What Makes You Tick Quotes & Sayings

Like I said, what makes people tick isn't neccessarily what makes them good. Fast-forward, — Richard Russo

Black: The point is, Professor, that I aint got the first notion in the world about what makes God tick. I don't know why he spoke to me. I wouldnt of.
White: But you listened.
Black: Well what choice would you have?
White: I don't know. Not listen?
Black: How you goin to do that? — Cormac McCarthy

I think you approach a part the same way and just find out in what's making them tick and who they are. In a movie like this you may have a little less time and few dialogue scenes and exposition scenes for your character to really get that across, and so I wanted to be able to convey that she's not somebody who's just punching a clock but she has this weird emotional investment in her job to where she does get quite myopic and that's what makes her relentless. — Kate Beckinsale

Look, you don't know what makes me tick, so stop assuming you do. — Codi Gary

If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that. — Nick Clegg

For me, storytelling is all about how we learn about each other. I'm so curious about people, what makes them tick, why they are who they are, and how we all relate to each other, despite the fact that we may not think that we do. — Thomas Sadoski

Looking back, yes, I made too many comebacks. But each comeback I was 100 percent sure that I would win. I never came back for the money, because I didn't need it. The adulation I was getting anyway in other spheres. But I'm a guy who likes to see how close he can get to the edge of the mountain - that's what makes me tick. — Sugar Ray Leonard

I want to know about what makes an athlete tick. — Lisa Guerrero

You want to know what makes me tick, I'll tell you what makes me tick. I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn; I read a two-penny magazine called 'The Hawk's Nest.' Nobody entered that nest that didn't leave a little richer and a little wiser. And that 11-year-old boy said, 'Isn't that a wonderful thing.' And that's all there is to it. — Buddy Hackett

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor? — David McCullough

I grew up Baptist and still go to church. I myself have explored other religions, because I want to know what it is that makes other people tick. I find we're all talking about the same thing, really - it's all God. — Dennis Quaid

And even though he's the father of capitalism and wrote the most famous and maybe the best book ever on why some nations are rich and others are poor, Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote as eloquently as anyone ever has on the futility of pursuing money with the hope of finding happiness. How do you reconcile that with the fact that no one did more than Adam Smith to make capitalism and self-interest respectable? That is a puzzle I try to unravel toward the end of this book. Besides the emptiness of excessive materialism, Smith understood the potential we have for self-deception, the danger of unintended consequences, the seductive lure of fame and power, the limitations of human reason, and the unseen sources of what makes our lives both so complex and yet at times so orderly. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book of observations about what makes us tick. As a bonus, almost in passing, Smith tells us how to lead the good life in the fullest sense of that phrase. — Russ Roberts

Comb his Facebook page. See if he has a Twitter account. Follow up on every Google lead. I want to know what makes him tick, what makes him the man he is. — Faith Sullivan

I suppose one of the things that interest me about acting is unpicking what makes people tick and why they do what they do and what it means to be human. — Hattie Morahan

Other than the bombs they strap to their chests, Ive got no idea what makes the Palestinians tick. — Dennis Miller

I feel like, whatever movie I was making, there would always be moments of human intimacy and insight into a little bit of what makes us tick as people. — Colin Trevorrow

My opinion means nothing. It happens every day. The most unlikely people commit the most unlikely crimes. Nice old ladies poison whole families. Clean-cut kids commit multiple holdups and shootings. Bank managers with spotless records going back twenty years are found out to be long-term embezzlers. And successful and popular and supposedly happy novelists get drunk and put their wives in the hospital. We know damn little about what makes even our best friends tick. — Raymond Chandler

Moskin has brought together with care and lucidity an inside history of American diplomacy written through the eyes of the many diplomats who conceived and carried it out over 225 years. You experience the challenges, successes, and foibles. Over time, the Foreign Service evolved into a professional cadre serving the public and presidents, often at the peril of their lives. Anyone interested in understanding our diplomacy, what makes it tick, and how it strives to serve the public interest should read this masterful history. — Thomas R. Pickering

What makes your brand stick and tick is your ability to make it memorable — Bernard Kelvin Clive

I think my parents were really smart parents. I think they were, actually, pretty progressive for the time. The one thing that they really wanted me to know is what makes me tick, what I am about, how I approach life. And I think what my parents really wanted for me was for me to be who I am. — Rich Mullins

So, what I am learning to do is (to) learn each of their personalities - to study them, to learn how their natural bent is. Is it toward intellectualism. Is it toward athletics? Toward humor? Ministry? What makes each of them tick? And can I help them blossom in their areas of strength and win their hearts in doing so? So, that's one challenge in doing that. — Alex Kendrick

The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Our obstacle is that we live in an attention-deficit culture. — Josh Waitzkin

You can't control everything. You can't control how someone feels about you. Or what makes them tick. You can only control how you react, how you act, how you think and feel. — Maya Banks

I love the communication aspect with my athletes. I like the one on one time with my athletes but really its about making them better athletes and finding out what makes them tick. — Robin Farina

There is a very special place in the Australian psyche for sport. It is one of the pillars of the Australian way of life. You don't really understand what makes the Australian nation tick unless you understand the great affection Australians have for sport. — John Howard

To the traditional traveller - let alone travel writer - this might seem absurd. The whole point of travel is to go deep. To spend time in a place, to get under its skin. How can one possibly appreciate what makes a city or a country tick in a bare ten hours — Hugh Thomson

Am I meant to not reply to Josh From HR's texts, do you think? Hell, maybe I am. Maybe he liked me the way I like Adam The Tick Boxer. Maybe every single person in London is hoping for a text from someone else, and we're all connected in a chain of waiting. I wonder who's at the top of the chain?
Robert's phone beeps. He picks it up, reads the text, makes a derisive little snorting sound and puts it back on the table without replying.
That answers that question, then. — Gemma Burgess

I want to inspire and encourage people and intrigue them to want to know what makes me tick, which is ultimately the love of God, the grace, peace and forgiveness of God that I'm so thankful & grateful for. — Christian Hosoi

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good. — Tommy Mottola

People with Tourettes ... What makes them tick? — Jimmy Carr

People know that both my parents were shrinks so I was sort of raised in an atmosphere where there was that interest in the human mechanism and the human psyche and what makes people tick. And yes, I think I'm particularly creative and adventurous and improvisational and spontaneous in my inner impulses and patterns and deeply curious and appetized in the unfathomably mysterious and delicious phenomena that is the human being and who we really are. — Jeff Goldblum

With the Special Ops Warrior Foundation's help, we put 266 kids through college last year. And that's what keeps me going. I'll be honest, I don't like running. I don't like biking. I don't like swimming. I do it to raise money. But, now that I'm in this sport, I want to see how far I can push myself. What makes me tick is that pain you feel when you do these ultramarathons. I love knowing that everyone's suffering because I know I can suffer just a little bit more. I can take a lot of pain. — David Goggins

I've never felt entirely comfortable in high society. I'm more comfortable talking to the bar staff than the super-rich. I don't really get what makes them tick. — Rory Bremner

Some lessons you learn gradually and some you learn in a sudden moment, like a flash going off in a dark room. I sift and rake and dig around in my vivid recollections of young Sean on the floor in summer, and I try to see what makes him tick, but I know a secret about young Sean, I guess, that he kind of ends up telling the world: nothing makes him tick. It just happens all by itself, tick tick tick tick tick, without any proximal cause, with nothing underneath it. He is like a jellyfish adrift in the sea, throbbing quietly in the warm waves of the surf just off the highway where the dusty white vans with smoked windows and indistinct decals near their wheel hubs roll innocently past. — John Darnielle

There's a truth to the fact that it's hard to be real. It's easy to be indulgent. It's easy to be bubble gum, but it's hard to find a real thing that really makes your soul tick. It's painful and honest. It can be more challenging than just a sad song. — Mat Kearney

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know. — Alan W. Watts

I write books because I have always been fascinated by stories and language, and because I love thinking about what makes people tick. Writing a story ... 'The Giver' or any other ... is simply an exploration of the nature of behavior: why people do what they do, how it affects others, how we change and grow, and what decisions we make along the way. — Lois Lowry

You know, that kind of coldness, you know. And I think, yeah, I think that definitely helped. The female characters on the show, you can see some of them wanting to know what makes him tick. And I guess that translates into some of the fans outside. You know? — Matt Robinson

Now women are funny animals. You never know when you are with them - they don't often know where they are with themselves . It's no good trying to find out what makes them tick. It just can't be done. They have more moods than an army of cats with lives, and all you can hope is to spot the mood you're after when it turns up and step in quick. Hesitate you're a dead duck, unless you're one of those guys who like slow approach that might get you somewhere in a week or in a month or even a year. — James Hadley Chase

An occasional lucky guess as to what makes a wife tick is the best a man can hope for, Even then, no sooner has he learned how to cope with the tick than she tocks. — Ogden Nash

We certainly want those at the top to do well, but if you base your entire presidency and your entire economic platform on helping them do even better, you're missing what makes the economy tick. Because not everyone has been as fortunate as Mitt Romney, you cannot base your whole approach on a life experience as rarified as his. — Chuck Schumer

Forty is better than 30. I have a better understanding of who I am, what makes me tick, what's okay and not okay. — Brooke Burke

The best bosses understand the people working for them. That's the first component: what makes my people tick? What are they in it for? — Donny Deutsch

Learning what really makes a dog like him tick had forced me to grasp more about what made me tick. I often didn't like what I saw in me, but I was determined to do right by him. Which meant, as Carolyn had suggested, that I had to be better. Orson, like all my dogs, was a measure, a barometer, a mirror of me. — Jon Katz

In fact, because the unself-aware - which includes basically everybody - are impervious to uncharitable perceptions of their underlying motives, all these insights you have into people and what makes them tick are surprisingly useless. — Lionel Shriver

People are fascinating, aren't they, the closer you get to knowing what makes them tick? — Kate Morton

You never have a friend all figured out. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock. — Robert Breault

Anyone who devotes time and attention to what makes people tick, to me, is a smart person. — Ron Silver

Ace let out a deep breath, squeezing my hand and then letting go. "I know how hard this all is for you and I'm sorry that I haven't been more receptive. I promise from now on I will try my hardest to let you in more. Tell you more about my world and everything that makes me tick."
I took his hand and pulled it up to my lips, barely grazing his knuckles. "Deal. — Magan Vernon

Reductionism argues that we can learn what 'makes things tick' by looking more closely at matter, examining the underlying units. There are at least two problems with this approach. First, reductionism assumes that only observable, material items are 'real,' even though the vacuum of space is known to contain vast amount of inaccessible, 'invisible' energy. Subatomic particles go in and out of observable 'existence,' and science does not know 'where' they go when they are not manifesting here. Second, this path of reasoning ignores a major quandary encountered in the realm of quantum physics. When examining matter more closely
diving down from the molecular level to the subatomic
a point is soon reached where there is virtually nothing present, at least not an obvious 'material something. — Mark Ireland

If we are to develop profound theory to solve the intractable problems in our societally-critical domains ... we must learn to crawl into the life of what makes people tick. — Clayton Christensen

I find a naturalistic understanding of human nature to be indispensable to leading a wise and mature life, and it is often exhilarating. Wisdom consists in appreciating the preciousness and finiteness of our own existence, and therefore not squandering it; of being cognizant of what makes people everywhere tick, and therefore enhancing happiness and minimizing suffering; of being alert to limitations and flaws in our own judgments and decisions and passions, and thereby doing our best to circumvent them. The exhilaration comes from understanding that we are a part of natural world; that deep mysteries can be explained; and that the world
including our own mental lives
can be intelligible, rather than a source of superstition and ignorance. Yes, mortality sucks, but given that it exists, I'd rather know that than be kept in a childlike state of delusion. — Steven Pinker

If you understand what makes him tick-what is magic for him- then you can understand anyone — Rene Denfeld

Neither you nor I nor anybody else knows what makes a mathematician tick. It is not a question of cleverness. I know many mathematicians who are far abler than I am, but they have not been so lucky. An illustration may be given by considering two miners. One may be an expert geologist, but he does not find the golden nuggets that the ignorant miner does. — Louis J. Mordell

I don't think I could ever give up music. It's what makes me tick. If there was no music, there would be no writing. — Maggie Stiefvater

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm. — James Thurber

So he doesn't tick any of my usual boxes, but there's something in the way he looks at me. In his eyes, there's this strange kind of appreciation that is part attraction, part something else that makes me feel rare and precious and . . . seen. — Cora Carmack

I've had a reoccurring dream about hanging out with Britney Spears, so maybe it would be fun to chill with her for a bit? Like, see what makes her tick. I had this dream once about Britney, that we were going to get married or something, and so I had to meet her parents but we were stuck on a beach in these sand dunes - and at this point between the dreams and self-portrait, you know way too much about me. — Gabriel Mann

Winners know what makes people tick by effectively tapping into our fears and aspirations. By listening very carefully and then repeating almost word-for-word exactly what they've heard, winners know how to articulate compelling needs - and products to satisfy those needs - that people didn't even know they wanted. — Frank Luntz

The music I make and the process of acting, for me, are both about trying to understand people and get inside what makes us tick. That's the main thing that excites me. Our sense of who we really are and what drives us. — Riz Ahmed

I think bringing depth to characters means really needing to find out who this girl is, what is she passionate about, what makes her tick, what gets her going in life. So I did a lot of backstory for who she was and sometimes it comes across screen and sometimes it doesn't. You never know, because you're not the director, but you can only do your work and hope that it somehow subtly is infiltrated in that. But I think the characters I've played for the most part have depth, just not in the way that you think they do. — Amy Smart

Crossrail is a prime example of infrastructure. It is a rather deadly word, but I think it is exciting stuff, the civil engineering which makes Britain tick - the bridges, tunnels, power and water networks, which bind us together. — Evan Davis

I've always been interested in how people think, how they react to challenges in their lives - what makes people tick. I've also always been passionate about social issues and causes, and I wanted to make films that addressed important issues in very human terms. — Barbara Kopple

I still picture myself as a student of the music. I'm always trying to learn new things. Music is just what makes me tick. — Big Boi

Darkness just loosens the mask. Sharpens the mind's eye. Makes the color of a remembered pencil, or a tick of waxy red on a cracked plaster wall, as vivid as that taillight a few feet away. — Garth Risk Hallberg

And there's no synthetic owners manual?" His lips twitched, smile threatening to break into a grin.

A joke. He wasn't funny. "Do you come with an owners' manual, Captain? Because I'd like to study your troubleshooting section."

"Would you like to strip me down to my nuts and bolts, and figure out what makes me tick?"

"I knew what made you tick from the moment we first met. That's why I punched you between the legs."

~ #1001 & Caleb — Pippa DaCosta

As a producer, I always want to know what makes the kids tick. — Wyclef Jean

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I'm no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women. — Stephen Hawking

I'd love to have William Faulkner, Beethoven and Bach over. I want to find out what makes those guys tick! — Candy Crowley

Self-mastery calls for thorough familiarity with one's mental and emotional strengths. And it calls for sustaining a commitment to personal growth - the understanding of what makes you tick as an individual - as well as personal development. — Charles Garfield

Tell me what ticks you off, and I will tell you what makes you tick. — Lloyd John Ogilvie

I think most people are inherently interested in how their brain works, in what makes them tick. — Simon Sinek

I just love thinking about what makes people tick — Jessica Ennis

You need to know what makes artists tick. Having been through the process myself as a musician, since I was an early teen, gave me an advantage - understanding them from their point of view, because it's about them, it's not about you - it's their vision and what they're capable of achieving, and you're the conduit. — Tommy Mottola

I think it's great for my boys to have a girl in the house, just to understand at least a little bit about what makes a woman tick - not that I can certainly figure that out, because I can't. — Gisele Bundchen

You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant. — Norman Mailer

Because it is my second season with the team, no time has been wasted in getting to know the people I'm working with. I am aware of what the team is capable of and how the organisation works, and they are familiar with what makes me tick. — Damon Hill

I like knowing what makes people tick and wakes me stop ticking, like clocks. — Jay Coles

What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do. — Yo-Yo Ma

Business is all about people, Miss Steele, and I'm very good at judging people. I know how they tick, what makes them flourish, what doesn't, what inspires them, and how to incentivize them. I employ an exceptional team, and I reward them well. — E.L. James

My biggest job really is to figure other people out. I need to understand what makes a person tick. — Stephen A. Schwarzman

By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu. — Steven Pinker

If God spent 180 million years making dinosaurs, what makes us think Man is so special, a tick of the clock before midnight? — Laurence Overmire

Everyone has a theory of human nature. Everyone has to anticipate the behavior of others, and that means we all need theories about what makes people tick. — Steven Pinker

Some women just make you want to know what makes them tick. Others make you wonder what happens when the ticking stops. — Michael Makai

An international team of psychiatrists has flown to Redmond, WA in an attempt to discover exactly what makes Bill Gates tick. And, more especially, what makes him go cuckoo every half hour. — David Pogue

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick. — Lisa Cron

What makes you tick? Why do you care about the things you care about? — Les Wexner