Quotes about impulse

Third Notebook: Part One
Source: No Longer Human

About the first World War.
The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
Source: Waiting for God

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

Frequently misquoted as "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge" and close variants.
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. (1959), C.G. Jung, R.F.C. Hull (translator) (Princeton Press, 1979, ISBN 9780691018225

Source: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938), p. 273

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter one, The Country of the Blind

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 185-186.

He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid.
"As I Please" column in The Tribune (13 October 1944)^{http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ http://alexpeak.com/twr/ooc/#2}
As I Please (1943–1947)

Preface
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

"Father Severyan", in November 1916: The Red Wheel: Knot II (1984; translation 1999).
Context: At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, nor yet the Church — none of them has been able to stop it. And don't succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state's essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 321

Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)
Context: To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled time, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard and fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we still embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
The Black Cat (1843)

"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

Variant: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

Source: The Sword of Summer

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Source: Illuminations

Source: The Writing Life

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 2 : The Witches
Context: “Sisters,” she began, “let me tell you what is happening, and who it is that we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history—and that’s not long by our lives, but it’s many, many of theirs—it’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them, it cuts them out. Some of you have seen what they did at Bolvangar. And that was horrible, but it is not the only such place, not the only such practice. Sisters, you know only the north; I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan’t feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, obliterate, destroy every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

1950s, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

As translated by John Rodker
The Inferno (1917)

Remarks by the President in YSEALI Town Hall at Taylor's University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (November 20, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/20/remarks-president-yseali-town-hall
2015

Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 17: Fear, p. 175
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 18-19

Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)

As quoted in The Meaning of Life : According to the Great and the Good (2007) edited by Richard T. Kinnier.
1970s and later

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

"The Idea of Righteousness"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

On Hinduism (2000)

Introduction
Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991)

Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (8 March 1983)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

1790s, First Principles of Government (1795)

1910s, Political Ideals (1917)

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Source: (1932), p.29

Pages 46-47, "All at One Point".
Cosmicomics (1965)

Diário do Comércio - Causas Sagradas http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/120117dc.html (17 January 2012)

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 240-243.

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

"Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927)
Non-Fiction

Source: (1932), p.25

Source: This Immortal (1965), pp. 9-10

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s

Lives of the Engineers (1862).

Source: Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, 1925, p. 7

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 2: Leaders and Followers

Source: (1932), pp. 27-28

referencing the Kumbh Mela, Ch. XLIX
Following the Equator (1897)

Source: (1932), p.2

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 96-97

My Inventions (1919)

Letter to Maurice W. Moe (15 May 1918), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 60
Non-Fiction, Letters

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

III, v, 33; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
"the aged Dardanian" here refers to Priam
Tristia (Sorrows)

Source: (1932), p.3

Other

The Black Cat (1843)

"On Light And Other High Frequency Phenomena" A lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (24 February 1893), and before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis (1 March 1893), published in The Electrical review (9 June 1893), p. Page 683; also in The Inventions, Researches And Writings of Nikola Tesla (1894)

Letter 3
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

A Death in the Desert (1864)

Source: (1932), p.26

Concepts

Ausdehnungslehre (1844)

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

VI, lines 5-6; translation by Sir James George Frazer
Fasti (The Festivals)

Source: Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII

Psychological Types (1921). CW 6. P.805

Das Zentrum der geistigen Selbstdisziplin als solcher ist in Zersetzung begriffen. Die Tabus, die den geistigen Rang eines Menschen ausmachen, oftmals sedimentierte Erfahrungen und unartikulierte Erkenntnisse, richten sich stets gegen eigene Regungen, die er verdammen lernte, die aber so stark sind, daß nur eine fraglose und unbefragte Instanz ihnen Einhalt gebieten kann. Was fürs Triebleben gilt, gilt fürs geistige nicht minder: der Maler und Komponist, der diese und jene Farbenzusammenstellung oder Akkordverbindung als kitschig sich untersagt, der Schriftsteller, dem sprachliche Konfigurationen als banal oder pedantisch auf die Nerven gehen, reagiert so heftig gegen sie, weil in ihm selber Schichten sind, die es dorthin lockt. Die Absage ans herrschende Unwesen der Kultur setzt voraus, daß man an diesem selber genug teilhat, um es gleichsam in den eigenen Fingern zucken zu fühlen, daß man aber zugleich aus dieser Teilhabe Kräfte zog, sie zu kündigen. Diese Kräfte, die als solche des individuellen Widerstands in Erscheinung treten, sind darum doch keineswegs selber bloß individueller Art. Das intellektuelle Gewissen, in dem sie sich zusammenfassen, hat ein gesellschaftliches Moment so gut wie das moralische Überich. Es bildet sich an einer Vorstellung von der richtigen Gesellschaft und deren Bürgern. Läßt einmal diese Vorstellung nach—und wer könnte noch blind vertrauend ihr sich überlassen—, so verliert der intellektuelle Drang nach unten seine Hemmung, und aller Unrat, den die barbarische Kultur im Individuum zurückgelassen hat, Halbbildung, sich Gehenlassen, plumpe Vertraulichkeit, Ungeschliffenheit, kommt zum Vorschein. Meist rationalisiert es sich auch noch als Humanität, als den Willen, anderen Menschen sich verständlich zu machen, als welterfahrene Verantwortlichkeit. Aber das Opfer der intellektuellen Selbstdisziplin fällt dem, der es auf sich nimmt, viel zu leicht, als daß man ihm glauben dürfte, daß es eines ist.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 8
Minima Moralia (1951)

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

"Combray"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 88-92

81
Golden Sayings of Epictetus

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
Context: What is serious about excitement is that so many of its forms are destructive. It is destructive in those who cannot resist excess in alcohol or gambling. It is destructive when it takes the form of mob violence. And above all it is destructive when it leads to war. It is so deep a need that it will find harmful outlets of this kind unless innocent outlets are at hand. There are such innocent outlets at present in sport, and in politics so long as it is kept within constitutional bounds. But these are not sufficient, especially as the kind of politics that is most exciting is also the kind that does most harm. Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1441/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Context: I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. IX Barcelona and Madrid (1936)<!-- * L’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction. /** Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.-->
Context: No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. Even in our age of material well-being this must be so, else how should we explain the happiness we feel in sharing our last crust with others in the desert? No sociologist's textbook can prevail against this fact. Every pilot who has flown to the rescue of a comrade in distress knows that all joys are vain in comparison with this one. And this, it may be, is the reason why the world today is tumbling about our ears. It is precisely because this sort of fulfilment is promised each of us by his religion, that men are inflamed today. All of us, in words that contradict each other, express at bottom the same exalted impulse. What sets us against one another is not our aims — they all come to the same thing — but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.
Let us, then, refrain from astonishment at what men do. One man finds that his essential manhood comes alive at the sight of self-sacrifice, cooperative effort, a rigorous vision of justice, manifested in an anarchist's cellar in Barcelona. For that man there will henceforth be but one truth — the truth of the anarchists. Another, having once mounted guard over a flock of terrified little nuns kneeling in a Spanish nunnery, will thereafter know a different truth — that it is sweet to die for the Church. If, when Mermoz plunged into the Chilean Andes with victory in his heart, you had protested to him that no merchant's letter could possibly be worth risking one's life for, Mermoz would have laughed in your face. Truth is the man that was born in Mermoz when he slipped through the Andean passes.

The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.

2015, Address to the People of India (January 2015)
Context: 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. Three years ago in our state of Wisconsin, back in the United States, a man went to a Sikh temple and, in a terrible act of violence, killed six innocent people -- Americans and Indians. And in that moment of shared grief, our two countries reaffirmed a basic truth, as we must again today -- that every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.

Light (1919), Ch. XX The Cult
Context: If, from the idea of motherland, you take away covetousness, hatred, envy and vainglory; if you take away from it the desire for predominance by violence, what is there left of it?
It is not an individual unity of laws; for just laws have no colors. It is not a solidarity of interests, for there are no material national interests — or they are not honest. It is not a unity of race; for the map of the countries is not the map of the races. What is there left?
There is left a restricted communion, deep and delightful; the affectionate and affecting attraction in the charm of a language — there is hardly more in the universe besides its languages which are foreigners — there is left a personal and delicate preference for certain forms of landscape, of monuments, of talent. And even this radiance has its limits. The cult of the masterpieces of art and thought is the only impulse of the soul which, by general consent, has always soared above patriotic littlenesses.

Principles of Social Reconstruction [Originally titled Why Men Fight : A Method Of Abolishing The International Duel], Ch. VIII : What We Can Do, p. 257
1910s
Context: It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive possession, which will be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of impersonal justice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession, and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.
The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession.

De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis declamatio (1529), translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73