Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Behaviors once driven by raw instinct can evolve into reasoned thought over time.
In plain terms
Reason develops from what used to be instinct.
What can you take from it?
Understand that current logic often stems from past impulses.

Where it applies

  • learning new skills
  • changing habits
  • child development

Putting it to work

  • trace habits to origins
  • recognize impulse roots

Questions to consider

  • What instincts guide your reason today?
  • How did you learn this?

Another view

Not all instincts evolve into reason; some remain primal.

More from Ovid

  1. What is deservedly suffered must be borne with calmness, but when the pain is unmerited, the grief is resistless.

    Permalink to quote #94

  2. What is without periods of rest will not endure.

    Permalink to quote #96

  3. We two are to ourselves a crowd.

    Permalink to quote #93

Related quotes

  1. Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.

    William BlakeWilliam Blake quote #1

  2. Our civilization is still in a middle stage - scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly gu…

    Theodore DreiserTheodore Dreiser quote #2

  3. During the earliest stages of thought, accommodation remains on the surface of physical as well as social experience.

    Jean PiagetJean Piaget quote #8