When you have a “gut feeling,” that’s your intuition kicking in. It’s a hard process to describe, but it’s basically the ability to understand or know something — often immediately — based on your feelings rather than facts.
Intuition is similar to instinct, but not the same. Both come without conscious reasoning, but instinct is an automatic response that pushes you into an action that typically promotes survival (such as fight or flight), whereas intuition is a feeling of knowing — a judgment, insight, or decision that just feels right.
Learning to trust these hunches has helped people from all walks of life to succeed, whether by making new discoveries, creating great art, or building a successful business. Here are some quotes about the value of intuition, from philosophers, artists, business leaders, scientists, and more.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.Rumi
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, is to understand things by the intuitive kind of knowledge.Baruch Spinoza
Logic, which alone can give certainty, is the instrument of demonstration; intuition is the instrument of invention.Henri Poincaré
All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.Immanuel Kant
Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.Alexis Carrel
The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgments which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning. These judgments are often but by no means invariably correct.Alan Turing
All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration… At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.Albert Einstein
Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together — and they call the result intuition.Agatha Christie
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.Frank Capra
You must train your intuition — you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.Ingrid Bergman
Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business — everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.David Lynch
Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect.Steve Jobs
Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.Paulo Coelho
For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have to prove it right.Tim Cook
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition… What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.Alan Alda
Intuition is the wisdom formed by feeling and instinct — a gift of knowing without reasoning.Angela Ahrendts
I've trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life. And the only time I've made mistakes is when I didn't listen.Oprah Winfrey
I feel there are two people inside me — me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely.Kim Basinger
The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become.Gisele Bündchen
When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it.Guillermo del Toro
Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.Clarissa Pinkola Estés
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