Unconscious Motivation Quotes

Look, anything any writer writes is going to be on some level autobiographical. Part of the funny/sad thing is that you don't always know how autobiographical you're being.

I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

Very bad things follow when we kid ourselves that we're naturally rational, rather than the more humbling truth: naturally emotional.

No one consciously wants to destroy themselves. It always comes in a disguise. But then you have to deal with it some way.

I only realised why I keep living in Shepperton when I returned to China. All the people who moved there had come from places just like Shepperton, and so they built and lived in houses exactly like these. I now know I was drawn here because, on an unconscious level, Shepperton reminds me of Shanghai.

One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.

A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece, anywhere, is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.

However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

The child knows only that he engages in play because it is enjoyable. He isn't aware of his need to play--a need which has its source in the pressure of unsolved problems. Nor does he know that his pleasure in playing comes from a deep sense of well-being that is the direct result of feeling in control of things, in contrast to the rest of his life, which is managed by his parents or other adults.

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.

Fighting was something inside of me that I didn't realize was there.

You must understand, that for a daughter to protect her father's image is natural; Freud built a whole career around it.

On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm doing ... I can't do it.

It wasn't a Freudian slip. I wasn't even aware of it.

I love going to plays. There's a subconscious side to it, obviously-some people like to be spanked for XYZ psychological reasons, and I like to go to plays, and I can't entirely explain why.

You cannot simplify human intelligence, emotion, and growth. To watch the frills and furbelows of a human psyche is fascinating.

Progressives and conservatives alike lean, unconsciously, towards particular conclusions, and then scrabble around to rationalise those conclusions to themselves.

I was looking to be pale, you know, like the kind of person who has that pigment in their skin where no matter what the weather is they have pink cheeks. I had a couple of friends like that. But it was all very instinctive in a way. I never really thought that much about it.

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces.

Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.

We act in ways that are mysterious to ourselves.

The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions.

Every fear hides a wish.

You can only follow what's on your mind. In fact, a song is something you write because you can't sleep unless you write it.