Quotes and Sayings about Consciousness
"With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books."
- Peter Abrahams
(Related: Dreams, Poetry, Books, Consciousness, Self, Shakespeare, World)
"Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Ego, Embarrassment, Nothing, Reflection, Self, Today)
"Porno is the unconsciousness of culture, the libido of humanity."
- Masami Akita
(Related: Culture, Humanity)
"Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty."
- Louisa May Alcott
(Related: Power, Talent, Genius, Charm, Conceit, Consciousness, Danger, Goodness, Modesty, Will)
"I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently."
- Pedro Almodovar
(Related: Act, Consciousness, Passion)
"Ideology has very little to do with 'consciousness' - it is profoundly unconscious."
- Louis Althusser
(Related: Ideology, Unconscious)
"Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer."
- Barbara de Angelis
(Related: Consciousness, Delight)
"But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right."
- Ray Stannard Baker
(Related: Courage, Being, Consciousness, Mob, Right)
"Feeling is the consciousness of the resulting conditions - of success, failure, equilibrium, compromise or balance, in this continuous rivalry of ideas."
- James M. Baldwin
(Related: Success, Ideas, Failure, Balance, Compromise, Consciousness, Feeling, Rivalry)
"In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social."
- James M. Baldwin
(Related: Thought, Self)
"Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle."
- Balthus
(Related: Experience, Work, Consciousness, Criticism, Painting, Self, Struggle)
"I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness."
- Iain Banks
(Related: Consciousness, Machines)
"Works of art produced in the contemporary world are a further expression of that. But I don't think there is an active, ongoing nihilist self-consciousness in the artist."
- Leonard Baskin
(Related: Art, Artist, Expression, Self, World)
"Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness."
- Bruno Bauer
(Related: Progress, Christianity, Alienation, Self)
"The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it."
- Ferdinand Christian Baur
(Related: Time, Idea, Consciousness, Literary)
"You shall always find what you created in your mind, for instance, a benevolent God or an evil Devil. Between them are countless facets. Therefore, concentrate on the depth of your consciousness and on what you consider to be positive and good."
- Hans Bender
(Related: God, Positive, Consciousness, Devil, Mind)
"Sam Walton instilled ownership of the products in the stores into the collective consciousness of every associate regardless of what job they did for the company."
- Michael Bergdahl
(Related: Company, Consciousness, Job, Ownership)
"In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside."
- Henri Bergson
(Related: Thought, Consciousness, Present)
"The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect."
- Luciano Berio
(Related: Music, Consciousness, Intellect, Obvious, Spiritual)
"Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time."
- Steven Biko
(Related: Time, Life, Attitude, Positive, Consciousness, Mind, World)
"The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity."
- Steven Biko
(Related: Consciousness, Country, Dignity, Man, Value)
"Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception."
- H. P. Blavatsky
(Related: Perception, Consciousness, Universe)
"But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we conceive of."
- H. P. Blavatsky
(Related: Consciousness, First, Reflection, Spiritual, World)
"Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness."
- Dewitt Bodeen
(Related: Lie, Consciousness, Sin, World)
"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."
- W. E. B. Du Bois
(Related: Soul, Contempt, Eyes, Pity, Self, Sense, World)
"The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
(Related: Love, Ability, Consciousness, Space)
"It's from our sufferings that we form our consciousness."
- Lisa Bonet
(Related: Consciousness)
"Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Cure, Egotism, Name, Self, Sensibility)
"There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual."
- Catherine Drinker Bowen
(Related: Arrogance)
"But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both."
- Georg Brandes
(Related: Christianity, Consciousness, Doubt, Horror, Madness, Sin)
"An unconscious consciousness is no more a contradiction in terms than an unseen case of seeing."
- Franz Clemens Brentano
(Related: Consciousness, Contradiction, Unconscious)
"The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie."
- Joseph Brodsky
(Related: History, Lie, Consciousness, First)
"Consciousness is the glory of creation."
- James Broughton
(Related: Consciousness, Creation, Glory)
"If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness."
- Les Brown
(Related: Comfort, Consciousness, Zone)
"The world is real. Consciousness is the illusion."
- Craig Bruce
(Related: Consciousness, Illusion, World)
"Evil, and evil spirits, devils and devil possession, are the outgrowth of man's inadequate consciousness of God. We must avoid thinking of evil as a thing in itself - a force that works against man or, against God, if you will."
- Eric Butterworth
(Related: God, Consciousness, Devil, Force, Man, Possession, Spirits, Thinking, Will)
"Where you are in consciousness has everything to do with what you see in experience."
- Eric Butterworth
(Related: Experience, Consciousness)
"When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness."
- Joseph Campbell
(Related: Consciousness, Self, Thinking)
"The ill effects of thought come about when we forget that thought is a function of our consciousness... an ability that we as human beings have. We are the producers of our own thinking."
- Richard Carlson
(Related: Thought, Ability, Consciousness, Forget, Thinking)
"Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best."
- Andrew Carnegie
(Related: Approval, Consciousness)
"Here, the broader issues are already familiar, and discussion has focused at a more sophisticated and detailed level. Within the philosophy of mind, the problem of consciousness is no big news."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Consciousness, Mind, News, Philosophy)
"Within psychology and neuroscience, some new and rigorous experimental paradigms for studying consciousness have helped it begin to overcome the stigma that has been attached to the topic for most of this century."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Consciousness, Psychology)
"What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a "neural correlate of consciousness"?"
- David Chalmers
"Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Science, Computer, Consciousness, Mathematics, Physics)
"Anyway, there is a lot of really interesting work going on in the neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, and I would love to see philosophers become more closely involved with this."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Love, Work, Consciousness, Psychology)
"Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Work, People, Consciousness, Now, Psychology, Trying)
"I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years."
- David Chalmers
(Related: Science, Consciousness, Mind, Philosophy, Years)
"What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power."
- John Cheever
(Related: Power, Ability, Consciousness, Danger, Literature, Will)
"Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness."
- Sri Chinmoy
(Related: God, Heart, Ideas, Beliefs, Consciousness, May, Mind, Spiritual, Thinking, Will)
"When I came back to Britain, I realized that I was no longer a very young woman. I had to meet my new consciousness, my new age, with roles that reflected it somewhat."
- Julie Christie
(Related: Age, Consciousness, Woman)
"Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Consciousness)
"The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness."
- J. M. Coetzee
(Related: Consciousness)
"If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart."
- J. M. Coetzee
(Related: Feelings, Heart, Thoughts, Animals, Consciousness, May, Mind, Project, Temptation, Writing)
"The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."
- Joseph Conrad
(Related: Power, Truth, Courage, Consciousness, Endurance, Faithfulness, Generosity, Sea)
"Fears and lies intensify consciousness."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Consciousness, Lies)
"Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Time, Consciousness)
"Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness."
- Aaron Copland
(Related: Inspiration, May, Self)
"The years between 1800 and 1825 were distinguished, so far as our domestic development was concerned, by the growth of the Western pioneer Democracy in power and self-consciousness."
- Herbert Croly
(Related: Power, Development, Growth, Democracy, Self, Years)
"The reason bin Laden staggered the planes going into the towers was so every camera would be focused on the second tower when the plane hit. It was not only the murder, but the perpetual image of the horror that permeated into people's consciousness."
- John Cusack
(Related: People, Consciousness, Horror, Murder, Reason)
"There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness."
- Edwidge Danticat
(Related: People, Consciousness, Country, Frustration, Moments)
"The eye is the most refined of our senses, the one which communicates most directly with our mind, our consciousness."
- Robert Delaunay
(Related: Consciousness, Eye, Mind, Senses)
"True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Vision, Consciousness, Deep, Language, Terror, Writers)
"There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory)."
- Daniel Clement Dennett
(Related: Action, Consciousness, Content, Reality)
"When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start."
- Dietrich Fischer Dieskau
(Related: Performance, Preparation, Reflection)
"It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution."
- Annie Dillard
(Related: Birthday, Evolution, Present, Self)
"All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature."
- Wilhelm Dilthey
(Related: Experience, Nature, Science, Consciousness, Validity)
"A book, like a landscape, is a state of consciousness varying with readers."
- Ernest Dimnet
(Related: Consciousness, State)
"The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness."
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
(Related: Development, Consciousness, Evolution, Mind)
"The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness."
- Max Eastman
(Related: Artist, Consciousness)
"One needs but to say that, in the case of an unfamiliar sequence of syllables, only about seven can be grasped in one act, but that with frequent repetition and gradually increasing familiarity with the series this capacity of consciousness may be increased."
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
(Related: Act, Consciousness, Familiarity, May, Needs, Repetition)
"Often, even after years, mental states once present in consciousness return to it with apparent spontaneity and without any act of the will; that is, they are reproduced involuntarily."
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
(Related: Act, Consciousness, Present, Spontaneity, states, Will, Years)
"Mental states of every kind, - sensations, feelings, ideas, - which were at one time present in consciousness and then have disappeared from it, have not with their disappearance absolutely ceased to exist."
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
(Related: Time, Feelings, Ideas, Consciousness, Present, Sensations, states)
"A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness."
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
(Related: Heart, Consciousness, Effort, Will)
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
- Albert Einstein
(Related: Consciousness)
"Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly."
- Arthur Erickson
(Related: Beauty, Consciousness)
"The book has many different characteristics: some are extremely old-fashioned storytelling traits, but there are also a fair number of postmodern traits, and the self-consciousness is one."
- Jeffrey Eugenides
(Related: Old, Self)
"The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness."
- Marilyn Ferguson
(Related: Attention, Calculations, Consciousness, Effort, Information)
"We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace."
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(Related: Change, Consciousness, Poets, World)
"His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Related: Consciousness, First, Sin)
"I have a picture of an ideal consciousness."
- Henry Flynt
(Related: Consciousness)
"Life is a state of consciousness."
- Emmet Fox
(Related: Life, Consciousness, State)
"It is only the consciousness of a nonexistence which allows us to realize for moments that we are living."
- Max Frisch
(Related: Consciousness, Living, Moments)
"It was clear to me that the forms of consciousness of our inherited and acquired historical education - aesthetic consciousness and historical consciousness - presented alienated forms of our true historical being."
- Hans-Georg Gadamer
(Related: Education, Being, Consciousness)
"Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: History, Science, Anthropology, Consciousness, Gender, Literature)
"I do think the attempt to raise consciousness has succeeded. People are very aware of gender concerns now."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: People, Consciousness, Gender, Now)
"If the heart stops for more than two minutes, you have massive brain death. There are only two minutes between our conscious world and zero. That's how fragile our consciousness is."
- Robin Gibb
(Related: Death, Heart, Consciousness, World)
"Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness."
- Remy de Gourmont
(Related: Life, Consciousness, Sensations, states)
"If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness."
- Gunther Grass
(Related: Age, Work, Busyness, Conflict, Consciousness, Dawn, Leisure, Melancholy, Utopia, Will)
"It is the prayer of my innermost being to realize my supreme identity in the liberated play of consciousness, the Vast Expanse. Now is the moment, Here is the place of Liberation."
- Alex Grey
(Related: Being, Consciousness, Identity, Now, Play, Prayer)
"Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Time, Consciousness, Space)
"A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Hope, Consciousness, Crisis, Radical)
"Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Possibility, Body, Consciousness)
"There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Nature, Consciousness, Radical)
"The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Survival, Body, Consciousness, Personality, Study)
"The new formula in physics describes humans as paradoxical beings who have two complementary aspects: They can show properties of Newtonian objects and also infinite fields of consciousness."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Consciousness, Formula, Infinite, Physics)
"Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Survival, Behavior, Consciousness, Karma, Reincarnation)
"If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Body, Consciousness)
"I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Change, Consciousness, Crisis, Future, Tools)
"Many cultures have independently developed a belief system in reincarnation that includes return of the unit of consciousness to another physical lifetime on Earth."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Belief, Consciousness, Earth, Reincarnation)
"Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Fear, Positive, Consciousness, Evolution, Healing, Personality)
"Everybody has a high point and a lot goes into that: timing, situation, general consciousness."
- Alex Van Halen
(Related: Consciousness)
"Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony."
- William Christopher Handy
(Related: Consciousness, Song)
"Conflict is the beginning of consciousness."
- M. Esther Harding
(Related: Beginning, Conflict, Consciousness)
"If any human being is to reach full maturity both the masculine and feminine sides of the personality must be brought up into consciousness."
- M. Esther Harding
(Related: Being, Consciousness, Maturity, Personality)
"Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness."
- Helen Hayes
(Related: Actors, Self)
"Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses."
- Seamus Heaney
(Related: Consciousness)
"The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom."
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(Related: History, Progress, Consciousness, Freedom, World)
"As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself."
- Martin Heidegger
(Related: Consciousness, Ego)
"At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. Art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution."
- Barbara Hepworth
(Related: Art, Men, Thought, Conflict, Consciousness, Man)
"And if I can take part in it by transforming my own consciousness, then someone else's, I'm happy to do it."
- Bill Hicks
(Related: Consciousness)
"Chris Hemsworth is like Christopher Reeve in that he can do two things: he can wear a big red cape without a shred of self-consciousness. But he's also funny as hell, and he's so sweet. So with all the fish-out-of-water stuff, he's so funny. So he does almost two jobs in a way."
- Tom Hiddleston
(Related: Funny, Fish, Hell, Jobs, Self)
"Everyone has a right to change their consciousness, but ultimately the whole process is misleading."
- Robyn Hitchcock
(Related: Change, Consciousness, Misleading, Right)
"The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other."
- Mark Hopkins
(Related: Love, Power, Affection, Consciousness, Exercise, Giving, Race)
"Malcolm X raised my consciousness about myself and my people and other people more than any person I know. I knew him before he became Malcolm X."
- Lena Horne
(Related: People, Consciousness)
"To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness."
- Edmund Husserl
(Related: Science, Consciousness)
"Something similar is still true of the courses followed by manifold intuitions which together make up the unity of one continuous consciousness of one and the same object."
- Edmund Husserl
(Related: Consciousness, Unity)
"If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reality is subject to mathematical laws, then these essential laws will be of most fertile significance in investigating facts of the conscious life of human and brute animals."
- Edmund Husserl
(Related: Life, Animals, Consciousness, Facts, Laws, Reality, Will)
"It just is nothing foreign to consciousness at all that could present itself to consciousness through the mediation of phenomena different from the liking itself; to like is intrinsically to be conscious."
- Edmund Husserl
(Related: Consciousness, Nothing, Present)
"Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent."
- Edmund Husserl
(Related: Virtue, Consciousness, World)
"The ideal of a pure phenomenology will be perfected only by answering this question; pure phenomenology is to be separated sharply from psychology at large and, specifically, from the descriptive psychology of the phenomena of consciousness."
- Edmund Husserl
(Related: Consciousness, Psychology, Question, Will)
"I know that you are part of me and I am part of you because we are all aspects of the same infinite consciousness that we call God and Creation."
- David Icke
(Related: God, Consciousness, Creation, Infinite)
"Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance."
- William Ralph Inge
(Related: Life, Habit, Performance, Connection, Consciousness, Habits)
"A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity."
- Charles Ives
(Related: Experience, Nature, Consciousness, Day, Unity)
"One of the surest signs of the estimated changes in the consciousness of the American proletariat is to be found in the character of the demands now being put forward by the leadership."
- C. L. R. James
(Related: Leadership, Character, American, Being, Consciousness, Now)
"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue."
- Henry James
(Related: Experience, Consciousness, Sensibility)
"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."
- William James
(Related: Lie, Consciousness, Potential, Waking)
"Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it."
- Karl Jaspers
(Related: Thought, Being, Consciousness, Man, Reality, Understanding)
"I think that will be a lot of fun for audiences to get the same stream of consciousness that was going through my head at the time. It was very exciting to suddenly recall what I was feeling at the time."
- Roland Joffe
(Related: Time, Audiences, Consciousness, Feeling, Fun, Will)
"Intention involves such a small fragment of our consciousness and of our mind and of our life."
- Jasper Johns
(Related: Life, Consciousness, Intention, Mind)
"Nothing will see us through the age we're entering but high consciousness, and that comes hard. We don't have a good, modern myth yet, and we need one."
- Robert Johnson
(Related: Age, Consciousness, Myth, Nothing, Will)
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Consciousness, Pain)
"I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life."
- Jack Kerouac
(Related: Life, Hope, Consciousness, Man)
"The Republican consciousness has no integrity and it falls apart once you check it out. If you're a Christian, why would you want to fry this dude?"
- Ken Kesey
(Related: Christian, Consciousness, Integrity, Republican, Want)
"In dream consciousness... we make things happen by wishing them, because we are not only the observer of what we experience but also the creator."
- Pir Vilayat Khan
(Related: Experience, Dream, Consciousness, Wishing)
"It seems like the chaos of this world is accelerating, but so is the beauty in the consciousness of more and more people."
- Anthony Kiedis
(Related: Beauty, People, Chaos, Consciousness, World)
"In terms of having high hopes that the level of consciousness will get higher and higher, yeah."
- Anthony Kiedis
(Related: Consciousness, Will)
"Partly because the town is just finicky, there are strange Catch 22 clauses in the consciousness of this community and one of them was that you, I found out, you can't do a comedy unless you've just done a comedy."
- Val Kilmer
(Related: Comedy, Community, Consciousness)
"It is not sex by itself that interests me, but its particular role in American consciousness, and in my own life."
- Jerzy Kosinski
(Related: Life, Sex, American, Consciousness)
"My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious."
- Karl Kraus
(Related: Consciousness, Unconscious)
"Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is."
- Joseph Wood Krutch
(Related: Consciousness, Living, Sun)
"All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved."
- Hans Kung
(Related: Experience, Consciousness, Earth, Future)
"If the war has faded into history, democracy's defeat in Vietnam has left deep marks in the consciousness of both nations."
- Nguyen Cao Ky
(Related: War, History, Consciousness, Deep, Defeat, Democracy, Nations, Vietnam)
"I'm not a fast, stream-of-consciousness lyricist at all - I know some guys who are, and if there is one skill I wish I had, it's that."
- Jonny Lang
(Related: Skill)
"Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life; from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based."
- Christian Lous Lange
(Related: Art, Life, Character, Strength, Consciousness, Deep, Literature, Spiritual)
"Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Consciousness, End)
"The human consciousness is really homogeneous. There is no complete forgetting, even in death."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Death, Consciousness)
"The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Beliefs, Body, Consciousness, Mind)
"The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Fear, Christian, Consciousness, Man)
"Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Beauty, Intelligence, Life, Sex, Consciousness, Intuition)
"The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn't got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Life, American, Care, Consciousness, Living, Rest)
"I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota."
- Fran Lebowitz
(Related: Consciousness, Drugs)
"There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things."
- Mike Leigh
(Related: Life, Awareness, Consciousness)
"The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: History, Class, Consciousness, Countries, Effort, Trade)
"We hit a stride where all self-consciousness disappeared."
- Joshua Leonard
(Related: Self)
"This fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. This consciousness of sin is the straight pathway to heaven."
- Joseph Barber Lightfoot
(Related: Wisdom, Fear, Beginning, Consciousness, Heaven, Sin)
"But there is another danger besetting your path. I mean the error of regarding your own capacities instead of your work, of putting self-consciousness in place of God."
- Joseph Barber Lightfoot
(Related: God, Work, Danger, Error, Self)
"Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men."
- Walter Lippmann
(Related: Men, Purpose, Consciousness, Man)
"Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Art, Consciousness, Conviction, Open)
"There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Related: Life, Love, Consciousness, First, Nothing)
"Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Consciousness, Lesbian)
"But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Women, Consciousness, Deals, Lesbian)
"I recall feeling an almost delicious terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of tall June grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things of the past for me to explain it."
- Pierre Loti
(Related: Consciousness, Day, Feeling, June, Past, Self, Terror)
"Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind."
- Ramana Maharshi
(Related: Consciousness, Limitations, Mind)
"The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people."
- Norman Mailer
(Related: Art, People, Purpose, Consciousness)
"Not only does travel give us a new system of reckoning, it also brings to the fore unknown aspects of our own self. Our consciousness being broadened and enriched, we shall judge ourselves more correctly."
- Ella Maillart
(Related: Travel, Being, Consciousness, Self)
"You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and class consciousness."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Development, Class, Consciousness, Order, Potential)
"You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Class, Consciousness)
"The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Life, Class, Consciousness, Day, Trade)
"The conclusion you can draw from these characteristics is that you have an uneven development of class activity and an uneven development of class consciousness in the working class."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Development, Class, Consciousness)
"On The Practice, I get to do what I love to do, and I am making a contribution that will, in the end, help raise social consciousness, dispel some of the myths about being large, and change the way that people view and interact with large people."
- Camryn Manheim
(Related: Change, Love, People, Being, Consciousness, End, Help, Myths, Practice, Will)
"Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness."
- Katherine Mansfield
(Related: Consciousness, Meaning, Words)
"There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us."
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Consciousness)
"What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?"
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Home, Power, Heart, Consciousness, Poverty)
"The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive."
- Marc Maron
(Related: Consciousness, Internet, Unconscious)
"Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity."
- Karl Marx
(Related: Blind, Consciousness, Freedom, Necessity)
"The core political values of our free society are so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that only a few malcontents, lunatics generally, ever dare to threaten them."
- John McCain
(Related: Society, Values, Consciousness)
"When this sad war is over we will all return to our homes, and feel that we can ask no higher honor than the proud consciousness that we belonged to the Army of the Potomac."
- George B. McClellan
(Related: War, Army, Consciousness, Honor, Will)
"I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story."
- John McGahern
(Related: Time, Books, Consciousness, Difference, Excitement)
"But it has, in addition, an even more precious quality - a consciousness of the human intelligence, the human spirit and that man is a social creature."
- Norman McLaren
(Related: Intelligence, Quality, Consciousness, Man, Spirit)
"In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Age, Being, Consciousness, Information)
"Ideally, advertising aims at the goal of a programmed harmony among all human impulses and aspirations and endeavors. Using handicraft methods, it stretches out toward the ultimate electronic goal of a collective consciousness."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Goal, Advertising, Aspirations, Consciousness, Harmony, Impulses)
"Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Aggression, Consciousness, Manipulation, Public, Yield)
"Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence."
- Moses Mendelssohn
(Related: God, Consciousness, Existence, Ignorance, Proof, Thinking)
"The human being is flesh and consciousness, body and soul; his heart is an abyss which can only be filled by that which is godly."
- Olivier Messiaen
(Related: Soul, Heart, Being, Body, Consciousness)
"Regression to the stage of early infancy is not a suitable method in and of itself. Such a regression can only be effective if it happens in the natural course of therapy and if the client is able to maintain adult consciousness at the same time."
- Alice Miller
(Related: Time, Consciousness, Therapy)
"Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Consciousness, Evil, Existence)
"In the vanity of self-consciousness one feels at a long remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a simple and pure heart."
- Donald G. Mitchell
(Related: Love, Heart, Self, Vanity)
"Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness."
- Eugenio Montale
(Related: Art, Consciousness, Man, Production, Waiting, Will, World)
"Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious."
- Alan Moore
(Related: Consciousness, First, Language)
"Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception."
- Alan Moore
(Related: Experience, Perception, Consciousness, Right, Universe)
"I think because people are passing - people that we are aware of are passing at - I don't say a great pace, but it seems like people are dropping, and I think it's just making - there's a consciousness and there's sensitivity to it."
- Shemar Moore
(Related: People, Consciousness, Sensitivity)
"Sensation is not the conduction of a quality or state of external bodies to consciousness, but the conduction of a quality or state of our nerves to consciousness, excited by an external cause."
- Johannes P. Muller
(Related: Quality, Cause, Consciousness, Nerves, State)
"Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self."
- Iris Murdoch
(Related: Happiness, Being, Consciousness, Self)
"It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity."
- Benito Mussolini
(Related: Virtue, Consciousness, Mission, State, Unity)
"Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable."
- Thomas Nagel
(Related: Consciousness, Mind)
"I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness."
- Huey Newton
(Related: Time, Life, Being, Community, Consciousness, Defeat)
"In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Truth, Absurdity, Consciousness, Existence, Man, Now)
"It felt like being in the center of the world, and I felt like I was a witness to history and I knew that the whole world was watching on television. So, I could feel the collective consciousness of the world focused on this little strip of land called Seattle."
- Krist Novoselic
(Related: History, Being, Consciousness, Land, Television, World)
"What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you."
- Gary Oldman
(Related: Idea, Actors, Consciousness)
"The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Cause, Consciousness, Ignorance, Present, Vanity)
"A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Poetry, Consciousness, Sense, Temper)
"I don't think the British carry a historical consciousness either."
- Tom Paulin
(Related: Consciousness)
"Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations."
- Roger Penrose
(Related: Calculations, Consciousness, Mind, Years)
"As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness."
- Roger Penrose
(Related: Morality, Consciousness, Question)
"If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it."
- Roger Penrose
(Related: Morality, Consciousness, World)
"Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness."
- Max Planck
(Related: Consciousness, Ego)
"This is part of human nature, the desire to change consciousness."
- Michael Pollan
(Related: Change, Nature, Consciousness, Desire, Human nature)
"There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory."
- Marcel Proust
(Related: Life, Consciousness, Man, Memory, Youth)
"I believe that the Framers of the Constitution made their intent clear when they wrote the First Amendment. I believe they wanted to keep the new government from endorsing one religion over another, not erase the public consciousness or common faith."
- Nick Rahall
(Related: Faith, Government, Religion, Consciousness, Constitution, First, Public)
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Happiness, Achievement, Values, Consciousness, State)
"I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Time, Consciousness, Will)
"It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful."
- Adrienne Rich
(Related: Time, Consciousness)
"Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind."
- Bridget Riley
(Related: Attention, Consciousness, Focus, Freedom, Spirit)
"There are a great number of Republicans who are economically conservative but have hearts and a consciousness about their country."
- Tim Robbins
(Related: Consciousness, Conservative, Country, Republicans)
"No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
(Related: Government, People, Class, Consciousness, Help)
"I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on."
- Isaac Rosenberg
(Related: Poetry, Life, Consciousness, Will)
"Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Adversity, Consciousness, Prosperity, Remorse)
"For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell."
- Josiah Royce
(Related: Consciousness, Individuality, Now, Present)
"A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them. There is no such thing as bad art."
- Muriel Rukeyser
(Related: Art, Work, Artist, Consciousness, Emotions)
"Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Chaos, Consciousness, Irony)
"Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits and values."
- Arthur M. Schlesinger
(Related: History, Change, Values, Consciousness, Habits, Revenge)
"I was born with a serious spiritual consciousness and for many years studied different paths."
- Steven Seagal
(Related: Consciousness, Spiritual, Years)
"The first, or theoretic branch, that which explains the nature, production, and distribution of wealth, will be found to rest on a very few general propositions, which are the result of observation, or consciousness."
- Nassau William Senior
(Related: Nature, Wealth, Consciousness, First, Observation, Production, Rest, Result, Will)
"A young man is stirred and stimulated by the consciousness of how much depends upon his own exertions: a young girl is oppressed by it."
- Elizabeth Missing Sewell
(Related: Consciousness, Man)
"We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization."
- Michael Shermer
(Related: Consciousness, Principles, Self)
"Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning."
- Clifford D. Simak
(Related: Intelligence, Consciousness, Meaning, Universe)
"On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself."
- Georg Simmel
(Related: Life, Time, Consciousness, Needs, Personality)
"Human nature is the same now as when Adam hid from the presence of God; the consciousness of wrong makes us unwilling to meet those whom we have offended."
- Matthew Simpson
(Related: Nature, God, Consciousness, Human nature, Now, Wrong)
"You can only paint through your experience and sub-consciousness."
- Barbara Smith
(Related: Experience)
"Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(Related: Religion, Life, People, Consciousness, Man, Order)
"The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service."
- Stephen Sondheim
(Related: Service)
"As a result of the awareness and consciousness of decline, an awareness and consciousness of a national ethnicity or an Islamic identity also came into being."
- Abdolkarim Soroush
(Related: Awareness, Being, Consciousness, Identity, Result)
"I've always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness."
- Norman Spinrad
(Related: Technology, Consciousness, Culture)
"Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness."
- John Sterling
(Related: Intelligence, Instinct, Self)
"Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one."
- John Sterling
(Related: Life, Consciousness, Joy, Pain)
"And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music."
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Related: Art, Music, Intelligence, Perception, Consciousness, Media, Senses, Sensibility, Will)
"It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject."
- Joseph Story
(Related: Government, Power, Act, Ambition, Bigotry, Consciousness, Intolerance, Pride, Spiritual)
"If God and man are in themselves one, and if religion is the human side of this unity then must this unity be made evident to man in religion, and become in him consciousness and reality."
- David Friedrich Strauss
(Related: Religion, God, Consciousness, Man, Reality, Unity)
"In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas."
- John Millington Synge
(Related: People, Consciousness, Isolation, Pain, Universe)
"I think people are isolated because of the nature of human consciousness, and they like it when they feel the connection between themselves and someone else."
- James Taylor
(Related: Nature, People, Connection, Consciousness)
"On the whole, the psychological work of the last quarter of the nineteenth century emphasized the study of consciousness to the neglect of the total life of intellect and character."
- Edward Thorndike
(Related: Life, Work, Character, Consciousness, Intellect, Neglect, Study)
"I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness."
- James Thurber
(Related: Consciousness)
"The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue."
- Arnold J. Toynbee
(Related: Virtue, Islam, Consciousness, Race, World)
"The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself."
- Leon Trotsky
(Related: Nature, Society, Blind, Consciousness, Humanity, May)
"The higher one climbs on the spiritual ladder, the more they will grant others their own freedom, and give less interference to another's state of consciousness."
- Paul Twitchell
(Related: Consciousness, Freedom, Spiritual, State, Will)
"The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness."
- Lao Tzu
(Related: Growth, Awareness, Consciousness, Key)
"The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness."
- Miguel de Unamuno
(Related: Consciousness, World)
"Consciousness is a disease."
- Miguel de Unamuno
(Related: Consciousness, Disease)
"You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character."
- Marquis De Vauvenargues
(Related: People, Character, Strength, Consciousness, Prudence, Want)
"It is precisely as though I were possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being."
- Conrad Veidt
(Related: Acting, Being, Consciousness, Spirit)
"When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months."
- Vernor Vinge
(Related: Science, Time, Ideas, Consciousness, Fiction, Months, Now, Writing)
"The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them."
- Rudolf Virchow
(Related: Science, Consciousness, Limits)
"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity."
- Voltaire
(Related: Thoughts, Awareness, Consciousness, Infinity, Meditation, Thinking)
"And we're seeing a higher level of consciousness and many more opportunities for people to challenge their present ways of thinking and move into a grander and larger experience of who they really are."
- Neale Donald Walsch
(Related: Experience, People, Challenge, Consciousness, Present, Thinking)
"Changing mass consciousness is an individual responsibility."
- Dennis Weaver
(Related: Consciousness, Responsibility)
"We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Thought, Consciousness, Horses, Hurt)
"Nobody would take checks from Indians, nobody would give them any credit, and nobody would let them drink in the bars. There was a rudeness, a brusqueness, with which the Indians were treated constantly. At a very young age, that had entered my consciousness."
- James Welch
(Related: Age, Consciousness, Credit, Rudeness)
"The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society."
- Paul Wellstone
(Related: Society, Virtue, Consciousness, First, Students, Teaching)
"There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius."
- Walt Whitman
(Related: Power, Genius)
"This sunlight linked me through the ages to that past consciousness."
- Henry Williamson
(Related: Consciousness, Past)
"Consciousness itself is an infinite regress. This explains coincidences."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Consciousness, Infinite)
"There have been a number of us working very, very hard to bring myth and fairy tales into public consciousness, through fantasy literature and other media. I hope we're succeeding in some small way."
- Terri Windling
(Related: Hope, Consciousness, Fantasy, Literature, Media, Myth, Public)
"I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness."
- Jeanette Winterson
(Related: Change, Consciousness)
"A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(Related: Consciousness, Man, Public, Thinking)
"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end."
- Virginia Woolf
(Related: Life, Beginning, Consciousness, End)
"When we learn new behaviors and break through to higher levels of consciousness and love, we can fulfill the deeper spiritual hunger within."
- Judith Wright
(Related: Love, Consciousness, Hunger, Spiritual)
"The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness."
- Wilhelm Wundt
(Related: Consciousness, Mind)
"Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness."
- Wilhelm Wundt
(Related: Consciousness)
"Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness."
- Wilhelm Wundt
(Related: Consciousness, Mind, Needs, Obscurity, Reflection, Spirit)
"A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow."
- Marguerite Young
(Related: Consciousness, Writer, Writing)
"I don't believe there can be a poetic novel without political consciousness. I have a strong political conscience."
- Marguerite Young
(Related: Conscience, Consciousness)
"Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women's class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle."
- Clara Zetkin
(Related: Women, Class, Consciousness, Importance, Propaganda, Questions, Struggle)