Top 100 The Impulse Quotes
#1. I actually think every person can make a difference. Every single human being has within the impulse to express more of who they truly are.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
#2. The civilizing process has increased the distance between behavior and the impulse life of the animal body.
Shoshana Zuboff
#3. The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.
Eric Hoffer
#4. Golf and women are a lot alike. You know you are not going to wind up with anything but grief, but you can't resist the impulse.
Jackie Gleason
#5. The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.
John Steinbeck
#6. The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.
Aldous Huxley
#7. If the public homage of a people can ever be worthy of the favorable regard of the Holy and Omniscient Being to Whom it is addressed, it must be that in which those who join in it are guided only be their free choice-by the impulse of their hearts and the dictates of their consciences ...
James Madison
#8. The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.
George Santayana
#9. Old habits never die. And when you've once been in the business of granting wishes, the impulse never quite leaves you
Joanne Harris
#10. She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can't-see-monsters-monsters-can't-see-me.
Holly Black
#11. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.
James Madison
#12. I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
#13. My generation came at a time when photography was advancing by leaps and bounds, creating the impulse to experiment and seek new approaches.
Gjon Mili
#14. The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends.
Thomas Berry
#15. Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
William Hazlitt
#16. The impulse to connect the dots - and to share what you've connected - is the urge that makes you an artist
Amanda Palmer
#17. He had a childish urge to throw the phone down. Only the prospect of the pain he'd inflict on himself in the process of leaning over to retrieve it stopped him from giving in to the impulse.
Samanthe Beck
#18. Just as you can only really smell incense in the first moments after it is lit, or taste wine in that instant of the first sip, the impulse of love springs from a single, perilous moment in time, I feel.
Soseki Natsume
#19. I don't think it's wise to manufacture a painting, just for the sake of working ... if the impulse isn't truly there, the painting will lack power.
Scott Kahn
#20. There's a lot of landscape I never would have described if I hadn't been homesick. The impulse was nostalgia.
Joan Didion
#21. The impulse pumping through my body was to take ahold of her again and ease her head onto my chest. Well no, my actual impulse was to tear off her purple bra with my teeth and prove she was plenty Bond girl for me. But I sensed that might be a slight overkill ...
Ophelia London
#22. Among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious.
Rachel Cusk
#23. Because people's desire to be comfortable supersedes their desire for self knowledge and well being, they avoid any form of discomfort. This is the impulse that drives us to repress undesired emotions, thoughts, and past trauma.
Ben Stewart
#24. Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
#25. It's true though, that the impulse to give freely to the world seems to be at the bottom of the well of human intentions where the purest and clearest water arises. To be able to offer back what the world has given you, but shaped a little by your touch - that makes a true life.
John Tarrant
#26. The divine is a mystery, so the impulse to really discover, like a child, has to be the core response to anything.
Darrell Calkins
#27. It is not enough to recognize what is right and true. One must control the impulse to do what is wrong and easy.
Andy Andrews
#28. What is the motive which operates in every man's breast to counteract the impulse towards the gratification of his wants and appetites?
Jean-Baptiste Say
#29. As the saw teeth caught on the bone, she had performed a second surgery, one less bloody but no less brutal, excising from his heart the impulse to run, to cower, to let the man bleed to death rather than face the horror of saving him. The amputation had left both patients lighter. p 121-122
Anthony Marra
#30. The impetus of existing plans is always stronger than the impulse to change. The Kaiser could not change Moltke's plan nor could Kitchener alter Henry Wilson's nor Lanrezac alter Joffre's.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#31. Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, the fear instinct.
Boris Sidis
#32. A leader who arrives in a new setting, or inherits a big role, needs to curb the impulse to display his manhood.
Alex Ferguson
#33. He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.
Stephen Crane
#34. He and she belonged to each other for always: he understood that now. The impulse which had first drawn them together again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselves almost, that deep-seated instinctive need that each had of the other, would never again wholly let them go.
Edith Wharton
#35. I know it's difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.
Christy Hall
#36. The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others.
Bertrand Russell
#37. It is the impulse of science to try to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#38. If the impulse to daring and bravery is too fierce and violent, stay it with guidance and instruction.
Xun Zi
#39. We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.
William Deresiewicz
#40. By reaching for the stars, Jefferson gave us all the impulse. He
David McCullough
#41. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
#42. The impulse to win is a valuable thing, right up until you let it make you into a loser.
Tana French
#43. The Infinite, from which comes the impulse that lead us to activity, is not the highest Reason, but higher than reason; not the highest Goodness, but higher than goodness.
Felix Adler
#44. It's not that bullying is any worse today. The impulse for cruelty is the same impulse. The only difference is that the tools to achieve that have become more sophisticated.
Jodee Blanco
#45. No one ever really leaves Hollywood. No one really leaves unless they are called away by God. Even then, the impulse would be to come back again and make a movie about the experience.
Shirley Maclaine
#46. You have to factor in the human propensity for simplification, Sverl, and for their inability to believe in their own demise and unimportance. It's the impulse behind the religions -
Neal Asher
#47. It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.
Ian Fleming
#48. The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life is by the general adoption, by the educated - of methods for the prevention of conception except when conception is deliberately desired.
Havelock Ellis
#49. More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.
Patti Smith
#50. The impulse to explain is the Achilles' heel of all genre work, and the most sophisticated artists within every genre know better than to expose their worlds to the sharp knife of intellection.
Tom Bissell
#51. Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?
Karen Horney
#52. The thing that started me painting originally was seeing Bambi when I was about nine. I was incredibly disturbed by the forest fire that killed Bambi's mother, and that distress gave me the impulse to create something, as a way of dealing with it.
Joni Mitchell
#53. The impulse to touch her and all the life in her was something I had to check regularly.
Lily King
#54. It is clearly true that the reflex of disparagement is no more compatible with rigorous inquiry than the impulse to glorify.
Marilynne Robinson
#55. Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.
Napoleon Hill
#56. The impulse of love that leads us to the doorway of a friend is the voice of God within, and we need not be afraid to follow it.
Agnes Sanford
#57. The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service, irrespective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as Christianity itself.
Jane Addams
#59. The pure, the bright, the beautiful, That stirred our hearts in youth, The impulse to a wordless prayer, The dreams of love and truth; The longings after something lost, The spirit's yearning cry, The striving after better hopes ... These things can never die.
Ruskin Bond
#60. Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant,
superbly contemptuous of all that is not
itself, and, as they very definition of passion
implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might
intimidiating power. It contains a challenge.
It contains an unspeakable hope.
James Baldwin
#61. The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.
Kenneth E. Boulding
#62. The impulse to write comes, I think, from a desire - perhaps a need - to give imaginative life to experience, to share it with the reader, not to cover up the truth but to deliver it obliquely.
Paul Theroux
#63. There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
H.L. Mencken
#64. Sometimes a glance, a few casual words, fragments of a melody floating through the quiet air of a summer evening, a book that accidentally comes into hands, a poem or memory-laden fragrance may bring about the impulse which changes and determines our whole life.
Anagarika Govinda
#65. Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.
Robert Collier
#66. Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#67. The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.
August Wilson
#68. Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others.
Daisaku Ikeda
#70. How could I have missed it? Easy. Deep in grief over Casey leaving, I'd gone on automatic pilot this morning, barely glancing in the mirror as I brushed my hair, smoothed on my makeup. I clamp down on the impulse to dig out a mirror and check out the 'mark.
Magda Alexander
#71. I have tried to fight the impulse, the attraction, but my defenses crumble every time I see him. Since my divorce from Hank I'm practically love-starved.
Martha Lemasters
#72. He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#73. I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention.
James Laughlin
#74. The sense of inferiority inherent in the act of imitation breeds resentment. The impulse of the imitators is to overcome the model they imitate.
Eric Hoffer
#75. I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box.
Anna Quindlen
#76. Torn between the impulse to stroke his head, and the urge to cave it in with a rock, I did neither.
Diana Gabaldon
#77. The impulse to dream was slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing.
Richard Wright
#78. The impulse to investigate can only be set free if you stop pretending to know answers that you don't. Because the incentives to pretend are so strong, this may require some bravery on your part.
Steven D. Levitt
#79. I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than a decade before: I wanted to interrupt a career.
Garth Greenwell
#80. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.
Joan Didion
#81. Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.
James J. Kilpatrick
#82. The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.
Brooks Atkinson
#83. Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this: always obey such an impulse.
David Lloyd-Jones
#84. Thoreau once said if you see a man approach you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life; it is hard to restrain the impulse in talking with social engineers.
William H. Whyte
#85. Those who feel the impulse to pursue the path of enlightenment should immediately take the step, and not defer it while they attend to all the other things on their mind.
Yoshida Kenko
#86. The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.
John Berger
#87. They [parents] can resist the impulse to "prove" their love by showering children with things they do not need and give them precisous time and attention instead.
Hillary Clinton
#88. Nunca se debe gatear, cuando se tiene el impulso de volar (Never crawl when the impulse is to fly)
Helen Keller
#89. The impulse that led you to make an image is a thing that you cannot share with anyone, even if you explain it. What remains is a surface that will live its own life, that will belong to everybody. I accept that surface.
Jeanloup Sieff
#90. We ... must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#91. Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.
Abraham Maslow
#92. The more she tried to recapture the impulse that had set her wanting to put pen to paper, the less it seemed to have ever existed in the first place.
Charles De Lint
#93. It's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n' roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty - I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could.
Patti Smith
#94. The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.
Mary Gaitskill
#95. He said, "If these were silent, the very stones would cry out." Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out.
G.K. Chesterton
#96. Faith is the "eternal elixir" which gives life, power, and action to the impulse of thought!
Napoleon Hill
#97. The impulse for me to want to make sculpture is because I want to make statements, really, on a purely emotional level. And it's also somewhat of a challenge to see how that can be done with materials and objects that really are not emotional, in and of themselves.
Arthur Ganson
#98. I want to live as much as I can,and if people are around when I happen to get spontaneous, I can't exactly tell them to go away. I can't be like, clear out the grocery store! I feel the impulse to dance.
Lindy Zart
#99. THE IMPULSE IS TO SQUEEZE AND
FONDLE BABY WILD ANIMALS
BUT THEN THEY'D BE BROKEN AND
WHAT GOOD WOULD THEY BE?
Jenny Holzer
#100. In the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the possession of it, not the impulse under which it was sought.
Friedrich Nietzsche
