Great Throughts Treasury

"The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle. " - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

"Unfortunately for mankind—and perhaps fortunately for tyrants—the poor and downtrodden lack the instinct or pride of the elephant, who refuses to breed in captivity." - Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas

"Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature." - Nikola Tesla

"Man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct . The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal." - Nikola Tesla

"He declared that it could not be done and did me the honor of delivering a lecture on the subject, at the conclusion he remarked, "Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this. It would be equivalent to converting a steadily pulling force, like that of gravity into a rotary effort. It is a perpetual motion scheme, an impossible idea." But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile." - Nikola Tesla

"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. " - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

"The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon." - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

"When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb. " - Patañjali NULL

"Yoga says instinct is a trace of an old experience that has been repeated many times and the impressions have sunk down to the bottom of the mental lake. Although they go down, they aren’t completely erased. Don’t think you ever forget anything. All experiences are stored in the chittam; and, when the proper atmosphere is created, they come to the surface again. When we do something several times it forms a habit. Continue with that habit for a long time, and it becomes your character. Continue with that character and eventually, perhaps in another life, it comes up as instinct. " - Patañjali NULL

"Revenge, which, like envy, is an instinct of justice, does but take into its own hands the execution of that natural law which precedes the social." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

"Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted." - Paul Pearsall

"The energy of hatred won't get you anywhere; but the energy of forgiveness, which reveals itself through love, will transform your life in a positive way… The warrior of light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle, he does not have time to think of the enemy's blows, and so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. In times of peace, he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say, He's mad. Or, He lives in a fantasy world. Or even, How can he possibly believe in such illogical things? But the warrior knows that intuition is God's alphabet and he continues listening to the wind and talking to the stars. " - Paulo Coelho

"Too mean-spirited and too feeble in resolve to attempt the conquest of their own evil passions, and of the difficulties of the material world, men sought dominion over their fellow-men, as an easy method to gain that apparent majesty and power which the instinct of their nature requires." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers." - Peter Matthiessen

"Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when instinct functions? For in this pure action, this pure moving of the bird, there is no time, no space, but only the free doing-being of this very moment -now!" - Peter Matthiessen

"The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which of times they are unable to account. " - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace

"Intellect is the knowledge obtained by experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world. " - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Man is unique in that he knows nothing. He can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, in fact he can do nothing by natural instinct alone except weep." - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

"Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts." - Albert Einstein

"How it happens that the pure and holy have such firm confidence in the immortality of the soul? Do they not by a deeper instinct or intuition, recognize their spirituality, and feel that they belong more to spirit than to flesh—more to eternity than to time?" - Robert James Turnbull

"And being such the soul doth recognize The doubleness of nature, that there lies A soul occult in Nature, hidden deep As lies the soul of man in moveless sleep. And like a dream Broken in circumstance and foolish made, Through which howe’er the future world doth gleam, And floats a warning to the gathered thought, Like to a dream, Through sense and all by sense conveyed, Into our soul the shadow of that soul Doth float. Then are we lifted up erect and whole In vast confession to that universe Perceived by us: our soul itself transfers Thither by instinct sure; it swiftly hails The mighty spirit similar; it sails In the divine expansion; it perceives Tendencies glorious, distant; it enweaves Itself with excitations more that thought Unto that soul unveiled and yet unsought." - R. W. Dixon, fully Richard Watson Dixon

"No good purpose has ever been served by disturbing the nerves of our little ones with the emotion of fear. A child, for example, may suffer more from the fear of a fall than from the fall itself. While it is true that the early steps of a child must be watched, and its early experiences guided, yet a guardianship based on the instilling of fear into the young soul, is far more harmful than any baleful experience which the unguarded child may encounter. It is seldom that an accident befalls a child through its own lack of care or experience ; the instinct for self-preservation works strongly and unconsciously from the very earliest stages of childhood. God has created His creatures with the necessary provisions for the protection of life." - Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein

"An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads." - Richard Whately

"I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President I must put the interests of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"I consider then, that generally speaking, to render a reason of an effect or Phaenomenon, is to deduce It from something else in Nature more known than itself, and that consequently there may be divers kinds of Degrees of Explication of the same thing. For although such Explications be the most satisfactory to the Understanding, wherein 'tis shewn how the effect is produc'd by the more primitive and Catholick Affection of Matter, namely bulk, shape and motion, yet are not these Explications to be despis'd, wherein particular effects are deduc'd from the more obvious and familiar Qualities or States of Bodies, ... For in the search after Natural Causes, every new measure of Discovery does both instinct and gratifie the Understanding." - Robert Boyle

"For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim, and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shall thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and al things in himself Great universal teacher! He shall mold Thy spirit and by giving , make it ask." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"With equal sweetness the commissioned hours Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers. The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high, Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky; While the dear flowers, wht fond humility, Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts, Perfume that homage all around imparts." - Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli

"Now the whole point about machines is they are designed not to be random. When you call up a word processing program on your computer, you don't want it to be different every time you call it up. You want it to stay the same." - Rupert Sheldrake, fully Alfred Rupert Sheldrake

"Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres." - Saki, pen name for Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro NULL

"A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy - very unhappy - it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness." - Samuel Butler

"A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"We obtain our concept of the unconscious, therefore, from the theory of repression … We see, however that we have two kinds of unconscious — that which is latent but capable of becoming conscious, and that which is repressed and not capable of becoming conscious in the ordinary way." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"It's completely stupid to write love letters, cannot be reproduced by a simple letter, but what to do when this terrible ocean separates us from the man we love?" - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"If I did not believe that our work was done in the faith and hope that at some day, it may be a million years hence, the Kingdom of God will spread over the whole world, I would have no hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it." - Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

"All creatures ignorant of their own natures, could not universally in the whole kind, and in every climate and country, without any difference in the whole world, tend to a certain end, if some overruling wisdom did not preside over the world and guide them: and if the creatures have a Conductor, they have a Creator; all things are “turned round about by his counsel, that they may do whatsoever he commands them, upon the face of the world in the earth.” So that in this respect the folly of atheism appears. Without the owning a God, no account can be given of those actions of creatures, that are an imitation of reason." - Stephen Charnock

"For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless; it is precisely those who are apparently aloof from the world who build for themselves a remarkable and thoroughly individual world in miniature, using their own special equipment, hermit-like." - Stefan Zweig

"I, who unfortunately for me I always had a passionate curiosity for the things of the mind ..." - Stefan Zweig

"The love of a mother for her children is dominant, selfish and selfless at the same time.... The love of a father for his son or daughter is, if it is ever to love is a far-hearted, generous, moody and thoughtful gift giving without hope of reply, a farewell to a troubled wanderer wants to protect he likes, a properly weighed judgment about the strength and weakness, full of compassion for the failure, and full of pride to success." - Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

"I believe this... the strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." - Thomas Jefferson

"As a science of the unconscious it is a therapeutic method, in the grand style, a method overarching the individual case. Call this, if you choose, a poet’s utopia." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Looking, he thought that to come to Venice by the station is like entering a palace by the back door." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. It's simply impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it." - Thomas Merton

"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real." - Thomas Merton

"The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error." - Thomas Merton