Top 81 First Instinct Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. I usually go with the first instinct, and then build upon that.
John Otto
#4. 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
#5. Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.
Sarah Dessen
#6. Your first instinct when you see a man on the ground is to go down on him.
Murray Mexted
#7. I guess when you're hurt your first instinct's to hurt back.
Harper Lee
#8. My urge, when I go to the store, is to buy everything. And it's the same when I'm composing. My first instinct is basically to bring the whole store home, and not make a decision about how things play out.
Nico Muhly
#9. If someone writes something shitty and you actually address them, most of the time they're just like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a big fan." And they're really nice people. When you're on the Internet, it's people's first instinct to just go after people.
Aziz Ansari
#10. It's not that I'm some detached lab animal just conditioned to ignore violence, but my first instinct is maybe it's not too late to dab club soda on the bloodstain.
Chuck Palahniuk
#11. Trust your first instinct.
Kelis
#12. 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
#13. When anything is wrong with your child, your first instinct is to make it better.
Didi Conn
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. She wanted her life back and that was mainly because of Vadim. She was a man she didn't want to leave. Even if her first instinct had been to flee, the time for running was over. She wouldn't live in fear forever.
Katie Reus
#17. I love musicals and music driven films, and my first instinct is to tell the story. And when music is a big part of the action I can literally make the story sing!
David Raiklen
#18. 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
#19. Did you really ever think of me when you were kidnapped? Because I look at all the things you went through, and my first instinct is to shield you from my problems - but sometimes you act like nothing happened to you at all.
Lia Habel
#20. The karmic cycle, when someone screws up really bad and hurts you. Our first instinct is to hurt back, or refuse to forgive.
Jennifer Probst
#21. 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
#23. 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
#24. Where do you run for help? When you are in trouble, what is your first instinct? Do you run to others or to God? Is it usually the counsel of another rather than the counsel found in waiting upon God in prayer? Why is this the way it is? Why do we run to man before we run to God?
Kay Arthur
#25. 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
#26. My first instinct when I write songs is not a negative one. It's something positive ... Everything I've ever done has some form of hope in it, I think.
Noel Gallagher
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. My mum says, 'Go with your first instinct,' but this can lead to impulse buying!
Lindsay Lohan
#30. A dragons first instinct is to protect and defend. Its not your fault.
Candace Knoebel
#31. I admit that when challenging times first surface, it's not first instinct to do a happy dance. But when you take time to pause and add insight to injury, you will immediately start to feel empowered to make those majorly needed life shifts.
Karen Salmansohn
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. My first instinct, the product of a lifetime of insecurities, was to wonder what I had done wrong.
Stephenie Meyer
#36. When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.
Ambrose Bierce
#37. I wanted to direct when I was very young. I had no idea of cinema, of who's doing what. That was my first instinct: "Okay, I want to be the boss."
Thomas Bidegain
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. My first instinct is to push you until you break just to see how hard I have to press.
Veronica Roth
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
George Santayana
#47. 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 M. Nixon
#48. 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
#49. The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.
Jean Cocteau
#50. My immediate instinct when faced with the questions from The Mail on Sunday ten days ago was to protect my family's privacy and particularly my son in his first term at university, living away from home.
Cherie Blair
#51. 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
#52. I've noticed it a lot. I'm not someone who revises. It's always the first movement, it's that. It's an instinct. Either it works straight away, or it won't ever work.
Amelie Nothomb
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
#56. First of all I trust my own instinct, experience that I gained over years and feeling when the moment is right for buying shares. That is what one calls intuition.
Alisher Usmanov
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. [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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. This was the first time I had not just rushed in and followed my instincts, and it wasn't working out. I was beginning to actively regret it.
Gwenda Bond
#63. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. Improv requires one thing I lack that I think most mothers need - the basic instinct to put someone else first.
Jen Kirkman
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. It was instinct to pull back, to let go before I felt him let go first, bu he didn't allow me.
Alexandra Bracken
#70. The first reaction is surely the most natural one, but not always the most correct one; thereupon, the invention of apologies.
Criss Jami
#71. At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.
W.G. Sebald
#72. Instinct is the gift of experience. The first question you have to ask yourself is, 'On what basis am I making a judgment?' ... If you have no experience, then your instincts aren't any good.
Malcolm Gladwell
#73. It's the easiest thing in the world to be kind to someone, to show love, to forgive. You are born with this instinct - it should be your first reaction. NOT violence, anger and hatred! That is something we are taught, it's a Choice You Make.
Michelle Horst
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. Once fire was discovered, the instinct for improvement made men bring food to it. First to dry it, then to put it on the coals to cook.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#78. His first fatherly instinct ripped through his body when he realized with absolute clarity that he would lay down his life without the slightest hesitation if his daughter could just have lived.
Ashley York
#79. The first obligation I have is to be funny; it's my first impulse and an instinct. I like being funny and finding the jokes.
George Carlin
#80. 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
#81. When something needs to be fixed, when I need something to change, my first and abiding instinct is to read. I think I can read my way to a solution. Or at least an evasion.
Lauren F. Winner
