Knee Jerk Quotes

#1. My knee-jerk is that it is comedy and, if you watch them all back-to-back, you will gain something and you will lose something.

Mitchell Hurwitz

#2. All too frequently, the knee jerk reaction to tragedies by the media and chattering class is to move to restrict our rights ... Our founding documents make it clear that our inalienable rights come from God and that the job of the government is to ensure and protect those God-given rights.

Dave Brat

#3. We tend to have a knee-jerk negative response to anything that seems to want or have control over us.

Sheena Iyengar

#4. In the past, I had a knee-jerk approach to work, and it showed on screen. I was doing movies for the wrong reasons - trying to juggle dates, do too many guest appearances, take up projects under pressure or for emotional reasons.

Salman Khan

#5. A curious observation is the uniform way that committees review curriculum for each field of study. Too often, authorities have a knee-jerk impulse to declare that 'all curriculum areas will be the same.' In fact, real and significant differences exist between fields of study.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

#6. I'm not religious, but by nature I am spiritual. I'm an artist, and creativity seems to go hand in hand with spirituality. But I have a knee-jerk reaction against organized religions. Actually, I have knee-jerk reactions against anything that's organized.

Nikki Sixx

#7. Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.

Edward Abbey

#8. Is it or is it not ethical to create an embryo, and to create a person for the purpose of getting an organ to give to someone else? Your knee-jerk reaction is 'absolutely not;' but you need the ethical analysis of that to show why and how that is something that you need to stay away from.

Anthony Fauci

#9. When I look back on my knee-jerk reactions now, I realize I should have just taken a breath.

Fred Durst

#10. I'd really rather that nobody had a gun, and then nobody would have to worry about it. That would be more my theory. In America, there's this knee-jerk response that more walls and more guns make people safer, and I'm entirely suspect of that way of thinking.

Ethan Hawke

#11. Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

Douglas Hurd

#12. I'm not a knee-jerk conservative. I passionately believe in free markets and less government, but not to the point of being a libertarian.

Rupert Murdoch

#13. I feel sad that we have allowed these knee-jerk feminists who want to act like it's a struggle against men ... but again that's the least politically developed strand of feminism.

Bell Hooks

#14. The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee- pad conservative ...

Edward Abbey

#15. We're certainly not perfect, and we're not probably even better than anybody else, except that perhaps we are given to certain kinds of contemplation that provide a valuable balance to the knee-jerk reactionary behavior of most of our newspapers and political leaders. Poets are great doubters.

Sam Hamill

#16. My father had infused my childhood with unspoken blame. He was the kind of man who scoped around looking for things to be angry at. It had turned me into a knee-jerk suck-up to authority - Mom, Dad, teachers. 'Whatever makes your job easier, sir or madam.' I craved a constant stream of approval.

Gillian Flynn

#17. The problem with a person who has knee-jerk reactions is that it often makes him look like a jerk, and makes others want to react by giving him the knee.

Torry Martin

#18. It occurs to me that as different as we are in our behavior and decisions, our most basic, knee-jerk emotional reactions to really big things are often remarkably similar. And it is in these moments that I am most grateful for my sister.

Emily Giffin

#19. Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.

Frank Herbert

#20. Knee-Jerk Irony: The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation.

Douglas Coupland

#21. Patriotism can be good or bad. Knee-jerk patriotism can be very bad. I'm patriotic almost to the point of self-consciousness, but I love my country the way I love a friend or a child who I would correct if she was going the wrong way. Who I expect the very best from.

Emmylou Harris

#22. As much as I like to be thoughtful and think things through in my decision making - I don't like knee jerk decisions - but I'm not afraid to make decisions.

Ron Jaworski

#23. The telephone is a great knee-jerk machine, but if you really want to tell someone how you feel, you need the slowness of the letter. In a society where everything is fast, it's like going out in the country and looking up at the stars.

Nick Bantock

#24. The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material you're decoding

Maureen Corrigan

#25. We shouldn't knee jerk anything. The Iraqi government a few years back, when they had a chance to sign an agreement that would keep some of our presence there, refused to do it. So we've got to be very careful and thoughtful before we do anything.

Carl Levin

#26. The student's job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating.

Renee Fleming

#27. In minority communities there's a sensitivity, often a knee-jerk reaction, to critical representations. There's a misunderstanding of what an artist does.

Junot Diaz

#28. I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents.

Spike Jonze

#29. Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.

William F. Buckley Jr.

#30. Since the only way you are going to find solutions to painful problems is by thinking deeply about them - i.e., reflecting - if you can develop a knee-jerk reaction to pain that is to reflect rather than to fight or flee, it will lead to your rapid learning/evolving.

Ray Dalio

#31. I fall in love with characters when they're out of their element or are uncomfortable and you really feel for them in a knee-jerk sympathetic way.

Anna Kendrick

#32. It's tough being an actor making music, because even I have a knee-jerk reaction to that.

John Hawkes

#33. That you exist this way, Zoe, you're the ultimate proof that we can be so much more than just the sum of our parts and knee-jerk impulses. Something about you just could not be controlled, just had to be free.

Heather Anastasiu

#34. Politics means facing up to hard choices and facing down prejudice, short-termism, the easy, tempting court of knee-jerk public reaction.

Charles Kennedy

#35. Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.

William Safire