Human Instinct Quotes

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.

Maybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they are to birds flying overhead. Our first impulse is to ignore them.

The belly comes before the soul.

Against human nature one cannot legislate.

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

The yearnings of freedom are not a Western import; they are a human instinct.

Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

When a man's making love, the last thing he thinks about is war.

We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.

Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally, among mankind.

Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.

I think that monogamy is artificial. I do not think it's something that comes naturally to us.

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.

I'm not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.

There are 7 billion people on the planet. Pretty much everyone is doing sex. It's not like you need to order the "baby-starter kit" on Amazon. Instincts will come to you at the weirdest places and times.

The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.

One of the fundamental discoveries I made about myself - early enough to make use of it - was that I am driven to seize life and to understand it. The motor that pushes me is propelled by more than scientific curiosity.

Self preservation is the first law of nature and governments.

The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.

Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man?

The ugly is very appealing to man. It's instinct. One shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There's a devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror.

That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human.

When I think about life on Earth, there should not be a species like us. And if there was, we should be out in the jungle killing each other in small groups. That's what you should expect.