Quotes and Sayings about Unconscious
"If you listen to a lot of music, it gradually seeps into your consciousness or your unconsciousness and comes out in your music."
- John Abercrombie
(Related: Music, Consciousness)
"Porno is the unconsciousness of culture, the libido of humanity."
- Masami Akita
(Related: Culture, Humanity)
"Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy."
- Hannes Alfven
(Related: People, Astrology, Astronomy, Land, Today, Universe)
"Ideology has very little to do with 'consciousness' - it is profoundly unconscious."
- Louis Althusser
(Related: Ideology, Unconscious)
"Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
(Related: Apology, Faults, Favorite, Nothing, Sin, Unconscious)
"Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
(Related: Thought, Action, Unconscious)
"The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: Mind, Unconscious)
"A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment."
- Walter Bagehot
(Related: Civilization, Climate, Enjoyment, Luxury, Unconscious)
"Architecture is a art when one consciously or unconsciously creates aesthetic emotion in the atmosphere and when this environment produces well being."
- Luis Barragan
(Related: Architecture, Art, Being, Emotion, Environment)
"Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand."
- Saul Bellow
(Related: Psychoanalysis, Unconscious)
"The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses."
- Walter Benjamin
(Related: Impulses, Psychoanalysis, Unconscious)
"Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself."
- Robert Foster Bennett
(Related: Life, Control, Being, Choices, Freedom, Result)
"The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind."
- Henri Bergson
(Related: Mind, Unconscious, Will)
"A woman finds the natural lay of the land almost unconsciously; and not feeling it incumbent on her to be guide and philosopher to any successor, she takes little pains to mark the route by which she is making her ascent."
- Alice Stone Blackwell
(Related: Feeling, Land, Woman)
"I'm not aware that I was consciously influenced by any director, though these things often happen unnoticed, submerged in the unconscious."
- William Peter Blatty
(Related: Unconscious)
"Our unconscious is not more animal than our conscious, it is often even more human."
- Edward Bond
(Related: Unconscious)
"Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire."
- Christian Nestell Bovee
(Related: Example, Followers, Reason)
"There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual."
- Catherine Drinker Bowen
(Related: Arrogance)
"An unconscious consciousness is no more a contradiction in terms than an unseen case of seeing."
- Franz Clemens Brentano
(Related: Consciousness, Contradiction, Unconscious)
"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter - in the eye."
- Charlotte Bronte
(Related: Soul, Eye, Unconscious)
"Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius."
- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
(Related: Genius, Man)
"The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon."
- Anthony Burgess
(Related: Habit, Mind, Unconscious)
"The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Difference, Unconscious)
"We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Lie, Day, Dress, Order, Present)
"There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it."
- Miguel de Cervantes
(Related: Humor)
"The reason is that for many years I have avoided reading anything whatsoever that approaches my own line of country, out of a somewhat fanatical desire to avoid the risk of unconscious imitation."
- Leslie Charteris
(Related: Country, Desire, Imitation, Reading, Reason, Risk, Unconscious, Years)
"Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious."
- Jean Cocteau
(Related: Art, Marriage, Unconscious)
"I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding."
- Jackie Cooper
(Related: Work, Hope, Dying, Mediocrity, Now, Public, Reason, Right)
"What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make."
- John Corigliano
(Related: Choices, Style, Thinking, Unconscious, Years)
"The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry."
- Richard Dawkins
(Related: Faith, Blind, Unconscious)
"No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion."
- Christopher Dawson
(Related: Civilization, Culture, Doubt, Driving, Force, Passion, Past, Self, Unconscious)
"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)
"Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course."
- John Drinkwater
(Related: Life, Men, Poetry, Experience, Being, Desire, Unconscious)
"The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious."
- T. S. Eliot
(Related: Unconscious)
"The other thing in composition is opening up the unconscious."
- John Fahey
(Related: Unconscious)
"Sometimes when you play a character, you can feel it in your body. And I felt like I had characteristics of my dog: the way Webster moves, the way he holds his head. I kind of adapted it into this part unconsciously."
- Calista Flockhart
(Related: Character, Body, Play)
"When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories."
- Dario Fo
(Related: Art)
"The images attempt to capture scientific thought. They represent the physical manifestation of the thought process. Everything in the laboratory is a product of a stream of conscious or unconscious thought."
- Peter Fraser
(Related: Thought, Unconscious)
"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Dreams, Knowledge, Mind, Road, Unconscious)
"The psychical, whatever its nature may be, is itself unconscious."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Nature, May, Unconscious)
"But I now think what I was doing, in a completely unconscious way, was getting off the turf where my husband and I might be rivals. We were both working in fiction... so I look back and I see that I consciously vacated the contested ground."
- Helen Garner
(Related: HusbFiction, Now, Unconscious)
"To probe for unconscious determinants of behavior and then define a man in their terms exclusively, ignoring his overt behavior altogether, is a greater distortion than ignoring the unconscious completely."
- Willard Gaylin
(Related: Behavior, Man, Unconscious)
"Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Culture, Race, Unconscious)
"I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are."
- David Guterson
(Related: Duty, First, Unconscious)
"If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this."
- Friedrich August von Hayek
(Related: People, Difficulty, Questions, Will)
"Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought."
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(Related: Men, Thought, Nothing, Unconscious)
"The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought."
- Heinrich Heine
(Related: Men, Thought, Action, Unconscious)
"All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied."
- Vernon Howard
(Related: Behavior, Existence, Self, Unconscious)
"The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty."
- Zora Neale Hurston
(Related: People, Cruelty, Unconscious)
"There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices."
- Francis Jeffrey
(Related: Strength, Man, May, Nothing, Unconscious)
"The thing is, if you believe in the unconscious - and I do - there's room for all kinds of possibilities that I don't know how you prove one way or another."
- Jasper Johns
(Related: Possibilities, Unconscious)
"The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions."
- E. Stanley Jones
(Related: Actions, Mind, Unconscious)
"Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Life, Heart, Being, Question, Unconscious)
"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Man, Press, Unconscious)
"Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Love, Nature)
"A woman always has her man, but the man unconsciously leans on his roots, his heritage. He feels like an orphan without his parents."
- Raj Kapoor
(Related: Man, Parents, Woman)
"I believe in the unconscious state of the mind in death."
- John Harvey Kellogg
(Related: Death, Mind, State, Unconscious)
"Even though things happen by accident, you also unconsciously choose things that help you."
- Nastassja Kinski
(Related: Accident, Help)
"My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious."
- Karl Kraus
(Related: Consciousness, Unconscious)
"Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it."
- Louis Kronenberger
(Related: Individualism, Innocence, Unconscious)
"However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously."
- Wally Lamb
(Related: Fiction, May, Pretty, Writers, Writing)
"I've never seen a truly great fighter get knocked onto the ropes unconscious... knocked out cold before... and I saw Roy Jones get knocked out twice in a row."
- Jim Lampley
(Related: Unconscious)
"Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Men, Freedom, Unconscious)
"I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Life, First, Man, Self, Unconscious)
"I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious."
- David Letterman
(Related: Trying, Unconscious)
"At that moment Mr. Clifford, quite unconscious that he and his most personal feelings and aspirations were subjects of discussion, was turning from the main road into the lower road."
- Joseph C. Lincoln
(Related: Feelings, Aspirations, Road, Unconscious)
"We know that communication must be hampered, and its form largely determined, by the unconscious but inevitable influence of a transmitting mechanism, whether that be of a merely mechanical or of a physiological character."
- Oliver Joseph Lodge
(Related: Character, Communication, Influence, Unconscious)
"Every goal, every action, every thought, every feeling one experiences, whether it be consciously or unconsciously known, is an attempt to increase one's level of peace of mind."
- Sydney Madwed
(Related: Peace, Thought, Action, Goal, Feeling, Mind)
"For the myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious."
- Thomas Mann
(Related: Life, Formula, Myth, Unconscious)
"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries."
- Thomas Mann
(Related: Life, Man)
"The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive."
- Marc Maron
(Related: Consciousness, Internet, Unconscious)
"Man is firmly convinced that he is awake; in reality he is caught in a net of sleep and dreams which he has unconsciously woven himself."
- Gustave Meyrink
(Related: Dreams, Man, Reality, Sleep)
"Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth."
- Marston Morse
(Related: Beauty, Earth, Infinity, Mathematics, Play, Result, Unconscious)
"Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious."
- Charles Munch
(Related: Art, Intelligence, Music, Land, Unconscious, Words)
"Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries."
- Gilbert Murray
(Related: Grammar, Language, Unconscious)
"The greatest impediments to changes in our traditional roles seem to lie not in the visible world of conscious intent, but in the murky realm of the unconscious mind."
- Augustus Y. Napier
(Related: Lie, Mind, Unconscious, World)
"Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together."
- Anais Nin
(Related: Life, Dreams, Action, Connection, Unconscious)
"This country has been unconscious, and it's got to awake. That's my belief."
- Charles Olson
(Related: Belief, Country, Unconscious)
"Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance."
- Tom G. Palmer
(Related: Medical, Choices, Circumstances, Right, Unconscious)
"I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge."
- Jackson Pollock
(Related: Time, Painting, Unconscious)
"For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Imagination, Fiction, Order, Unconscious)
"If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Problems, Study, Unconscious)
"It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Unconscious)
"Kafka truly illustrates the way the environment oppresses the individual. He shows how the unconscious controls our lives."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Environment, Unconscious)
"If you're going to stick around in this business, you have to have the ability to reinvent yourself, whether consciously or unconsciously."
- Dennis Quaid
(Related: Business, Ability)
"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive."
- Man Ray
(Related: Imagination, Dreams, Unconscious)
"Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Life, Forget, Problems, Solution, Unconscious)
"More and more, unsolicited gifts from without are likely to be received with unconscious resentment."
- Edward Sapir
(Related: Gifts, Resentment, Unconscious)
"All psychological research is completely barred by the interpretations of the psychoanalysts. Everything happens in the unconscious, and I don't know what this unconscious is."
- Nathalie Sarraute
(Related: Research, Unconscious)
"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)
"You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know."
- Steven Spielberg
(Related: Dreams, Unconscious, Will, Years)
"We are all at times unconscious prophets."
- Charles Spurgeon
(Related: Unconscious)
"During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Quality, Genius, Trying)
"We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly."
- Anne Sophie Swetchine
(Related: Reform)
"The conscious purpose of science is control of Nature; its unconscious effect is disruption and chaos."
- William Irwin Thompson
(Related: Science, Nature, Control, Purpose, Chaos, Effect, Unconscious)
"The conscious process is reflected in the imagination; the unconscious process is expressed as karma, the generation of actions divorced from thinking and alienated from feeling."
- William Irwin Thompson
(Related: Imagination, Actions, Feeling, Karma, Thinking, Unconscious)
"A World is not an ideology nor a scientific institution, nor is it even a system of ideologies; rather, it is a structure of unconscious relations and symbiotic processes."
- William Irwin Thompson
(Related: Ideology, Unconscious, World)
"Unconscious Polities emerge independent of conscious purpose."
- William Irwin Thompson
(Related: Purpose, Unconscious)
"The un-conscious distortion of the facts is almost harmless compared to the unconscious neglect of an animal's mental life until it verges on the unusual and marvelous."
- Edward Thorndike
(Related: Life, Facts, Neglect, Unconscious)
"Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity."
- Leo Tolstoy
(Related: Humanity, Unconscious)
"Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks."
- Anthony Trollope
(Related: Power, Company, Temper)
"All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me - consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected."
- Donald Trump
(Related: Women)
"In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness."
- Ivan Turgenev
(Related: Nature, Art, End, Freedom, Goodness, Laws, Reason)
"Games sometimes can reveal things. To watch someone in movement, unconscious movement, can be very stimulating and revealing, whether they win or not."
- John Turturro
(Related: Games, Unconscious)
"Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Sea, Unconscious)
"I am not unconscious of the persuasive power exerted by these considerations to drag men along in the current; but I am not at liberty to travel that road."
- Benjamin F. Wade
(Related: Men, Power, Travel, Liberty, Road, Unconscious)
"The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories."
- Margaret Walker
(Related: Poetry, People, Body, Deep, Memories, Unconscious)
"A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation."
- Neale Donald Walsch
(Related: Life, Action, Chance, Choice, Creation, Unconscious)
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
- Booker T. Washington
(Related: English, Unconscious, Vocabulary, Words)
"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)
"As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others."
- Marianne Williamson
(Related: People, Fear, Light)
"My specialties are corpses, unconscious people and people snoring in spectacular epics."
- Gig Young
(Related: People, Unconscious)
"Not only may she unconsciously register a favorable impression with my associates and me, but she may also suggest something by her work that will lead to some new and novel feature in a forthcoming production."
- Florenz Ziegfeld
(Related: Work, Impression, May, Production, Will)
"Sometimes, if you really want to try something original, you step a little too far out of bounds. I mean, there's a market force that kind of unconsciously keeps you in line a little bit."
- David Zucker
(Related: Force, Want)