Instincts

I think that the natural instinct of the people everywhere is toward peace and good will.
~ William F. Bartlett, in Memoir of William Francis Bartlett (1878). Harvard Commencement Dinner (24 June 1874).

So, I work on instinct and start probing with remarks and I have an indication of what the person is like before they even open their mouth.
~ Bill Bixby, in TV Picture Life (September 1964).

Some of my instincts are reprehensible.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

There is only one way in the world to be distinguished: Follow your instinct! Be yourself, and you'll be somebody. Be one more blind follower of the blind; and you will have the oblivion you desire.
~ (William) Bliss Carman

How strangely and abruptly we become convinced, at a first introduction, that we shall secretly love this person and loathe that, before experience has guided us with a single fact in relation to their characters!
~ (William) Wilkie Collins, Basil (1852). Part I. Chapter VII

Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Doves

There is perhaps more of instinct in our feelings than we are aware of, even in our esteem of each other.
~ William Danby, Ideas and Realities, or Thoughts on Various Subjects (1827).

The idea of the Collectible is everywhere today, and sometimes strikes me as some desperate instinctive reconfiguring of the postindustrial flow, some basic mammalian response to the bewildering flood of sheer stuff we produce. ... But the main driving force in the tidying of the world's attic, the drying up of random, "innocent" sources of rarities, is information technology. We are mapping literally everything ...
~ William Gibson, in Wired Magazine (January 1999). My Obsession

An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, Bart (1853). Part I. Philosophy of Common Sense, Section V

Beasts let their instincts control them; Humans control their instincts; Man does both.
~ Billy Henson

If you float on instinct alone, how can you calculate the buoyancy for the computed load?
~ Christopher Hodder-Williams

Intuition is a safer guide than reason, we are told; for intuition goes straight to the heart of a situation and has already acted while reason is debating.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, in Cambridge Essays on Education (1917). The Training of the Reason

Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture III: The Reality of the Unseen

Instinct is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such away as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 2. Chapter 24: Instinct

The hunting and the fighting instinct continue in many manifestations. They both support the emotion of anger; they combine in the fascination which stories of atrocities have for most minds ... the pleasure of disinterested cruelty has been thought a paradox and writers have sought to show that is no primitive attribute of our nature, but rather a resultant of the subtile or other less malignant elements of mind. This is a hopeless task.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 2. Chapter XXIV: Instinct

It is but seldom that a man loves one and for all; it may only show that his sexual instincts are not very strong.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949).

The great lie about immortality destroys every kind of reason, every kind of naturalness in the instincts.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Anti-Christians (1887).

An instinct is a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instruction.
~ William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). Chapter XVIII: Instincts

[Jury selection] ... is best based upon seat-of-the-pants instincts, which are undoubtedly crudely stereotypical and may in many cases be hopelessly mistaken.
~ William H. Rehnquist

Human instincts are hard-wired programming.
~ William Rotsler

I'll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.
~ William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

Instinct is a great matter; I was now a coward on instinct.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I. Act II, scene iv

It goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act III, scene ii

I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
~ William Stafford, Crazy Horse 7 (1971). An Interview with William Stafford

I just always think, "Do I like it?" And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
~ Billy Wilder, in Conversations With Wilder (1999).

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
~ Billy Wilder

We can try to kill all that is native, string it up by its hind legs for all to see, but spirit howls and wildness endures.
~ Terry Tempest Williams

My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.
~ Ellen Willis, Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981). Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism

A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules.
~ William Wordsworth, Alas! What Boots the Long Laborious Quest?