Eugen Herrigel Quotes

Generally we don't really consciously do it as a purpose-driven thing. ... It's really just a response to life.

People make fast moves around me, I react. I can't help it.

You surprise yourself on some balls off the bat. You don't think you have a chance to catch it. And then your natural ability just takes over.

The less thinking you do, the better you play.

An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.

You'll begin to act when you can forget your technique - when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously.

I just . . . knew, the way you know how to breathe or to pull your hand back from a hot stove.

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.

Fully 95 percent of our behavior, feeling, and response is habitual.

I see things as they happen pretty quick, and I just go hit it.

I think it's somewhere in my head, in my travel space, and it just comes out. It's a visual thing that happens unintentionally. People will tell me, "You do realize you just spoke with that accent, right?" And I'll go, "Oh, did I?" So it's not something I think about. As we talk, I have a visual about my speech and it just comes out like that. If that makes any sense!

We often disguise our reflexes as deliberate actions.

I can get onstage and cut that off and be superinstinctive. To be a good live performer, you have to be instinctive. It's like, to walk in the jungle, or to do anything where there's a certain tightrope wire aspect you need to be instinctive. And you have to be comfortable at it also.

Shooting at a man who is returning the compliment means going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick shooting involves.

It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.

An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge.

Who is ready to be a truly independent representative of Minnesota? Who is free of entangling alliances and big money that allows them to represent? What do we need -- that sort of person who can truly independently represent Minnesota, or something else?.

...she still cannot resist looking out the window every couple of minutes. The sound of a passing truck causes her to glance away. Even if there is no sound, the weight of a hundred seconds always turns her head.

I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.

At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.

Sometimes I can spend months doing things to make sure that my instincts work correctly, but ultimately it's still instinctive.

I didn't intend. The word "intend" is the wrong word for what I do. It's just that it's something you do, and you can't not do. If you want to do it, and you don't intend to, you do it anyway. The word "intend" is wrong. The word "pressure" is right. It's like any art form.

People ask me 'what was going through your mind in the race?' and I don't know. I try and ...let my body do what it knows

A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.