Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Reason is the servant of instinct.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.

Let him make use of instinct who cannot make use of reason.

If individuals are rational, there is no need to protect them against their own choices.

There's a long tradition in Western thought that humans are not shackled by biology, whereas animals are pure instinct machines.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

All things must; man is the only creature that wills.

Events are not a matter of chance.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Man is a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.

.. every advance in social progress removes us more and more from the guidance of instinct, obliging us to depend upon reason for the assurance that our habits are really agreeable to the laws of health.

The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

What is now an act of reason, was but blind impulse.

Man is not, like the animals, an obsequious puppet of instincts and sensual impulses. Man has the power to suppress instinctive desires, he has a will of his own, he chooses between incompatible ends.

Reason also is choice.

The entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement - from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inborn behavior toward acquired knowledge. A half-grown panther abandoned in the wilderness will grow up to be a perfectly normal panther. But a half-grown child similarly abandoned will grow up into an unrecognizable savage, unfit for normal society. Yet there are those who insist the opposite: that we are creatures of instinct, like wolves.

We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see.

There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.

I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, or anything but that vain animal who is so proud of being rational.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.