#instinct

It's hard to think when someone's trying to kill you. We human beings aren't wired to be rational and creative when we know our lives are in danger of a swift and violent end. The body has definite ideas of which survival strategies it prefers to embrace, and those are generally limited to "rip threat to pieces" or "run like hell." No thinking need be involved, as far as our instincts are concerned. Our instincts were a long time in the making, though, and the threats that can come after us now have outpaced them. You can't outrun a bullet, and you don't go hand-to-hand with a gunman unless you're certain you are about to die anyway. Speed and mindless aggression weren't going to keep me alive. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#survival-instinct #strategy

Today I trust my instinct, I trust myself. Finally. ↗

— Isabelle Adjani

#i #instinct #myself #today #trust

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#dismay #finding #finds #flower #heart

Speaking as a builder, if you start something, you must have a vision of the thing which arises from your instinct about preserving and enhancing what is there. ↗

— Christopher Alexander

#arises #builder #enhancing #instinct #must

I want to try and be instinctive as a writer and director. ↗

— Andrea Arnold

#i #instinctive #try #want #writer

I don't think you can question your instinct; you should always trust it. ↗

— Andrea Arnold

#i #instinct #question #should #think

Back through the ages of barbarism and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama. ↗

— George P. Baker

#ages #back #barbarism #civilization #drama

The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion. ↗

— Matthew Arnold

#genuine #going #himself #instinct #liberty

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt. ↗

— Mikhail Bakunin

#animal #crushes #dignity #even #foot

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason. ↗

— Stanley Baldwin

#i #instinct #man #rather #reason