Repetition Compulsion Quotes

Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth - or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives - they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don't believe that they deserve any better - so they don't go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don't want the trouble of better. Freud called this a "repetition compulsion." He thought of it as an unconscious drive to repeat the horrors of the past - sometimes, perhaps, to formulate those horrors more precisely, sometimes to attempt more active mastery and sometimes, perhaps, because no alternatives beckon. People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It's partly fate. It's partly inability. It's partly … unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn? ~ Jordan B. Peterson

Training and learning a new skill is all about repetition. With this in mind be careful not to get repetitive to the point of boredom. A coach's challenge is to find ways of doing similar skills differently ~ Catherine Cox

To be free one must be a slave to reason. But to be a slave to reason (the very condition of freedom) exposes one to both the revisionary power and the constructive compulsion of reason. This susceptibility is terminally amplified once the commitment to the autonomy of reason and autonomous engagement with discursive practices are sufficiently elaborated. That is to say, when the autonomy of reason is understood as the automation of reason and discursive practices - the philosophical rather than classically symbolic thesis regarding artificial general intelligence. ~ Reza Negarestani

But gradually we learn something very precious under the tutelage of these wounds. We learn a compassion for others that replaces judging, self-loathing, and the compulsion to find someone to blame. We learn a reverent joy before our wounds that replaces the condemnation of and comparison of ourselves with others that used to fuel our anxiety. We learn that the consummation of self-esteem is self-forgetful abandonment to the Silence of God that gives birth to loving service of all who struggle. ~ Martin Laird

If the if isn't an if, what if is an if that if has to be replaced by an if that if shall never if that the place of if. ~ Avakruth

The reason why the book begins with the wish to "play back" how the two met is precisely to see if repeating the scenario might tell the narrator why he is so thoroughly smitten, to play with the scenario all over again, perhaps to master it, as Freud says about repetition. But there cannot be a "reason." An attraction that needs a reason is not a reason the heart or the body cares much about. ~ Andre Aciman

The whole point of meditation is not to follow the path laid down by thought to what it considers to be truth, enlightenment or reality. There is no path to truth. The following of any path leads to what thought has already formulated and, however pleasant or satisfying, it is not truth. It is a fallacy to think that a system of meditation, the constant practising of that system in daily life for a few given moments, or the repetition of it during the day, will bring about clarity or understanding. Meditation lies beyond all this and, like love, cannot be cultivated by thought. As long as the thinker exists to meditate, meditation is merely a part of that self-isolation which is the common movement of one's everyday life. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Unless you keep focused on your desires through images, repetition and a positive attitude, it will come to nothing. ~ Stephen Richards

The free man is not he who defies the rules ... but he who, recognizing the compulsions inherent in his being, seeks rather to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest each day's experience. ~ Bernard Iddings Bell

Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder. ~ Edward Gibbon

Guilt is not merely a concern with the past; it is a present-moment immobilization about a past event. And the degree of immobilization can run from mild upset to severe depression. If you are simply learning from your past, and vowing to avoid the repetition of some specific behavior, this is not guilt. You experience guilt only when you are prevented from taking action now as a result of having behaved in a certain way previously. Learning from your mistakes is healthy and a necessary part of growth. Guilt is unhealthy because you are ineffectively using up your energy in the present feeling hurt, upset and depressed about a historical happening. And it's futile as well as unhealthy. No amount of guilt can ever undo anything. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies. ~ Susan Sontag

But you invite ... "
"I invite a bit of military nonsense."
"That's what I ... "
"Duncan, I am a teacher. Remember that. By repetition, I impress the lesson."
"What lesson?"
"The ultimately suicidal nature of military foolishness. ~ Frank Herbert

Humorists are not humorous twenty-four hours a day. In fact, when you get to know them well, they are often not humorous at all. They tend to be hypersensitive, taut, neurotic creatures driven by God know what obscure compulsion to earn their living the hard way. ~ Margaret Halsey

Every movement in the market is the result of a natural law and of a Cause which exists long before the Effect takes place and can be determined years in advance. The future is but a repetition of the past, as the Bible plainly states ... ~ William Delbert Gann

The fantasy bond (really bondage) is the illusion that someone is there for them, someone who loves and protects them. The fantasy bond is like a mirage in the desert. Once set up, the denying fantasy bond functions automatically and unconsciously. Years later, when reality is no longer life-threatening, the fantasy bond remains. This explains why abandoned (abused) children are described as having a compulsion to protect their parents. ~ John Bradshaw

Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway to consciousness in the form of Homo sapiens or Little Green Men, for example - can be construed as a highway to heaven, but must be viewed as a tortuous track rutted with uncountable obstacles and festooned with innumerable alternative branches. Any reasonably precise repetition of our earthly route on another planet therefore becomes wildly improbable even in a trillion cases. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

Marriages, both good and bad, were defined by repetition. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Verbal virtuosities or the gratuitous expense of time or money that is presupposed by material or symbolic appropriation of works of art, or even, at the second power, the self-imposed constraints and restrictions which make up the "asceticism of the privileged" (as Marx said of Seneca) and the refusal of the facile which is the basis of all "pure" aesthetics, are so many repetition of that variant of the master-slave dialectic through which the possessors affirm their possession of their possessions. In so doing, they distance themselves still further from the dispossessed, who, not content with being slaves to necessity in all its forms, are suspected of being possessed by the desire for possession, and so potentially possessed by the possessions they do not, or do not yet, possess. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. ~ H.L. Mencken

Of course, kids don't always like repetition. Whatever they are watching has to be complex enough to allow, upon repeated exposure, for deeper and deeper levels of comprehension. At the same time, it can't be so complex that the first time around it baffles the children and turns them off. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

A free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind. ~ Socrates

If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Eyebeam: What do you mean, I have "male answer syndrome"?

Sally: It's the compulsion to provide an answer to any question, even if it means resorting to pure speculation.

Eyebeam: I knew that…

Sally: It's a very widespread phenomenon.

Beth: I wonder what causes it?

Eyebeam: Cause? Well, society has chosen male role models who always exhibit total control… If a male says "I don't know", he's admitting to conversational helplessness and failing to live up to that societal standard…

Sally: Pretty pitiful, huh?

Eyebeam: Damn!

Beth: …And I always thought they learned it all in "shop". ~ Sam Hurt

It's also important to reject any feelings of compulsion, guilt or negativity about sub-par or missed workouts. ~ Mark Sisson

The great error of nearly all studies of war ... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics ... ~ Simone Weil

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.
[Italian: Necessita c'induce, e non diletto.] ~ Dante Alighieri

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me. I have many places where I sit and think, "I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again." Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath, in 1962 or 1983, or many other times. Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometimes Chaz will say she's going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room and reading in bed. "Why don't you go and touch your bases?" she'll ask me. I know she sympathizes. These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves. ~ Roger Ebert

That was the thing about life. Habit and routine made things feel permanent, but that was all an illusion based on the very flimsy foundation of repetition. Change and chaos was a far better bet to put your faith in.

At least you would never be surprised when things went tits up. ~ J.R. Ward

I am not interested in repetition. I don't want to reach the point from where I wouldn't know how to go further. It's good to set limits for oneself, but there comes a moment when we must destroy what we have constructed. ~ Josef Koudelka

Teachers must, I discovered, have a gift to teach and the compulsion to use it. And faith. Anything less won't carry you through. ~ Robert Adams

Sometimes the intensity and the grind of doing television can wear you down, but at the same time there's something about the repetition, the sheer mass of work that you do that's also liberating. ~ Simon Baker

It is a part of the nature of man to resist compulsion. ~ Tacitus

A friend of yours?" Justiran's voice was detached and clipped.

"No," said Romeo. "But I've seen his heart. He's a good person."

"Do you know he put a compulsion on you?"

He forced me to, thought Paris, but he couldn't get the words out.

"Yes," said Romeo, "but . . ." His voice grew soft and wondering. "He loved Juliet. I'm sure of it."

Romeo was an idiot. Romeo thought nothing mattered besides who had what kind of pretty feelings about Juliet, and he was going to get them both killed by a necromancer. ~ Rosamund Hodge

Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli