C. S. Lewis
Writer, Scholar
"The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs."
Impulse quotes
Impulse
122 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Vincent Van Gogh
Painter
"Great things do not just happen by impulse, but as a succession of small things linked together."
Richard Prince
Artist
"We do not make art. We have unnamable motors and dangerous impulses that occupy our thoughts."
Patti Smith
Musician
"I don't know about that. I'm not a very analytical person. I have various impulses. I've often quoted Walt Whitman's phrase "I contain multitudes." I understand that."
Bertrand Russell
Philosopher, Mathematician
"Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting."
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Impulse quotes (page 1 of 7)
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"Every impulse we strangle will only poison us."
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"Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing."
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"The great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed."
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"So the universe is constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning."
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"The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time."
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"Hence, in desiring, the more the enjoyment is delayed, the more fancy begins to weave about the object images of future fruition, and to clothe the desired object with properties calculated to inflame the impulse."
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"The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk."
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"Creativity is the evolutionary impulse in the Universe."
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"Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it."
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"I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog."
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"People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time-even when hard at work."
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"Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer."
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"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."
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"Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions."
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"The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life."
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"De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse."
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"In the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the possession of it, not the impulse under which it was sought."
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"What is the impulse that drove to direct? To me, it seems so immense. Just having a rock 'n' roll band, or to go from the solitude of writing and to having to collaborate, is almost schizophrenic."
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"Man governs himself more by impulse than reason"
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"The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse."
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