Compulsions Quotes & Sayings

The two diseases also seem to share a neural component. The symptoms of Tourette's apparently arise from impaired inhibition in the circuit linking the cortex and the basal ganglia-a circuit that is also impaired in OCD. The basal ganglia, you'll recall from Chapter 2, play a central role in switching from one behavior to another. Impairment there could account for the perseveration of obsessions and compulsions, as well as the tics characteristic of Tourette's. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

For many people it's Facebook, or sports on TV, whatever it is. I have my own demons that I battle. But whatever they are, you wish you could not do them. For most of us it's "I cannot get off Facebook." But imagine that your demon has you living on the street. I don't think those compulsions and obsessions are that different. — Jess Walter

Some people with Tourette's have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects ... (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage of primal antinomianism and anarchy) — Oliver Sacks

To the narcissistic sociopath, a sexual experience is not about sex; it's about having complete control over his victims. They satisfy their sick compulsions by preying on vulnerable victims who they feel can most easily be manipulated and are least likely to expose their crimes. Warren needed the FLDS even more than the rebel religion needed a leader. His specialized psychosis was dependent on a unique religious hook that just would not work in the general population. In the outside world, he would never have been able to convince anyone to take him seriously. But with the FLDS predilection for blind religious obedience and submission to authority, he had the willing, captive audience that he needed, like a scientist needs labs rats. — Sam Brower

Writers do not want to think they are less rational than other people, and at the mercy of compulsions, but in their hearts they know they are like those people who are taken for walks by their dogs, towed through hedges and ditches by an untrained sub-human energy. — Hilary Mantel

Blessed are the ones who have become spiritually "domesticated"; the ones who have tamed the wild animal energy within them, the passions and compulsions of our lower nature. — Cynthia Bourgeault

He said, You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it. — China Mieville

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Political controls in the sense that we think of bureaus or departments of government can never ope to produce collaboration between groups in the inner wheels of our industrial organization. It must come from inner compulsions and desires. — William O. Douglas

There came a time in everyone's life when they realized that in spite of how hard they'd been running from themselves, everywhere they went, there they were: Addictions and compulsions were nothing but marching bands of distraction, masking truths that were unpleasant, but ultimately undeniable. — J.R. Ward

A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories. — Raymond Cattell

There isn't a name for my situation. Firstly because I decided to kill myself. And then because of this idea:
I don't have to do it immediately.
Whoosh, through a little door. It's a limbo.
I need never answer the phone again or pay a bill. My credit score no longer matters. Fears and compulsions don't matter. Socks don't matter. Because I'll be dead. And who am I to die? A microwave chef. A writer of pamphlets. A product of our time. A failed student. A faulty man. A bad poet. An activist in two minds. A drinker of chocolate milk, and when there's no chocolate, of strawberry and sometimes banana. — D.B.C. Pierre

Holding on will not make something come back. In my experience, it actually pushes it farther away. You cannot go back and undo what's done, my friends. You can only move forward. And if your deepest compulsions and instincts tell you that you're meant to be with that person or doing that thing, you should let go and move forth and see how life takes you there. Clearly, things aren't going according to your desired plan already, so why not throw caution to the wind and see where you end up. — Brianna Wiest

Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I think it's interesting," he said, "that you used the word 'compulsions.' That kind of removes the issue of responsibility."
"But I'm taking responsibility," I said. "I'm trying to stop it."
"You are," he said, "and that's very admirable, but you started this whole conversation by saying that 'fate' wants you to be a serial killer. If you tell yourself that it's your destiny to become a serial killer, then aren't you really just dodging reponsibility by passing the blame to fate? — Dan Wells

Half the point in reading novels and seeing plays and films is to exercise the faculty of sympathy with our own kind, so often obliterated in the multifarious controls and compulsions of actual social existence. — Germaine Greer

He who possesses a reasonable, sound theoretical equipment will perceive correctly, however neurotic or wicked he may be personally; he who lacks it or possesses an unsound one, will perceive incorrectly, however pure of neurotic tensions or compulsions he may be. — Ernest Gellner

If we become aware of its limitations and compulsions, we can transcend them. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms'). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ('You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone'). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter - the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A newspaper can follow the compulsions, the desires of the readers. Take the English evening newspapers - they are following the readers' desires when they are interested only in the royal family gossip. But even the most objective, serious newspaper in the world designs the way in which the reader could or should think. That's unavoidable. — Umberto Eco

To find love is the great human undertaking ... and it's always complicated by our compulsions and unconscious patterns, to say nothing of issues of trust and control. — Michelle Huneven

But that night as I drove back to Montreal, I at least discovered this: that there is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them. — Hugh MacLennan

One of the most pervasive ways in which collusion with oppression is enacted is through victim blaming. Even when oppression is acknowledged, victim blaming (by victims themselves, perpetrators, or society) denies any relation between, on one hand, oppression originating in society, such as racism, and, on the other hand, inner oppression, such as self-blame or other psychic compulsions. Consequently, reflecting such denial, the victim blaming stance posits either a decontextualized, abstract, and thus dehumanized notion of human freedom - agency as atomized willing. — Marilyn Nissim-Sabat

You are not your past, not your habits, not your compulsions. When you get to know who you are, anything becomes possible. — Geneen Roth

When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten. When the belt fits, the belly is forgotten. When the heart is right, "for" and "against" are forgotten. No drives, no compulsions, no needs, no attractions: Then your affairs are under control. You are a free man. — Zhuangzi

For compulsions, according to a growing body of scientific evidence, are a response to anxiety. Suffused and overwhelmed by anxiety, we grab hold of any behavior that offers relief by providing even an illusion of control. — Sharon Begley

Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state. — John Kenneth Galbraith

One went to two, two became four and the series continued. The more I tried to pull out the more I got pulled in. Constant fighting at home and bad academic grades made my new found world even more attractive. There there were no compulsions, no obligations; where you were the super-hero slaying beasts, demons and villains alike; where everything was perfect and reality was left far behind.
Page 13, Addiction. — Nelton D'Souza

We are legion, an army of millions. Though most of us will go to any length to hide our compulsions, we recognize one another. The guy using a paper towel to turn the restroom doorknob, the child counting his eyelashes, the old man wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes - these are my brothers. We are a secret tribe. We're like Freemasons, except that our secret handshake is followed by a vigorous washing session. — Jennifer Traig

We all remain who we are. But on the way to healing or liberation we have to do what the Romans called agere contra: we have to act against the grain of our natural compulsions. This requires clear decisions. Because it does not happen by itself, it is in a way "unnatural" or "supernatural" ... (we) simply have to cut loose now and then, and in the process ... make mistakes. — Richard Rohr

Compulsions are intricate survival systems that we create because we don't know how to be there for ourselves. — Mary O'Malley

Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is ever possible, imposes it own compulsions as well as it's conventions. He doubted whether Macklefield [the murder victim's Will attorney] would have interrupted his country weekend for a less sensational crime. As a young officer he, too, had been touched, if unwillingly and temporarily, by the power of murder to attract even while it appalled and repelled. He had watched how people involved as innocent bystanders, provided they were unburdened by grief or suspicion, were engrossed by homicide, drawn inexorably to the place where the crime had occurred in fascinated disbelief. The crowd and the media who served them had not yet congregated outside the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. But they would come, and he doubted whether Chandler-Powell's [owner of the Manor where the murder was committed] private security team would be able to do more than inconvenience them. — P.D. James

Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights. — George Will

There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things. — Jon Ronson

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted. — Paul Tillich

The human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages. — Christopher Morley

And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things. He — Jon Ronson

Eating disorders are prevalent among women who were sexually abused as children. They seem to have components of other symptoms such as obsessions, compulsions, avoidance of food, and anxiety, and they primarily include a distorted body image and feelings of body shame.
For some women, eating disorders are related to the loss of control over their bodies during the sexual abuse and serve as a means of feeling in control of their bodies now. Eating disorders can also be indicative of the developmental stage and age at which the sexual abuse began. Women with anorexia and bulimia report that they were sexually abused either at the age of puberty or during puberty, when their bodies were beginning to develop and they felt a great deal of body shame from the abuse. By contrast, women with compulsive eating report that the sexual abuse occurred before the age of puberty; they used food for comfort. — Karen A. Duncan

The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.
[Beauharnais v.Illinois, 342 U.S. 250, 287 (1952) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions. — John Updike

Sometimes you have compulsions that you can't control coming from the subconscious ... they are the dictator inside ourselves. — Denis Villeneuve

Compulsions are not good for the soul. — Gerald G. May

I'm typing away, wondering why I had that Pepsi Throwback at such a late hour. Caffeine is a compulsion. Art is an obsession. Writing is both.
It weaves in and out, this obsession, forming a basket, a basket I can hide in while pulling its lid over top; it shuts out the noise and normalcy of living. It shuts out the people and caffeinated relationships I love so well. Can you live with an artsy hermit? A sketchy-betchy, meditative, BabyBoomingPseudoHippie? Then short-term visits are in order. — Chila Woychik

OCD is an anxiety disorder, one that brings conscious intrusive thoughts and compulsions - 'Touch the bannister. Pick up that rock. You'd better do it, or something terrible will happen.' — Tim Howard

Siddhartha had one single goal before him -- to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of desire, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. To die away from himself, no longer to be "I," to find the peace of an empty heart, to be open to wonder within an egoless mind -- that was his goal. When every bit of ego was overcome and dead, when in his heart all cravings and compulsions had been stilled, then the ultimate must awaken, that innermost essence in one's being that is no longer ego, the great mystery. — Hermann Hesse

The free man is not he who defies the rules ... but he who, recognizing the compulsions inherent in his being, seeks rather to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest each day's experience. — Bernard Iddings Bell

Your desintation is a life of meaning, fulfillment, creativity and joy. A life free of fears, obsessions, compulsions, and addictions, without the insecurities others activates so easily and the torments they create in you. WHen you resist your [life] experiences, you resist the guidance they offer. Anger, resentment jealousy and fear each show you in their own way what you need to change inside yourself in order to reach your destination. Are you listening? — Gary Zukav

She did it, she told herself, not just for the riches her exploits brought her, not just to satisfy that itch lurking at the heart of her. Some of her visitors were good souls driven half-ma with grief for deceased wives. She helped to ease their loss. The rest of her clients were driven by darker compulsions, and the decor in some of the rooms she passed reflected their tastes. In those cases, she helped the women - far lass qualified then she - who would quench those desires, willingly or unwillingly, should she choose not to make this her task. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

Love? Love is about an unquenchable hunger, a passion so powerful it cannot be ignored. In the face of love," he spoke softly, "all resistance is futile. Sex is momentary, ephemeral ecstasy at best without love. No one with a good opinion of themselves would trade sex by itself if they could have the true geld .. love with a worthy lover. It alters lives, and even the barest slice of true love ... a moment, an evening, a day's worth, can become a treasure to be pulled from the memory and ignite those feelings again many years after it has passed. It is the most powerful of all compulsions." Das — William C. Samples

If a quote of two individuals looks identical or almost similar to make it difficult to know as who said it first to be Mr. Right, then it is perhaps sensible to give credit for the same to one who travels in life light by choice and not compulsions than other who is too eager to board on a success flight. — Anuj

As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings, and fits of emotions begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible: we can say yes, or we can say no.
... "All we are is the result of what we have thought." By changing our mode of thinking, we can remake ourselves completely. — Eknath Easwaran

To become enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria, an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula to control reality. Rather, it is an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevent subject of knowledge. Having attained enlightenment one knows everything that matters, and the precise nature of all that is. — Robert A.F. Thurman

Not merely by rules of conduct and religious observances, nor by much learning either, nor even by attainment of concentration, nor by sleeping alone, do I reach the happiness of freedom, to which no worldlings attain. If you have not put an end to compulsions, nurse your faith — Gautama Buddha

Human beings love, despite their compulsions to limit it and exploit it chaotically. Their love persuades them to make vows, build houses and turn their passion ultimately to duty. — Germaine Greer

Serial killers are usually - virtually always, in fact - slaves to their own compulsions. They kill because they have to, and they can't stop themselves. I don't want to get to that point, so I set up rules about smaller things - like how I like to watch people, but I don't let myself watch one person for too long. If I do, I force myself to ignore that person for a whole week, and not even think about it. — Dan Wells

The individual, by means of the discipline imposed on him by sport, not only plays and finds relaxation from the various compulsions to which he is subjected, but without knowing it trains himself for new compulsions ... Training in sports makes of the individual an efficient piece of apparatus which is henceforth unacquainted with anything but the harsh joys of exploiting his body and winning. — Jacques Ellul

I'm not weird,' Elle said defensively.
'I mean in a good way. All the best people are.' He swallowed, as if he were thinking carefully. Elle saw he was a little bit drunk. 'You've got staying power. Like with the Georgette Heyers. Reading all of them, getting obsessive about them. And you know, much better to be obsessed with crummy romance books than, er - hard-core porn, or something. — Harriet Evans

Peeves are like that: my peeves are law, yours are unhealthy obsessions. — Robert Lane Greene

The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure. Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon. The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness. — Henri Lefebvre

Galatians 5:18 asks, "Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?" (MSG). — Rick Warren

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it. — Simone Weil

In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time. — Orhan Pamuk

Every person must live the inner life in one form or another. Consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, the inner world will claim us and exact its dues. If we go to that realm consciously, it is by our inner work: our prayers, meditations, dream work, ceremonies, and Active Imagination. If we try to ignore the inner world, as most of us do, the unconscious will find its way into our lives through pathology: our psychosomatic symptoms, compulsions, depressions, and neuroses. — Robert A. Johnson

Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature ... what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action. If you know these things abut a person, you can touch him at the core of his being. — William Bernbach

To live a spiritual life does not mean that we must leave our families, give up our jobs, or change our ways of working; it does not mean that we have to withdraw from social or political activities, or lose interest in literature and art; it does not require severe forms of asceticism or long hours of prayer. Changes such as these may in fact grow out of our spiritual life, and for some people radical decisions may be necessary. But the spiritual life can be lived in as many ways as there are people. What is new is that we have moved from the many things to the kingdom of God. What is new is that we are set free from the compulsions of our world and have set our hearts on the only necessary thing. What is new is that we no longer experience the many things, people, and events as endless causes for worry, but begin to experience them as the rich variety of ways in which God makes his presence known to us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The best painting comes out of compulsions and obsessions, out of deep love or hate, out of intellectual or emotional involvement with something that lies outside the painting itself. — Edward Betts

In one case a desperate college student felt so trapped by his obsessive worries and compulsions that he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet passed into his frontal lobe, causing a frontal lobotomy, which was at the time a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was found still alive, his disorder cured, and he returned to college. — Anonymous

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with Him and Him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. Solitude is a place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from the victimizing compulsions of the world. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

How do our lives ravel out
into the no-wind, no-sound,
the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:
echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:
in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,
dead gestures of dolls. — William Faulkner

If I feel like crying, I'll just cry in a dream. Something I really try not to do in my waking hours. I like good melodrama because it's just an undumping of all these compulsions we feel that we work so hard to master during our waking hours. No wonder we crash to sleep in bed at night. We have to, otherwise we'd just spend our waking hours shredding the feelings from everybody else. — Guy Maddin

Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility. — Scott Adams

A wide distance between the governors and the governed will produce a state that is predatory toward its own citizens, indifferent to their desires, and subject to the inbred whims and compulsions of its ruling class. It will produce crisis. Countering — Christopher L. Hayes