Life & Wisdom Quote by Muhammed Iqbal

Iqbal’s line lands like a corrective to the flattering myth of the purely rational modern subject. “Primarily” does the heavy lifting: he’s not denying reason, he’s demoting it. The governing forces are “passion and instinct,” words that refuse the polite language of policy and propriety. They point to the subterranean engines of behavior - desire, fear, pride, hunger for meaning - that keep moving even when ideology insists we’re enlightened.

Coming from a poet-philosopher writing in the shadow of empire and the churn of early 20th-century politics, the claim reads less like anthropology and more like diagnosis. Colonial administrations loved to portray themselves as the custodians of reason; nationalist movements often countered with fervor, sacrifice, and collective awakening. Iqbal understands both the danger and the power in that terrain. If humans are driven first by passion, then sermons about “progress” or “order” won’t change anything unless they touch the emotional core that actually motivates people. If humans are driven by instinct, then moral and political projects must reckon with the body and the crowd, not just the manifesto.

The subtext is strategic: don’t build a future on the assumption that argument alone persuades. Build it around the forces that already govern us, then discipline and elevate them. In Iqbal’s broader universe, the point isn’t to surrender to impulse; it’s to harness it - to turn raw passion into will, and instinct into a deliberate selfhood capable of resisting domination and inventing its own direction.