook post by Marc Gafni from Apr 07, 2015

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• Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Exaggeration Is, Generosity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.42, Courier Corporation

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• Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Pigs, Feet, Morality

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• I find that when people haven't found God and do not know the new birth and the Spirit is not on them, yet they have the ancient impulse to worship something. If they're not educated they kill a chicken and put a funny thing on their head and dance around. If they are educated they write poetry.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Writing, Funny Things, People

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• When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: "natural" qualities and those called truly "human" are inseparably grown together. Man, in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Character, Reality, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.29, Penguin

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• The true foundation of the brotherhood of humankind is belief in the knowledge that God is the Father of humankind. For us, therefore, brotherhood is not only a generous impulse but also a divine command.

  Harry S. Truman

  Father, Community, Brotherhood

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• Take up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will have a happy life. What is more, because you do so many thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality- gracious, friendly, and likeable.

  David Dunn

  Happy Life, Thoughtful, Giving

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• Morality has been conceived up to the present in a very narrow spirit, as obedience to a law, as inner struggle between opposite laws. As for me, I declare that when I do good I obey no one, I fight no battle and win no victory. The cultivated person has only to follow the delicious incline of his or her inner impulses. Be beautiful and then do at each moment whatever your heart may inspire you to do. This is the whole of morality.

  Ernest Renan

  Beautiful, Struggle, Heart

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• If I accept the fact that a god is absolute and beyond all human experiences, he leaves me cold. I do not affect him, nor does he affect me. But if I know that a god is a powerful impulse in my soul, at once I must concern myself with him, for then he can become important

  Carl Jung

  Faith, Powerful, Soul

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• That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.134, Graphic Arts Books

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