Top 161 Impulse Quotes

I have that thrill-seeking mentality, so when people want to know why my incarnations keep changing, or why I’ll do something different than I did before, it’s that same impulse.

Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.

I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it’s not part of a sensible way of living. It’s a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously.

Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.

One of the first times that I went into a book store and saw a bunch of my books, my impulse was to put them all under my coat and run away so that no one else could see them, even though, of course, I wanted everyone to see them.

A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars.

Oh, I’m quite the impulse buyer. Most of what I buy is stuff for my Jeep, ’cause it breaks down a lot.

I think most Americans probably believe that our relationship with Japan began in 1941. In fact, obviously, it began in 1854 when Commodore Perry sailed into Yokohama harbor and threatened to burn it down unless they would open up to trade with us. The imperial impulse was first ours historically.

Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.

I want the Wallwalker in the back of consumers’ minds, but not actively thought about. When it returns, they’ll react, ‘Oh, there they are!’ and they’ll buy them again as impulse items.

Disguising your own origins is a deeply American impulse, but that doesn’t make it any less compromising. The way I live my life is to try to foreground the tensions and paradoxes of being a white person who’s interested in racial justice and reconciliation, rather than disguise or obliterate them.

We tell ourselves, It’s important to get a sense of what people are saying about me.’ But it really feeds some narcissistic impulse to check and see if people like you.

Through all of history mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet.

I have to fight the impulse to use my phone as an alarm clock rather than leaving it in another room. If I don’t, I will wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘I’ll check my messages. Or the number of my book on Amazon.’

If you have an impulse to kindness, act on it.

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

If you have an impulse, not if you’re going to ruin someone elses’ scene, if you have an impulse of a funny little add-on or taking something in a weird direction, try it.

I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties – just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.

Happy as we are, times may alter; we may be bitten with some impulse towards change, and many things may seem too wonderful for us to resist, too exciting not to catch at, if we do not know that they are but phases of what has been before and withal ruinous, deceitful, and sordid.

The number one piece of advice that you would ever get with working with any large predator is don’t run. If you stand confident up in its face it’ll probably just wander away, but if you turn and run it triggers what’s known as the predatory impulse.

The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.

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.

The only difference was one of them was trying to make a perfect cake and one of them was trying to write a great book. But if we remove that from the equation, it’s the same impulse and they are equally entitled to their ecstasies and their despair.

The Founding Fathers worried that ‘some common impulse of passion’ might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It’s a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly.

I’m such an impulse buyer. I once went into a pet store for dog food and left with a fish tank and five fish. And yes, of course I forgot to buy dog food.

Let’s face it: so much of what we consume is not driven by knowledge but by basic craving and impulse. The process of what we eat starts in our heads. And no one is more in our heads than a food industry that spends billions of dollars in marketing its message in every means possible.

It’s probably the journalist in me, but I’m naturally suspicious about consensus and always feel an impulse to confront it.

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.

Dieting is odious and can require years of determination and sacrifice. I entirely understand the impulse to say, ‘Screw it,’ and have another piece of cake.

Everyone knows that at the age of 11-12, children have a marked impulse to form themselves into groups and that the respect paid to the rules and regulations of their play constitutes an important feature of this social life.

My dad, Frank Addison Albini, was a terrific shot with a rifle and had generally excellent hunting skills. While my dad loved hunting and fishing, he didn’t romanticize them. He was filling the freezer, not intellectualizing some caveman impulse or proving his worth as a real man.

There are some who want to get married and others who don’t. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.

If a term becomes too popular, its irritant value is ramped up. The impulse is then to replace it with something else.

I teach a course called ‘Committed Impulse,’ and part of the work I do is to get people outside of their heads.

There’s this artistic drive or something in me that impels me to sympathize with villains, but it’s maybe not a great impulse as someone who wants to do activism as well.

Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law.

While the mind is in doubt it is driven this way and that by a slight impulse.

If we did not have the impulse and ability to believe in the impossible, we would not have religion, democracy, or marriage.

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.

Some deeper part of me wants to write comical dialogue; I’d be foolish to not follow that impulse. Now I recognize that if there’s energy to a section of work, you go where the energy is. It’s a living thing, and you just follow it.

I have lots of clothes that I don’t wear because I’m bad for impulse buying. They sit in my cupboard looking forlorn, but if I haven’t worn something for a couple of months, I usually realise that it would be much better off in one of my friends’ wardrobes.

I think that because human difference for so long, in all its various forms, has been the root of so much oppression, sometimes there’s the impulse to say let’s deny the difference, as though by wishing away the difference we can then wish away the oppression.

Every time I finish in the top 10, I go to the mall. We have a really sick mall here in Palm Beach, Fla., with a lot of high-end stores. I’ll go in there and impulse buy for a couple of hours.

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.

When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while, you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

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.

When you’re young, you don’t really know quite what you’re aiming at. You’re very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you’re kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction.

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.