First Instinct Quotes & Sayings

You know that stuff about trusting your first instinct when you make a decision? They never say that to me. Taking meds to get along in school is pretty much a license for people to say, "Everyone follow your instincts, but not you. — Steve Lyman

The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not, is to let them bask and wallow in childish self-glorification. There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and formenost vain. The role of admiring doormat is about the only one that one man is glad to tolerate in another. With these soldiers I had no need to tax my imagination. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I think that perhaps we always fall in love the very first instant we see the man of our dreams, even though, at the time, reason may be telling us otherwise, and we may fight against that instinct, hoping against hope that we won't win, until there comes a point when we allow ourselves to be vanquished by our feelings. — Paulo Coelho

[Nietzsche] attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. At the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him. The unclean are therefore ill at ease hi his presence — Georg Brandes

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. — George Santayana

On 'There Will Be Blood,' I was cast at the last minute. I had 3 and a half to 4 days to get ready for the first day. I just went for it, threw myself in there and gave it everything I had. That was just guts and instinct, not a lot of preparation. — Paul Dano

At times, reality is love's great challenge. When our old stories and dreams are shattered, our first instinct may be to resist, deny, or cling to the way things were. But if we loosen our grip, often what fills the space is a tender forgiveness and the potential for a new and different kind of love. — Sharon Salzberg

I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal ... my first instinct was to write. — Gregory David Roberts

There is no use complaining about the hidden brain, or wishing it away. The telescope effect in our moral judgment is part of our nature. There is nothing we can do about it. But there is something we can do about our actions. We can choose to allow our actions to be guided by reason rather than instinct, choose to set up national and international institutions that respond instantly to humanitarian crises, rather than wait for our heartstrings to be pulled by stories of individual tragedy. If we rely on our moral telescopes, there will be people in a hundred years who ask how the world could have sat on its hands through so many genocides in the twenty-first century. Making — Shankar Vedantam

And I know that when you get hurt, your first instinct is to run. But I also realized something else. No one has ever followed you when you did run. But I'm going to follow, and I'm going to keep following until you realize that you can trust me. I'm not going to let you run away from something that could be so great. That is so great. Marty, I love you.
- Nate — Kathy Love

First mark of the self-preservative instinct of the great psychologist: he never seeks himself, he has no eyes for himself, no interest or curiosity in himself — Friedrich Nietzsche

But we didn't know anything in our twenties when we were first married. It was all just instinct and the patterns we'd grown up with. — Kent Haruf

Ally turned
her attention back to Brian Byrne. "So what do you do for a living when you're not searching out
your roots?"
"Have sex with thousands of women." He slanted her a grin that would've knocked her off
her feet if she wasn't already laid out flat by his comment. "Professionally, of course."
"Well, that makes it okay then." A porn star? Her instinct said no. But her instinct had also
thought Dave was a great guy when she first met him. How wrong was that? Hmm. What else
could Brian be? How about crazy? Sounded logical to her. She was alone with a crazy man. A
sexy crazy man, but crazy was still crazy. — Nina Bangs

In the same way that I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them, I also make up my mind about whether a business proposal excites me within about thirty seconds of looking at it. I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics. — Richard Branson

I've done so many movies with first-time directors, and honestly I just go with gut instinct. People that usually can tell me a good story, and talk to me about why the movie is the movie they want to make. I just go with my gut. — Neal H. Moritz

His first instinct was to help me, not sit like a deer in headlights, I now know that Matt isn't one to panic — Joe Teti

Eckhart Tolle says, "Addiction begins with pain and ends with pain," meaning that pain is behind compulsive behavior. Eleven years clean, I still feel the urge to medicate pain. Whenever events don't go my way, my first instinct is to annul the feeling, to look for an external resource to solve the problem. The second part of Eckhart's edict kicks in here - addiction "ends with pain." Medication of any kind offers only a temporary solution; it always leads back to pain and becomes therefore predictably cyclical. — Russell Brand

Kant provides a more helpful answer. For him, these first semblances of virtue can be explained in terms of discipline, in other words, as a product of external constraint: what the child cannot do on his own because he has no instinct for it "others have to do ... for him," and in this way "one generation educates the next. — Andre Comte-Sponville

What I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of me. I am in a chaos of principles
groping in the dark
acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. — Thomas Hardy

My first instinct was Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) cannot be president of the United States. She needs to lose because it's the thing she wants most on the planet Earth. — David Mandel

Since then, my approach to all things spiritual is rather cynical you could say. When somebody present something to me as spiritual, my first instinct is to be cynical and think, "oh yeah, one of those again." You see so much of it see in "spiritual culture" and people get very excited about it. It's all very "hoo haw." — Brad Warner

After directing awhile, you get an instinct about it, but you have to be able to trust your own feelings. Invariably, two-thirds of the way through a film, you say, "Jeezus, is this a pile of crap! What did I ever see in it in the first place?" You have to shut off your brain and forge ahead, because by that time you're getting so brainwashed. Once I commit myself to a film I commit myself to that ending, whatever the motivations and conclusions are. — Clint Eastwood

Meanwhile, back in the real world, my first instinct is a sort of stupid ducking motion I've learned from the movies, and I have the sure sense I'm going to be shot in the neck, where I feel particularly exposed and vulnerable. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works. — Steve Martin

We must overthrow the material and moral conditions of our present-day life ... We must first purify our atmosphere and completely transform the milieu in which we live; for it corrupts our instinct and our will, and constricts our heart and our intelligence — Mikhail Bakunin

It's an amazing feeling to know that life is actually growing inside your body. The first time you see the ultrasound and you see the little bones and you realise that it's part of you and it's in your care is life changing and this sort of protective instinct has taken over. — Halle Berry

One thing I've learned as an actor as well as a producer is to trust my own instinct. When I first started acting I would sometimes have ideas about certain things, whether it's a scene, or a character or certain dialogue, that wouldn't be followed. I was never in a position to have the power to press the matter. Sometimes it wasn't even about my character. But I'd watch the movie afterwards and think I was right. — Gerard Butler

My first instinct was to come rushing to you. To scream in your face, to shake you out of it... anything to get you to come back to me. But I knew that you needed to take the time on your own. We all have a different journey. — EXO Books

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of variation and of correlation of growth. In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given: namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or in understanding how a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ; secondly the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals, thirdly, Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological Record. In — Charles Darwin

You grow up loving movies, and your first instinct is you want to be an actor, because those are the people you see in the movies. But when you actually become an actor, you're like, 'Oh, wait, this is actually only a small portion of the storytelling. If I want to really tell a story, I'd want to be a director.' — Emily Meade

Then he said, "Always follow your first instinct about a person, baby girl, and you won't go wrong." At first I didn't understand what he meant. So I asked him. He just told to me to be careful of whom I trust. Make sure that the people you keep close to you are worthy of the trust you give them. — Sha Cole

Some people look for the obvious and make decisions based on that. However, sensitive people look for the subtle things in life. They observe what is missed, overlooked and rarely observed by others. They dwell at a deeper level of perception that clings to signs, body language and what is left unspoken. They are observers that will trust their instinct first over any fact or well delivered speech. — Shannon L. Alder

Engineers are funny animals. If you tell an engineer about a problem, any problem, his first instinct is to measure it. Tell an engineer you don't love him anymore and he'll ask for a graph of your love over time so that he can understand exactly how big the problem is and when it started. — Phil Lapsley

Blame someone else, that's always your first instinct. And if you can't blame someone else, then start claiming the problem isn't a problem anyway. Rewrite the rules, shift the goalposts. — Julian Barnes

I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak. — Sarah Dessen

They don't understand it. They're not old enough to know the first instinct of irritation should be avoided in order to keep an open mind. — Amelia Gray

But when I would see the surrogate, my first instinct, my first reaction would be jealousy, because she was doing what I wanted to do. — Cheryl Tiegs

Dana?' [asked Garson].
She nodded to show him she was listening.
'Why does he call you Scully all the time? I mean, you do have a first name.'
'Because he can,' she answered simply, without sarcasm, and didn't bother to explain. Just as it would be hard to explain why Mulder was, without question, the best friend she had. It was more than just being partners, being able to rely on each other when one of them was in danger, or when one of them needed a boost when a case seemed to be going bad; and it was more than simply their contrasting styles, which, perversely to some, complemented each other perfectly.
What it was, she sometimes thought, was an indefinable instinct, a silent signal that let her know that whatever else changed, whatever else happened, Mulder would always be there when he had to be. One way or another. — Charles Grant

The Republican party must break with its long-established instinct for caution and make a bold stand for first principles of freedom and constitutional limitations on government - from full repeal of Obamacare to rolling back multitrillion-dollar deficits. This is not so much a reproach of past Republican conduct as it is a recognition of new opportunities. — Tony Blankley

How can you be so optimistic about the whole damn world but not about yourself?"
"My magic, you mean."
"Your neck, Pen."
She drew her head back as if he'd just shouted. His words struck her that forcefully.
"My . . . ?"
"I adore your neck. And your eyes. Do you know how long it's been since I thought the word 'indigo'? Maybe when I read it in a poem, years ago. But that's the color you use to stare at me."
Heat shivered up her spine, along the tops of her breasts and across her cheeks. Never. Not ever had she imagined such a treasure. So shocked, she said the first thing that came into her head. Pure instinct.
"Yours are like a clear piece of glass with the sky behind it."
He grinned lazily. "Is that what you think? Well, feel free to continue. — Ellen Connor

In the face of uncertainty, our first instinct is often to reject novelty, looking for reasons why unfamiliar concepts might fail.26 When managers vet novel ideas, they're in an evaluative mindset. To protect themselves against the risks of a bad bet, they compare the new notion on the table to templates of ideas that have succeeded in the past. When — Adam Grant

Your first instinct when you see a man on the ground is to go down on him. — Murray Mexted

When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant. — Ambrose Bierce

In the privacy of my mind I can imagine whatever I want, and they aren't progressive, twenty-first-century thoughts. They're depraved, brutal cavewoman thoughts. In my mind, he's electric with the animal instinct to protect me, his heavy muscle braced over my body. He absorbs each impact and it is his privilege. He's injected sharp and hard with nature's superdrug, testosterone. I'm wrapped in him, safe from anything the world wants to throw at me. Anything painful or cruel will have to get through him before it has any chance of touching me. And it will never happen. "Alive? — Sally Thorne

Envy, jealousy, revenge and negativity are some of the basic instinct of women. They cannot help it. We prefer negative thoughts at first place due to the feeling of insecurity. — Himmilicious

On all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity
I have letters to make even blindmen see ... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough
I call it mankind's single immortal blemish ... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose
following Christianity's first day!
Why not following its last day, instead?
Following today?
Transvaluation of all values! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Why did you tell me it was just a kiss?" she asked, waiting for her voice to break. "I don't even care about that other girl. I mean, I do, but not as much. Why was your first instinct to tell me that what happened between you and me didn't matter? And why should I believe you now when you say that it did? Why should I believe anything you say? — Rainbow Rowell

Living out here, I have found that many creatures would prefer not to fight. But if your first instinct is to reach for your sword, you will never discover that. — Suzanne Collins

I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food. — Jonathan Safran Foer

My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story. — Ang Lee

People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans
hairless, weak, and helpless save for cunning
have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed. — Diana Gabaldon

One of them confessed to Paul that his tribe had heard stories about the fiercely cannibalistic ways of white men. Paul's first instinct was to laugh him off as a simpleminded fool. But the legend hadn't been conjured from thin air. When Paul tried to assure him that white men didn't eat black men, the man confronted him with a direct challenge: explain why they bought and sold Africans as if they were cattle, not human beings.
"Why do you come from nobody knows where, and carry off our men, and women, and children?" the man asked Paul. "Do you not fatten them in your far country and eat them? — Monte Reel

When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images.' The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively ... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts. — Wolfgang Pauli

It is the natural instinct of a child to work from within outwards; "First I think, and then I draw my think." What wasted efforts we make to teach the child to stop thinking, and only to observe! — Ananda Coomaraswamy

We're going up there," she told them. "To the Keep. Your first instinct will be to protect me, I know-"
"Here it comes," Dyer muttered
"But do me a favor and protect each other. Understand, Dyer?"
"Yes, Lady, yes! Because that's what I signed up for: to guard other guards while I leave the Queen to her own devices. — Erika Johansen

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and the sniff. Danger so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing. — John Galsworthy

Improv requires one thing I lack that I think most mothers need - the basic instinct to put someone else first. — Jen Kirkman

Will saw the first Senshi officer release and instantly knew where the arrow was aimed. 'They've spotted Shigeru!' He was about to turn and shove Shigeru to the ground, but as he did so, his eye caught a flicker of movement and he spun back.
When asked later about what he did next, he could never explain how he managed it. Nor could he ever repeat the feat. He acted totally from instinct, an unbelievable piece of coordination between hand and eye.
The Senshi arrow flashed downward, heading directly for Shigeru. Will flicked his bow at it, caught it and deflected it from its course. The arrowhead screeched on the hard, rocky ground and the arrow skittered away. Even Halt took a second to be impressed.
'My god!' he said. 'How did you do that? — John Flanagan

With impeccable timing and a fine instinct for the telling detail, Francesca Abbate evokes the plenitudes and the deprivations of human habitation, the nurturing richness of landscape, and the soul-wound wrought by casual defacement. Abbate has a superb capacity for distillation and a mastery of poetic line, and her diction is remarkably flexible, accommodating both the demotic and the lyrical. Her poems are as consistent in quality as they are varied in pacing, surface, and tone. A fine first book. — Linda Gregerson

I found I was able to relieve people not only of pain but of fear. It's strange how many people suffer from it. I don't mean fear of closed spaces and fear of heights, but fear of death and, what's worse, fear of life. Often they're people who seem in the best of health, prosperous, without any worry, and yet they're tortured by it. I've sometimes thought it was the most besetting humour of men, and I asked myself at one time if it was due to some deep animal instinct that man has inherited from that primeval something that first felt the thrill of life. — W. Somerset Maugham

No matter what these terrorists do, I refuse to be terrorized. All this requires is just a few alterations in our day to day lives. For example, my first instinct when I receive an envelope full of white powder ... is to snort it! I just won't do that this time! — Margaret Cho

Something snatched onto Crickets' left leg, and it was rapidly pulling her into the depths away from the wharf. Air-bubbles restricted her view in the pre-stirred water, as she kicked furiously against the high strength of her unknown assailant. Being from Louisiana, Cricket's first instinct told her she was going down to a certain-death by Alligator! — Darwun St. James

When anything is wrong with your child, your first instinct is to make it better. — Didi Conn

When you're hitting a fairway wood, you've got a lot of real estate to cover to get to your target. Your first instinct is probably to give it a little more power because you're worried about coming up short. — Ernie Els

If we were taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged first to feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses, and a little faith. We aren't often taught to cook like that, so when we watch people cook naturally, in what looks like an agreement between cook and cooked, we think that they were born with an ability to simply know that an egg is done, that the fish needs flipping, and that the soup needs salt. Instinct, whether on the ground or in the kitchen, is not a destination but a path. — Tamar Adler

An adult who does not understand that a child needs to use his hands and does not recognize this as the first manifestation of an instinct for work can be an obstacle to the child's development — Maria Montessori

A man actually has two Gods. The one, created him and the other, he created. Nature is not the first God but the first God exists in and as a part of the nature; a man with the help his reason creates a God against the forces of nature that are perceived to be as threat, hence the second God. The second God is the property of an individual mind that created it. A child has no reason and hence it has no second God; but it has the first God not yet known to it because the fear is not felt by the child! The first God is felt and known due to the fear ingrained in the instinct and the second God is the surrender and prayer brought out by the reason! — Thiruman Archunan

Let's go back to the train station,' she said. 'Or,
rather, let's come back to this room, to the day when we sat here together for the first time
and you recognised that I existed and gave me a gift. That was your first attempt to enter my
soul, and you weren't sure whether or not you were welcome. But, as you say in your story,
human beings were
once divided and now seek the embrace that will reunite them. That is our instinct. But it is
also our reason for putting
up with all the difficulties we meet in that search.I want you to look at me, but I want you to take care
that I don't notice. Initial desire is important because it is hidden, forbidden, not permitted.
You don't know whether you are looking at your lost half or not; she doesn't know either,
but something is drawing you together, and you must believe that it is true you are each
other's other half — Paulo Coelho

What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were "anti-family." ... It was motherhood that got me into the movementin the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women's movement that put self-esteem back into "just a housewife," rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of "instinct" and making it human, deliberate, powerful. — Mary Blakely

One's instinct is at first to try and get rid of a discrepancy, but I believe that experience shows such an endeavour to be a mistake. What one ought to do is to magnify a small discrepancy with a view to finding out the explanation. — John William Strutt

But in reality, when faced with death and the great unknown that came after, my survival instinct snatched wildly at whatever lifeline was offered. I didn't want to die. Even if it meant becoming something I loathed, my nature was, first and always, to survive. — Julie Kagawa

I usually go with the first instinct, and then build upon that. — John Otto

My first instinct is to push you until you break just to see how hard I have to press. — Veronica Roth

If you do believe in God, and your first instinct in all things must be gratitude: for creation, or love, for mercy. — Jonathan V. Last

Whenever I'm done with an album cycle, I still wanna write music. If I'm bored when I'm at home, which never happens, my first instinct is to go to the piano and bang something out. — Avril Lavigne

And again the news offered no news: On CNN, a rerun of Larry King interviewing the widowed and the suffering. On CNN2, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a fatherless son. On CNN3, a rerun of Flight 11 flying toward the first tower, in slow motion. On CNN4, a rerun of the tower collapsing, in slow motion, and again the towers fell, again people jumped and died. On CNN5, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a motherless daughter, a daughterless father, interviewing the motherless, fatherless, wifeless, husbandless, childless, shameless
disgusted, Bill pressed POWER and beheaded King, exiled CNN, and the world went dark. They sat relieved in the silence and dark. Not much road traffic now, but somewhere in the distant overhead the honk and flap of southbound geese, instinct bound, in vees for victory. The turkey was still on the table; the sides were still out. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are tired come home. — Pearl Abraham

Alec licked his spoon, then set it on the table and popped his drink open. "Okay, I may be breaking some kind of girl bonding rule or something, but can I offer you a guy's perspective on this?"
I frowned, my spoon halfway to my mouth. "Is this gonna make me want to hit you?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. But it's the truth. Here goes: kissing back is an instinct. Unless the girl smells like a sewer or has tentacles feeling you up independently, a guy's first instinct is to kiss back. That's how it works. What's important is how long that kissing back lasted. So ... how long? — Rachel Vincent

You're not my boss, Alan." He returned to his game. Honestly, my first instinct was to smack the kid, but i doubted that would fly with his parents. — Richard Paul Evans

Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer ... She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true ... She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture ... All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. — Willa Cather

Money is just one of the forces that blind us to information and issues which we could pay attention to - but don't. It exacerbates and often rewards all the other drivers of willful blindness; our preference for the familiar, our love for individuals and for big ideas, a love of busyness and our dislike of conflict and change, the human instinct to obey and conform and our skill at displacing and diffusing responsibility. All of these operate and collaborate with varying intensities at different moments in our lives. The common denominator is that they all make us protect our sense of self-worth, reducing dissonance and conferring a sense of security, however illusory. In some ways, they all act like money; making us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. We wouldn't be so blind if our blindness didn't deliver rewards; the benefit of comfort and ease. — Margaret Heffernan

I am as impressed by honesty as anyone, but when there is a hint that a man is taking me into his confidence, my first instinct is to suspect him. Am I to be flattered? And is he about to break another's confidence? — Zia Haider Rahman

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, - that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, - that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, - and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed. — Charles Darwin

It was a common fallacy among survivors that zombies were strong. This was incorrect. The average zombie, by itself, was weak with little muscle control. The creatures were pure instinct. Whatever intelligence they had was gone with their first death, lost forever. It was their numbers that gave them strength. A strong man or woman with a weapon and their wits could easily take out ten to fifteen zombies. But behind those ten to fifteen lay fifty or a hundred more, untiring, unrelenting in their search for flesh. A human tired, a zombie didn't. This was their greatest strength. — Robert Morganbesser

A generation of reporters saw the Washington Post win a Pulitzer for exposing the scandal, and many dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein. A strong and skeptical press corps is good for democracy. Often the media's first instinct is to portray every story as a scandal, however, which presents a distorted picture of government and leaves the public cynical. — George W. Bush

Prior to the advent of the civilization of the Third Estate (mercantilism, capitalism), the social ethics that was religiously sanctioned in the West consisted in realizing one's being and in achieving one's own perfection within the fixed parameters that one's individual nature and the group to which one belonged clearly defined. Economic activity, work, and profit were justified only in the measure in which they were necessary for sustenance and to ensure the dignity of an existence conformed to one's own estate, without the lower instinct of self-interest or profit coming first. — Julius Evola

One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts. — Jonathan Safran Foer

From when I was really young one of the first things I did was to perform and do shows. It was like a natural instinct. — Colin Morgan

Her. My mate. She's near . . . . She was downwind but close enough that he detected her. He didn't know what she looked like, what her name was, or even her species. Yet he'd been waiting a millennium - his entire existence - for her. His head swung around in the direction of the scent. A small female stood alone off to the side of the field. At his first sight of her, his breath was lost, his Lykae Instinct roaring to life within him. - Yours. Take her. - — Kresley Cole

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

First time was instinct. I hear O'Leary go, "Jesus," and there's a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he'd lap up water from a bowl. It wasn't American blood, but still, there's that dog, lapping it up. And that's the last straw, I guess, and then it's open season on dogs. — Phil Klay

My first instinct was to make an excuse or to get bashful or to change the subject...but then I realized I was in good company. I could be honest, and this guy was the one who seemed to be holding back. "Actually, yeah, that was kind of amazing. — Tyler Oakley

They do not like evidence like that, anything too definite because our first instinct is to find flaws and debunk. They want to be discussed and portrayed, but never proven. They want to be credited as the true makers of the pyramids and lifters of Stonehenge when it had much more to do with the gods who were then extant. — Thomm Quackenbush

I won't run." Gabriel gulped. "I promise."
"You aren't being punished; you're being protected." Cal snorted. "But you'll run. When you're scared or hurt, your first instinct is to run. You can't help it any more than I can resist chasing you." The shifter leaned to brush his mouth over Gabriel's. "Be smart, pet. Run to me. — Kari Gregg

C.J. had once believed that he understood who he was, what he was about, what he was capable of. But when the moment came to act upon these convictions, he discovered that his knowledge of self was faulty. Had his lack of killer instinct been a momentary lapse, first time jitters? Or was there more to it than that? If not the fearless, remorseless man he supposed himself to be, then just who was he? — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all - the authority of a man to think. — G.K. Chesterton

She asked herself a thousand times why she had hungered so desperately to belong body and soul to Joaquin Andieta when truth she had never been totally happy in his arms, and could explain it only in terms of first love. She had been ready to fall in love when he came to the house to unload some cargo; the rest was instinct. She had merely obeyed the most powerful and ancient of calls, but it had happened an eternity ago and seven thousand miles away. Who she was then and what she had seen in him she could not say, only that now her heart was far away from there. Not only was she tired of looking for him but deep down she did not want to find him; at the same time, though, she could not go on riddled with doubt. She needed an ending for that phase in order to begin a new love with a clean slate — Isabel Allende

Where had they learned to converse and to dance? I couldn't converse or dance. Everybody knew something I didn't know. The girls looked so good, the boys so handsome. I would be too terrified to even look at one of those girls, let alone be close to one. To look into her eyes or dance with her would be beyond me.
And yet I know that what I saw wasn't as simple and good as it appeared. There was a price to be paid for it all, a general falsity, that could be easily believed, and could be the first step down a dead-end street. — Charles Bukowski

The first reaction is surely the most natural one, but not always the most correct one; thereupon, the invention of apologies. — Criss Jami

Is there any depression so deep as this? is there any night so dark as this first eclipse of the soul, this first conscious stilling of the instinct for right? — John Meade Falkner