“No society is immune from the darkest impulses of man. And too often religion has been used to tap into those darker impulses as opposed to the light of God.”

““I suspect that drink has made you impulsive.“
“Drink makes me see funny; the gods made me impulsive.“”

“The “normal” person, when he discovers a deviant impulse in himself, is able to check that impulse by thinking of the manifold consequences acting on it would produce for him. He has staked too much on continuing to be normal to allow himself to be swayed by unconventional impulses.”

“the psyche has been burned
and left us senseless,
the world has been darker than lights-out
in a closet full of hungry bats,
and the whiskey and wine entered our veins
when blood was too weak to carry on”

“The impulse to increase profits can blind men to risk, especially when those at risk are strangers. Society imposes rules on corporate behavior to protect public safety in the face of baser impulses. These rules require enforcement...”

“Civilisation is not an appeal to nature. It is a revolt against nature—against nature as it has been represented in man in the past. It is supernatural. Civilization is an attempt to subordinate and control those primitive impulses which have reigned in human nature in the less gracious and less rational times gone by—impulses which we have ourselves to-day to a considerable extent inherited.”

“The one impulse in man which cannot be erased is his impulse toward freedom, his impulse toward sanity, toward higher levels of attainment in all of his endeavors.”

“A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.”

“… our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes”

“There is a god within us.
It is when he stirs us that our bosom warms; it is
his impulse that sows the seeds of inspiration.”
Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo: impetus hic sacrae semina mentis habet.