Triggered Quotes & Sayings

When trying to fathom an immense, intricate system, drawing direct arrows of causality between micro and macro-components is perilous. Which stock caused the crash of '29? Which person triggered the outbreak of World War I? Which word of Poe's "The Rave" suffuses it with an atmosphere of brooding melancholy? (91) — Thomas Lewis

I worked the extremely long night shifts for three years on the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea and I noticed during that time that my mating cycle was being repeatedly triggered. It cleared up when I left for my next job. — Steven Magee

World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out "loner" who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields. — Philip Roth

When such patterns are triggered in therapy, it gives the patient a chance to look at them and change them, for as we saw in chapter 4, "Acquiring Tastes and Loves," positive bonds appear to facilitate neuroplastic change by triggering unlearning and dissolving existing neuronal networks, so the patient can alter his existing intentions. — Norman Doidge

The good repent on knowing their sin; the evil become angry when discovered. Ignorance is not the cause of evil, as Plato held; neither is education the answer to the removal of evil. These men had an intellect as well as a will; knowledge as well as intention. Truth can be known and hated; Goodness can be known and crucified. The Hour was approaching, and for the moment the fear of the people deterred the Pharisees. Violence could not be triggered against Him until He would say, 'This is your Hour. — Fulton J. Sheen

In any ten step instruction manual and every book of doctrines, there is complex advice that serves the very simple function of helping the lonely person find some similarity with the world around him.
He connects and, suddenly, there is a burst of joy, a ray of hope. He believes that it was those steps or that book, specifically, that brought him happiness, when really he has simply been triggered into his natural state. — Vironika Tugaleva

The beginning of pride and hatred lies in worldly desire, and the strength of your desire if from habit. When an evil tendency becomes confirmed by habit, rage is triggered when anyone restrains you. — Rumi

What happens to a marriage? A persistent failure of kindness, triggered at first, at least in my case, by the inequities of raising children, the sacrifices that take a woman by surprise and that she expects to be matched by her mate but that biology ensures cannot be. Anything could set me off. Any innocuous habit or slight or oversight. The way your father left the lights of the house blazing, day and night. The way he could become so distracted at work that sometimes when I called, he'd put me on hold and forget me, only remembering again when I'd hung up and called back. The way he wore his pain so privately, whistling around the house after we'd had a spat, pretending nonchalance, protecting you and your sisters from discord, hiding behind his good nature, inadvertently — Jan Ellison

The emotions triggered by fiction are very real. When Charles Dickens wrote about the death of Little Nell in the 1840s, people wept - and I'm sure that the death of characters in J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series led to similar tears. — Paul Bloom

instability, the discomfort of the relationship - feed back into the low self-esteem and self-doubt that triggered the over-involvement to start with. The only way out appears to be deeper enmeshment, getting so close to the SOP that those blowups won't happen. Soon the cycle hums, fully in place, with both parties pedaling as fast as they can. — Robert Hemfelt

In fact, Clinton feels others' pain to the point that he not infrequently openly weeps for them, and his teary response is so infectious that it can trigger tears in others. This creates the opportunity for powerful political theater, all the more powerful because it is genuinely felt. Leopoulos was with Clinton in New Hampshire, and recalled how Clinton's empathy routinely triggered an epidemic of tears. "He had to hear everyone's story. Some of the people were crying, and had terribly sad stories. Clinton started crying, too, and then we were all crying." Stephanopoulos recalled one such encounter during the New Hampshire primary: "When Mary Annie Davis confessed tearfully that she had to choose each month between buying food or medicine, he knelt down, took her hand, and comforted her with a hug. Even the hardest bitten reporters in the room were wiping tears from their eyes."27 — John Gartner

Deliberately placed triggers for learned behaviours (programmes)
Although all abuse and trauma survivors may be "triggered" into intrusive flashbacks by present-day experiences that remind them of the trauma, the triggers deliberately installed by mind controllers are different, in that they are cues for conditioned behaviours. Some of these are behaviours such as going home, going outside (where someone is waiting), coming to the person who uses the trigger, or switching to a particular insider. Others are psychiatric symptoms such as flashbacks, self-harm, or suicide attempts, which are actually punishments given by insiders for disobedience or disloyalty. For many survivors, every trigger causes a switch to a part programmed to perform a particular behaviour associated with that trigger. For others, the front person remains present in the world but has an irresistible compulsion to perform the behaviour. — Alison Miller

Infancy is irretrievable. Its memories live underground. To what extent they return by stealth or are triggered by various catalysts remains an ongoing question. — Siri Hustvedt

Sensitive periods are triggered via the interaction of genetic timing and experience. Sensitive periods are times of rapid learning when thousands of synaptic connections are made each second (Greenough, 1987; ten Cate, 1989). The timing of sensitive periods varies — Louis Cozolino

Eating disorders are like a gun that's formed by genetics, loaded by a culture and family ideals, and triggered by unbearable distress. — Aimee Liu

Mindfulness has never been more important considering how the events of the world move in such an accelerated, frantic time. Our attention goes from here to the next thing to the next thing, and we're triggered from one response of fear to one of connection to the threat of loss. — Barnet Bain

A year or so earlier I had been to the Sky River Rock Festival in rural Washington, where a dosen stone-broke freaks from Seattle Liberation Front had assembled a sound system that carried every small note of an acoustic guitar - even a cough or the sound of a boot drooping on the stage - to half-deaf acid victims huddled under bushes a half mile away.
But the best technicians available to the National DAs' convention in Vegas apparently couldn't handle it. Their sound system looked like something Ulysses S. Grant might have triggered up to addres his troops during the Siege of Vicksburg. The voices from up front crackled with a fuzzy, high-pitched urgency, and the delay was just enough to keep the words disconcertingly out of phaze with the speaker's gestures. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 73) — Hunter S. Thompson

A year earlier, no company had been accorded more faith than Enron; by late November, none was trusted less. And so, a gasping gurgle, a desperate SOS: Enron, the emblem of free markets, the champion of deregulation, reached into its depleted treasury and forked over $100,000 to each of the major political parties' campaign war chests. Then, it shuttered its online trading unit - its erstwhile gem. On November 28, Standard & Poor's downgraded Enron to junk-bond level - which triggered provisions in Enron's debt requiring it to immediately repay billions of its obligations. This it could not do. Its stock was seventy cents and falling, and, now, no gatekeepers and no credit remained. Accordingly, in the first week of December, Enron, the archetype of shareholder value, availed itself of the time-honored protection for those who have lost their credit: bankruptcy. — Roger Lowenstein

I have not been diagnosed with epilepsy. I did have an MRI of the brain, and they found no abnormalities in my brain. Now, there are people with epilepsy who have completely normal MRI's, too. I just think also, you know, epileptic seizures can be triggered by emotional stress, by all kinds of things, lights. — Siri Hustvedt

Without a doubt in my mind, I believe that vaccinations triggered Evan's autism. — Jenny McCarthy

We do not start any change. We are part of it.
Something older than us had triggered change. — Toba Beta

Anxiety isn't an attack that explodes out of me; it's not a volcano that lies dormant until it's triggered by an earth-shattering event. It's a constant companion. Like a blow fly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can't see it, can't capture it, can't let it out. — Jen Wilde

The adolescent does not develop her identity and individuality by moving outside her family. She is not triggered by some magic unconscious dynamic whereby she rejects her family in favour of her peers or of a larger society ... She continues to develop in relation to her parents. Her mother continues to have more influence over her than either her father or her friends. — Terri E Apter

The Bosnian Genocide was something that triggered my consciousness and led to an awakening politically for me. — Maajid Nawaz

Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready."
"Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead."
She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled.
Smiled
He did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading. — Laini Taylor

Don't hold back because you're afraid of hurting someone else. If your best friend wants to be a cheerleader and you make the team but she doesn't, don't feel guilty. If you end up earning more than your sister, it's not a betrayal. Your success might be an inspiration for someone else, while limiting yourself to avoid upsetting the balance doesn't help anyone. Equally, rather than being paralysed by jealousy when someone else is coming out on top, use it to spur you on to greater things. Some of our best achievements will be triggered by envy at seeing someone else fulfilling our secret ambitions. — Rosie Blythe

explanation of odor. "Odor is particulate," he had written. The sense of odor is triggered when particulates in the air hit receptors in the nasal passage and are interpreted in the brain. In other words, when you sense a certain odor, you are actually ingesting particulates (solid particles from the object you smell) that cling to the mucous membranes in the nose and give you that sense of odor. When you smell the decay of a dead body, you are actually ingesting particulates of dead flesh into your lungs. Dead flesh clinging to alveoli, the clusters of air sacs in your lungs. Jennifer had been so grossed out by his description that she had called him up and asked specifically about particulates. "Well, Sis (Jerry had always called her 'Sis') it's like this. I don't ever make coffee in hotels where they keep the coffee pot in the bathroom, and I use airplanes sparingly." Gross. — Enes Smith

His face was smiling, his eyes glittered in the late autumn moonlight, and he emitted a flickering aura that might have triggered seizures in an impartial but sensitive child, and yet he was strangely depressed. — Ryu Murakami

Many people achieved important goals in their lives, but hardly any of them seemed any happier for it. Even worse, some complained that other areas of their lives had suffered along the way. The reason is simple: they didn't change the framework components of their personality - beliefs, decisions, and other subconscious structures that are typically negatively-oriented. Those basic structures had been triggered by the fulfillment of the goal and were subsequently creating a mess in people's lives. — Nebo D. Lukovich

Great genius you already have. The super conscious mind is invariably triggered by definition, and by decisiveness. — Brian Tracy

Computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms. Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal. — Steven Pinker

I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking. And then I walked back into the house and my wife asked, 'What's the matter?' and I said 'I don't feel good.' And tears - uncontrollable tears - was coming out of my eyes. And she said, 'What's the matter?' And I said 'I just thought about that execution I did two days ago, and everybody else's that I was involved with.' And what it was something triggered within and it just - everybody - all of these executions all of a sudden sprung forward. — Fred Allen

The emotional or physical pain that for many women precedes and coincides with the menstrual flow is the pain-body in its collective aspect that awakens from its dormancy at that time, although it can be triggered at other times too. — Eckhart Tolle

I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.
But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.
And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story. — Carolyn Bramhall

We can't pack down hurt, nor can we off-load it to someone else while maintaining our authenticity and integrity. Most of us have been on the receiving end of one of these outbursts. Even if we have the insight to know that our boss, friend, colleague, or partner blew up at us because something tender was triggered and it's not actually about us, it still shatters trust and respect. Living, growing up, working, or worshipping on eggshells creates huge cracks in our sense of safety and self-worth. Over time, it can be experienced as trauma. — Brene Brown

As God took me through the journey that became the Bible study 'Breaking Free', He taught me to look for a common denominator among the things that triggered my destructive habits. — Beth Moore

The psychologist Mark Schaller has shown that disgust is part of what he calls the "behavioral immune system" - a set of cognitive modules that are triggered by signs of infection or disease in other people and that make you want to get away from those people.40 — Jonathan Haidt

Subpersonalities can exist at different levels or memes, however, so that one can indeed have a purple subpersonality, a blue subpersonality, and so on. These often are context-triggered, so that one can have quite different types of moral responses, affects, needs, etc., in different situations. — Ken Wilber

And how do trees register that the warmer days are because of spring and not late summer? The appropriate reaction is triggered by a combination of day length and temperature. Rising temperatures mean it's spring. Falling temperatures mean it's fall. Trees are aware of that as well. And that's why species such as oaks or beeches, which are native to the Northern Hemisphere, adapt to reversed cycles in the Southern Hemisphere if they are exported to New Zealand and planted there. And what this proves as well, by the way, is that trees must have a memory. How else could they inwardly compare day lengths or count warm days? — Peter Wohlleben

Refugees such as ourselves could never dare question the Disneyland ideology followed by most Americans, that theirs was the happiest place on earth. But Dr. Hedd was beyond reproach, for he was an English immigrant. His very existence as such validated the legitimacy of the former colonies, while his heritage and accent triggered the latent Anglophilia and inferiority complex found in many Americans. Dr. Hedd was clearly aware of his privilege and was amused at the discomfort he was causing his American hosts. It — Viet Thanh Nguyen

She didn't need ordnance; she needed someone who could work around the problem. And that left her the single undead general in the Kel Arsenal, the madman who slept in the black cradle until the Nirai technicians could discover what had triggered his madness and how to cure him. Shuos Jedao, the Immolation Fox: genius, arch-traitor, and mass murderer. — Yoon Ha Lee

I realize this is blasphemy, but a few weeks ago I tried to watch a NASCAR race being run at Talladega. I lasted about five minutes before terminal boredom overtook me. It appeared to be nothing more than a high-speed freeway commute
a mob of luridly painted, identical lumps of metal loping at 180 mph around the banking, fender to fender, nose to tail. Knowing the scenario would surely devolve into a multicar demolition derby that would thrill the goobers in the grandstands, I turned off the set to later learn that this time it was Jimmie Johnson who triggered the eight-car melee. — Brock Yates

The Europeans must finally understand the incredible shock triggered by the attacks of September 11. — Brent Scowcroft

Initially, the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity. — Ulrich Beck

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into the realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I feel genius in great works of art. I have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people. — Deepak Chopra

If you try to impose a rigid discipline while teaching a child or a chimp you are working against the boundless curiosity and need for relaxed play that make learning possible in the first place ... learning cannot be controlled; it is out of control by design. Learning emerges spontaneously, it proceeds in an individualistic and unpredictable way, and it achieves its goal in its own good time. Once triggered, learning will not stop
unless it is hijacked by conditioning. — Roger Fouts

We belong to a short-lived genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What's more, we do damage. The brutal climate and environmental changes that we have triggered are unlikely to spare us. For — Carlo Rovelli

Everybody needs a fan, and the support and the encouragement. We're human beings; that is an essential part of the equation. When that fan is not there and when you're in a situation that triggers you on a historical level, you behave impulsively. You can destroy years worth of work professionally, personally, in a moment of being triggered by that. — Jillian Michaels

Clues. Sometimes we get involved with things that have both advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes the bad points outweigh (or outwit) the good, and we choose to ignore the negatives. Our subconscious won't let us get away with that. Remember, the mind will lie, the body cannot! * * * Getting Better by Getting It Together As we've see, your state of health depends on many constantly changing conditions. When you experience an illness or accident, it is usually because an imbalance between your inner and outer worlds has triggered a body problem. So you must work backwards: begin by looking at the body problem for clues to the cause of the imbalance, then take the steps necessary to restore your inner alignment. — Rochelle Gordon

In a world where time cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events are triggered by other events, not by time. — Alan Lightman

Covert manipulators are quite gifted at provocation. As they learn more about you, they are investigating your weak spots and catering their comments towards what they know will hurt you the most. Knowing you're triggered by their comments gives them a sadistic sense of satisfaction that alleviates their secret sense of inferiority and strokes their delusions of grandeur, control and aptitude. Having control over your emotions also gives them the power to effectively manipulate you and convince you that you don't deserve any better. — Shahida Arabi

Melody has a certain way that it projects back to you. It triggers certain nerves in your body and certain instincts that normally wouldn't be triggered by a normal voice. — Akon

Just like in real life, in code, a feature is triggered by an action (command) that results in a sequence of events that might or might not cause side effects. — Greg Young

...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can't really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won't...Without experimenting, you can't figure out which interests will stick, and which won't. — Angela Duckworth

People were doing business with one another through the Internet already, through bulletin boards. But on the Web, we could make it interactive, we could create an auction, we could create a real marketplace. And that's really what triggered my imagination, if you will, and that's what I did. — Pierre Omidyar

On another occasion, Amos and I wondered about the rate of divorce among professors in our university. We noticed that the question triggered a search of memory for divorced professors we knew or knew about, and that we judged the size of categories by the ease with which instances came to mind. We called this reliance on the ease of memory search the availability heuristic. — Daniel Kahneman

It boils down to studenthood-in-perpetuity / curiosity-in-perpetuity / applied fanatic restlessness. That is, a belief that life is ONE BIG LEARNING EXPERIENCE. Something mysterious happens to a curious, fully engaged mind - and it happens as often as not, subconsciously. Strange little sparks are set off, connections made, insights triggered. The results: an exponentially increased ability to tune up / reinvent / WOW-ize today's project at work. — Tom Peters

What triggered a migraine for me may have no effect on someone else. For many people, coffee can relieve symptoms somewhat, but for me it was a trigger. You really have to find out what affects you individually. — Morgan Fairchild

Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness ... focusing the consciousness ... aortal dilation ... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness ... to be conscious by choice ... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions ... one does not obtain food-safety freedom by instinct alone ... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct ... the animal destroys and does not produce ... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual ... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe ... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid ... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs ... all things/cells/beings are impermanent ... strive for flow-permanence within ... — Frank Herbert

This was the first of the solar superstorms, triggered — Karen Thompson Walker

Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes I think from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self worth is diminished if they are not [naturally] in charge. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We need to design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in that environment. Top of mind leads to tip of tongue. — Jonah Berger

The publication of Doctor Zhivago in the West in 1957 and the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Boris Pasternak the following year triggered one of the greatest cultural storms of the Cold War. Because of the enduring appeal of the novel, and the 1965 David Lean film based on it, Doctor Zhivago remains a landmark piece of fiction. Yet few readers know the trials of its birth and how the novel galvanized a world largely divided between the competing ideologies of two superpowers. — Peter Finn

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed. — Philip G. Zimbardo

Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Pain has an odd way of expressing itself in the acts of business. No matter how many setbacks a leader might experience, there always seems to be a new opaque watermark of endurance testing, invisibly triggered for erratic combustion in each compounding decision. Every CEO in the world knows this, yet few have the good sense to walk away from the table when their cards are hot. Why win in Act Two when a comeback in Act Three gives you a longer biography? Ego is not so much about immortality as it is about demonstrating stately resistance to nightmarish attacks in public forums. Any good smack to the head is a continuity wake up call, or at least another invitation to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. — Ken Goldstein

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz opened up a new line of attack on Donald Trump, targeting his involvement in Trump University, a for-profit, non-licensed now defunct institution which triggered lawsuits from individuals who claimed they were defrauded by him, as well as a suit alleging fraud from New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman. — Chris Hayes

China is an old nation with a colourful history. Its booming economy has triggered an appetite and a curiosity around the world for its art and culture, one that continues to grow. I can, however, tell people that it is a show with no actor. — Ai Weiwei

Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered.
Where do you get your ideas?
I purposely mishear things. — Harlan Ellison

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the acknowledged architect of the British victory in the French and Indian War, rose to condemn the decision to militarize the conflict. He recommended the withdrawal from Boston of all British troops, who could only serve as incendiaries for a provocative incident that triggered a war. — Joseph J. Ellis

our threshold of survival-prone behavior is so high it takes the prospect of total extermination to activate modes of placation and compromise, may there not be other processes, equally life-preserving, which can similarly be triggered off only at a far higher level of stimulus — John Brunner

To discern the Zeitgeist you need to read widely. You need to systematically scan all possible sources of information. You also need to gauge the moods and emotions triggered by the happenings at that point in time. But if you can get a good sense on Zeitgeist you can get immense control on shaping new ideas for others and you can even control others! — Abhishek Ratna

The very same brain centers that interpret and feel physical pain also become activated during experiences of emotional rejection. In brain scans, they light up in response to social ostracism, just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling hurt or of having emotional pain, they are not being abstract or poetic, but scientifically quite precise. — Gabor Mate

Those final moments, while horrific in one sense, were intimate in another. Perhaps when you finally realized were beaten - that there really was no hope - something was triggered in the mind, allowing you to expunge, accept. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

Age isn't triggered by wrinkles,nor by the reduction of strong footing,for the true youth exists effectively in your heart,brightens through your smile and beats slow when your heart is right, innocent like that of a child — Nwilliams S C

The way I work with my cinematographer is not based on general principles, but the ideas are triggered by the locations where we shoot. — Paolo Sorrentino

Our impotent condemnation of weeds will not stop this revolution. We aren't getting the revolution we want: we're getting the one that we triggered. The — Hope Jahren

The readiness to react with fear, for instance, depends on how much fear is already present within to be triggered by a stimulus. The more fear we have on the inside, the more our perception of the world is changed to a fearful, guarded expectancy. — David R. Hawkins

An emotion like anger that's an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it's triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that's all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it's because we've chosen to rekindle it. — Pema Chodron

You hide a Sun-powered device in darkness - only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light. In other words, the monolith may be some kind of alarm. And we have triggered it. — Arthur C. Clarke

Bose and Einstein had triggered low-temperature experiments that have led to the discovery of new matter. I owe my work and my Nobel to them. — Wolfgang Ketterle

Maybe PTSD really is triggered by a single incident, a stressor, as it's known in the psychiatric community, and maybe the attack at Al-Waleed was that stressor for me, but as I have learned in the intervening years, I was not damaged by that moment alone. In fact, while there are specific memories that resurface with some frequency, like the suicide bomber in Sinjar or the order riot at Al-Waleed, I find myself most traumatized by the overall experience of being in a combat zone like Iraq, where you are always surrounded by war but rarely aware of when or how violence will arrive. Like so many of my fellow veterans, I understand now how that it is the daily adrenaline rush of a war without front lines or uniforms, rather than the infrequent bursts of bloody violence, that ultimately damages the modern warrior's mind. — Luis Carlos Montalvan

In moments of high emotion, whether they're triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment, if the next thing you are going to say makes you feel better, than it's probably the wrong thing to say. — Amor Towles

A phrase such as 'the idea derived from evolution that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis' for example, not impossibly intricate in itself but somehow resistant to effort, as though it triggered something obdurate and even delinquent in his mind. Or the promise to look at an argument from three points of view, each of which had five salient features, the first of which had four distinguishable aspects. It was like discovering that a supposedly sane person with whom one had been enjoying a perfect normal conversation was in fact quite mad. Or, if not mad, sadistic. — Howard Jacobson

Bang, Otto said as he simultaneously triggered the detonators in all of the helicopter's remaining missiles. — Mark Walden

Their touch triggered an electric spasm of agony. He felt the gushing warmth of blood on his fingers. [Charles Meredith] — Stephen Lloyd Jones

Mental stories can literally spoil a human life. It took me a long time to become aware of my mental commentary, such as: "Everything always goes wrong", "I won't be accepted", "I'm a failure" or "What's the point?" Those fears were deep-rooted and triggered many upsetting addictive patterns of behaviour — Christopher Dines

I am suggesting here that organisms have a built-I capability of adapting to their environment. I am suggesting that to the extent that evolution occurs, it occurs at the level of the organism. This suggestion differs sharply from the thesis of the NDT, which holds that evolution occurs only at the level of the population. Organisms contain within themselves the information that enables them to develop a phenotype adaptive to a variety of environments. The adaptation can occur by a change in the genome through a genetic change triggered by the environment, or it can occur without any genetic change. — Lee Spetner

My downfall, inevitably, was triggered by food. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I do sculpting sometimes when I have the time, and the first thing I sculpted was a bust of [Albert] Einstein. It still sits on my table and still inspires me. He was a person who triggered my imagination and my ideas. — Vandana Shiva

Squires thought her need for alone time was a sign of depression. In the end, it was a lack of solitude that triggered her descent into depression. Like Squires, many introverts receive the wrong message about solitude.

Our extroverted culture makes introverts feel despicable for wanting to be alone. Like thieves snatching something that doesn't belong to them, we have to "steal" a moment of solitude. If only introverts could see that we have a right to our alone time. We have a right to enjoy it too. — Michaela Chung

The cause of these great extinctions, the most extensive in the seventy-million-year record for mammals, is a mystery. The two prevailing guesses, climatic environmental pressure or the destruction caused by human immigration in these regions, are at a stalemate. Nearly all regions of extinction were briefly inhabited by early humans, which is why some feel they played roles. I was not there at the time, so I can only speculate, but surely a global catastrophe of some sort triggered the cataclysm. — Stephen J. O'Brien

Two men could be just alike in all their dispositions to verbal behavior under all possible sensory stimulations, and yet themeanings or ideas expressed in their identically triggered and identically sounding utterances could diverge radically, for the two men, in a wide range of cases. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear. — Brian Tracy

I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them. — Laurie Halse Anderson

For some reason, some of my best solutions and ideas are triggered in those dark theaters, usually totally unrelated to what's going on onscreen. I also enjoy hiking in the foothills and mountains close to Sacramento. I always have to bring a pen and paper to jot down sudden thoughts and ideas. So inspiration arises from countless sources. — James Rollins

Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability." The analogy had special meaning in the constitutional context: In a series of cases triggered by Brown v. Board of Education, the court had said that laws that classified on the basis of race were almost always unconstitutional, or deserving "strict scrutiny." The court had said in Reed that it wasn't applying strict scrutiny, but then it seemed to do so anyway. Were laws that classified what men and women could do blatantly unconstitutional the way laws classifying by race were? RBG boldly urged the court to say they were. — Irin Carmon

You can train any animal into any behavior on cue if it's a natural behavior to begin with. Racism, sexism, speciesism - all natural human behaviors. They can be triggered any time by any unscrupulous yahoo with a pulpit. A child could do it. — Karen Joy Fowler

Everything was going according to plan. What caught me off guard, however, was the fact that this eagerly awaited phase brought a sense of loss to me that triggered a whole new wave of soul searching I had not anticipated. — Carolyn Custis James